One thought. A company like WileyFox must spend significant bucks to provide after-the-fact engineering to provide updates. It would be a classic error to underestimate the cost of ongoing engineering, and provide a lower up front cost, then be strapped for cash later. At that point, WileyFox management needs a revenue stream to provide the engineering to push 7.1.1. It would - again I am guessing - typically turn to outside companies who pay for placement, like the dialer. Those companies make money by selling data.
Thus I am not surprised that this is happening, although I had not heard of WileyFox until today. It's also possibly WileyFox is greedy, but I'm going with incompetence; I will believe first that someone made a mistake in pricing and planning, and they're looking for the best outcome for customers, company, brand.
I am, perhaps uncomfortably, saying that "you got an unexpectedly low price" going with a company like WileyFox. They gave you a cheaper phone, and frequent updates, and now they need to pay for it. They could either start charging subscriptions for the 7.1.1 update ( which would be fair, no? ), or they could do what they are doing by making a deal with what sounds like a shady dialer company, or they could bail out and not provide the updates they promised ( like most handset providers do ).
I could get all high-horse about software consumers being trained to expect free software. That expectation being set by the billions of dollars in VC money that has been spent to capture markets - markets that later require "exploitation". But I won't go there - it's a complicated argument, there are other market forces, there are models that work, companies can be "up front" about data-driven business models.
My way of saying - you do have to pay for software, you took the 7.1.1 update, you should expect to pay..... right?