Rogers-owned Fido has increased the price of its plans again but also raised its automatic payments discount accordingly.

This is the provider's second price increase in nearly a month.

Three of Fido's four plans saw increases of $5/mo to the base rate. For example, the $49/20GB plan went to $54/mo. Alongside that, Fido doubled the automatic payment discount from $5 to $10/mo, so prices effectively remain unchanged as long as customers sign up for autopay.

The changes apply to new customers only. Existing customers shouldn’t see changes to their prices or autopay discount.

Here's a full list of Fido’s plans and new prices:

• $37.50/2GB (unchanged, no autopay discount)
• $54/20GB (previously $49), $44 with autopay
• $59/40GB (previously $54), $49 with autopay
• $64/60GB (previously $59), $54 with autopay

The change brings Fido's automatic payments discount in line with parent company Rogers, which also offers a $10 discount on plans if customers use autopay. Bell also has a $10/mo autopay discount, while Freedom Mobile, Telus and its subsidiary Koodo still offer $5/mo autopay discounts.

However, the autopay "discount" hardly counts as such when companies inflate prices by the same amount.

Moreover, comparing carriers' autopay discounts means little when plan prices are almost all the same — for example, Koodo has a $5 autopay discount, but its plan prices match Fido’s prices after the discount, so it doesn't matter that Fido has a larger discount.

Interestingly, Fido's website didn't display the updated autopay discount for about two hours this morning after increasing the price of its plans, so it briefly looked like Fido removed the discount entirely and raised prices by $10/mo.

The timing of Fido's autopay change is also notable. The provider just announced the shutdown of prepaid services, and it's pushing prepaid customers to migrate to postpaid or switch to another Rogers' flanker brand, Chatr.

The new autopay discount comes ahead of Black Friday as well, when carriers typically offer deals on plans. It’ll be interesting to see how the $10 autopay discount factors into deal pricing in the coming months.