It’s a bad day to be a wallet. Not only has Google recently confirmed price hikes for YouTube Premium members in SA, but Rain South Africa has since followed suit, announcing a slew of increases. If you’re part of the unlucky crowd still under Rain’s thumb, the company will have already warned you of the coming hike via email.
In our case, the RainOne package will see a R24/m increase, taking the total price to R819/m, while the now defunct ‘unlimited home 5G premium’ plan now costs R1,029/m – a R34 hike. These prices will go into effect from 1 June 2025, meaning you have until the end of May to get your affairs in order or cancel entirely.
Bless the Rains down in Africa…
We reached out to Rain South Africa in an attempt to confirm which of the provider’s plans would be affected and what their new prices would be, and received a vague response citing inflation for the increase:
“Due to inflation, we’ve updated prices by an average of 3.4% on select rain plans. This update will take effect from your selected billing date, starting 1 May 2025,” it said.
This is in direct contradiction to the automated emails sent out to paying customers both yesterday and today warning users of the incoming price hikes, which state that these would only come into play starting 1 June 2025:
“In line with inflation, we’re updating the price of your plan. From your 1 June payment onwards, your rainOne will go up by R24 to the new price of R819 a month,” it said.
Rain did, however, confirm that only “select” plans would feel the sting of higher fees, while the likes of the company’s mobile plan, mobile gig top-ups, minutes, and SMS fees and prices would remain unchanged, as well as any costs you might incur when ‘leveling up’ your package.
We have attempted to determine which of these ‘select’ plans will be increased come June and their exact pricing, but we hadn’t heard back at the time of publication. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
