FIVE million households are overpaying for their broadband internet, wasting £162m a year, despite the price being at an all-time low, according to uSwitch.com.
The cost of a standalone broadband has fallen by 36% since 2004 when a connection would typically set customers back £27 monthly. Households now spend an average of £17 on their broadband and can buy a service from as little as £10 per month. Despite
this, nearly five million continue to pay more than £20 for their service.
The broadband market is still dominated by many of the same names as four years ago. Yet while some providers have cut charges by as much as 46%, others have reduced their prices by just 29%.
Four years ago, AOL and Orange were the two most expensive broadband suppliers. AOL now offers one of the cheaper packages at £15 per month whilst Orange is charging £20, retaining its title as priciest provider. Plusnet is currently cheapest, at £10 a month,
EU prices shameTHE European Commission has promised to name and shame businesses that unfairly hike the cost of consumer goods by exposing the more expensive countries. But we may have to wait until five years for it to publish a promised price list of 500 products available throughout the EU.
Many feel Britain gets the worst deal, especially when it comes to electronic goods. Sony's PlayStation 3 went on sale in Britain for £425 – at least £25 more expensive than in other European countries and as much as £100 dearer than in America.
The research also found that consumers in Britain are charged twice as much for electricity as citizens of Greece or Belgium.
However, Britain isn't the only place to suffer from price discrepancies across borders. A litre of milk can cost anything from 51p in Germany to 93p in Greece and Danes have to pay almost three times as much for a loaf of bread as those living in Hungary or Poland.
Insolvencies down
PERSONAL insolvencies in Scotland were down by 1% in 2007 compared with the previous year, and fell sharply by 6% in the final quarter of 2007, according to figures released by the Insolvency Service.
However, the leap in numbers entering sequestration, an increase of 14% compared with 2006, indicate ongoing debt problems.
Against this there was a 12% drop in people entering protected trust deeds.
Graham Martin, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers said: "We continued to see a trend across 2007 for people entering sequestration rather than protected trust deeds. It will be interesting to see whether the trend continues in 2008 when the bankruptcy period is reduced to one year."
Mortgage matcher
HSBC has introduced a 'RateMatcher' guarantee that promises to match the fixed interest rates for current mortgage customers when they roll off their existing two, three and five-year deals.
Customers will pay a fee to match their old fixed rate, depending on the length of the fixed term and their current rate. HSBC estimates that more than 93% of customers taking advantage of this new scheme will have a fee of less than £500 to pay.
The offer is available to HSBC's customers rolling off fixed rate deals until the end of April.
