BillMonitor

Obviously the drop in UK VAT from 17.5% to 15% is going to affect the mobile market, but it seems that no-one’s rounded up how that affects the industry yet, so here’s the low-down.

Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Three have all passed the cut on to customers, although they’ve chosen to keep their advertised prices on tariffs and calls the same.  When the VAT is applied to your actual bill, it’ll be 15% and your calls will be cheaper than the published rates.  Handsets, however, have had their advertised prices cut, with the exception of Three, who’ve chosen to just apply the cut when they charge you.

In addition, anyone on Pay As You Go will receive between 18p and 25p extra per £10 of top-up.

This begs the question, should price comparison sites report the actual prices with the new VAT rate considered or should they stick to the advertised rates?  At present, BillMonitor continues to reflect the advertised rates on the network websites, but perhaps we’ll change this depending on what our users want to see.