O2 contract customers face 3.2% price hike from February

cheekypj

O2 contract customers face 3.2% price hike from February


O2 has blamed a rise in external costs for a rise in its pay monthly tariffs from February.

The operator is emailing and writing to its customers from today to inform them of the 3.2% rise. The increase is in line with the retail price index level of inflation, which measures the change in cost of a basket of goods and services. O2 said charges for making calls, sending texts and using data will remain the same.

The operator is the latest to increase its prices during the middle of a contract period. Previous moves to do so by rivals have angered customers. In October, Ofcom announced plans to look into mid-contract price rises following consumer criticism of operators.

An O2 spokesperson said: 'Price increases are never welcome and this isn’t a decision we’ve taken lightly. At a time when our competitors have been raising the prices of their tariffs, we’ve resisted. But as external costs continue to rise, we can’t keep our pay monthly prices at the current level. For over half of our pay monthly customers this will mean an increase on their bill of up to 58 pence per month.'

Other customers unaffected by the change are Pay & Go, corporates on bespoke contracts, home and mobile broadband, home phone and O2 lease customers.

sorry cant post a link as still to new.

the information has been taken from mobiletoday.co.uk

also you can go to news. o2.co.uk and o2.co.uk/ prices

if someone can post links that would be great!!

silvercar

http://news.o2.co.uk/?press-release=rpi-price-increase-for-pay-monthly-customers

http://www.o2.co.uk/prices

Gordon_Hose

Is this their get out clause?

"Can I cancel my contract because of this?

You can. But as our terms and conditions allow us to put our prices up once every 12 months due to inflation, there would be a fee if you wanted to end your contract early."

I'd love any excuse to get away from O2.

Gordon_Hose

Seems they have this pretty much watertight. Here is the relevant section from their Pay Monthly Ts&Cs:

5. Charges for our Services
5.1 Detailed charging information can be found on our Website and in our Tariff Terms.

5.2 We may increase or decrease our Charges from time to time. If we increase our Charges (apart from for Additional Services), we’ll let you know at least 30 days before the Charges are due to go up and you’ll have the rights explained in paragraphs 5.3 and 5.4. We won’t increase your Monthly Subscription Charges more than once in any 12 month period.

5.3 You can end this Agreement without having to pay the Monthly Subscription Charges up to the end of any Minimum Period you have left, if:
(a) we increase your Monthly Subscription Charges by more than the Retail Price Index (RPI) annual inflation rate at the date we notify you of the applicable price increase; or
(b) we increase any of our Charges (apart from for Additional Services) in such a way that would have increased your total bill for the immediately previous month by more than 10% (if the increase(s) had applied for the whole of that month).

5.4 If you want to end the Agreement because of one of the circumstances in paragraph 5.3 you must give us Notice that you want to within 30 days of when we tell you about the relevant price increase(s). If you don’t give us Notice within 30 days, you accept the new Charges and the Agreement will continue with the new Charges.

Guys_Dad

Gordon_Hose wrote: »

Is this their get out clause?

"Can I cancel my contract because of this?

You can. But as our terms and conditions allow us to put our prices up once every 12 months due to inflation, there would be a fee if you wanted to end your contract early."

I'd love any excuse to get away from O2.

Trouble is, Gordon, others were flocking to O2 when Vodafone, EE, 3 put up their prices.

Folks, they are all at it, just like the Energy companies. The only difference is which month they raise the prices.

Gordon_Hose

Trouble is, GD, the company I work for was recently bought by Vodafone and I can get 50% staff discount on pay monthly contracts

I'm tied into O2 until Feb 2014. And the signal in my flat is atrocious.

zzzLazyDaisy

I think focussing on the *up to 58p* per month rise for half of O2 customers is a bit of smoke and mirrors on the part of O2.

What that means is that those customers who have monthly packages costing £18 or less, will see a monthly fee increase of up to 58p.

That also means that the other half of their customers, some of whom will be on significantly more expensive packages, will see a much bigger rise.

So someone taking out the best monthly tariff with a 'free' iphone today, will see an increase of around £34 over the period of the contract.

I wonder if this will be flagged up to all the people who are taking out new iphone contracts for christmas this month?

silvercar

And for those on a discounted rate, they still get their discount but it is applied to a larger price, so their increase is more than the headline percentage.

MrShazzyMan

Bloody bull****!!! External costs!!! My A**. Just because their network equipment failed on them miserably this year twice or was it more that they had to upgrade their systems with new hardware (I assume) and expect their customers to pay for the hardware well to think about it, it's obviously o2's own fault that their equipment had failed, they should of used better hardware!

Gordon_Hose

My contract costs £21.50 per month and will rise by £0.69p.

walesrob

I'm on a £15.50 tariff with O2 and will rise to £16.00, but luckily the minimum term ends in April, seems I've had a lucky escape.