MSE News: O2 raises prices for 7 million mobile customers

macman

The solution is obvious: don't sign up to expensive smartphone contracts that require a 24m minimum term. Use PAYG, or SIM only contracts, which can be as little as 30 days.

NorthworthyAlan

I agree that it's a bit naughty to up the price of a contract during the first year at all even if their terms and conditions allow.
However I consider myself both lucky and unlucky with this.
My new O2 contract started just over 3 weeks ago.
Having had problems with Vodafone, not being able to retrieve my bills to reclaim VAT, and having spent many hours over a period of 5 weeks trying, unsuccessfully to resolve the matter, I moved to O2. The area I live in gives me no choice other than to use one of these two networks locally as there is very poor coverage from other providers and no 3g coverage at all with any.
I looked at Tesco and Giff Gaff as possible alternatives, and with both, even keeping my old phone, I couldn't get the same unlimited calls and texts with 1gb of data for the same or lower cost.
So, I now have a sparkling new iPhone 5 which cost £249.99 up front, and traded the old iPhone 4s with them for £250.02 thus covering the up-front cost.
The increase to me, still makes it the cheapest option by a fair margin, and now I have a phone under warranty for nothing.
To me, that's a bargain. If you live in a big city rather than a rural location as I do, it may be different, but I don't, so while I'm not ecstatic about the increase, I may be a bit miffed, but I'm still happy!
No, I don't work for them, I am a humble guitar maker.

arcdef

There is a petition on the government website against this, search google for 'Mobile Phone Fixed Tariff Price Increases' and its the first hit.

We all need to sign this to stop it happening in the future!!!

snoog

Actually, it says O2 is allowed to increase your tariff up to the current RPI at the time of your notification. The emails went 17/12 I think. Anyway, the RPI for November was out then and it was 3.0% not 3.2% - that was October's RPI.

So technically, one could give them notice of 30 days if I'm not mistaken.

Buzby

The petition is ill-advised from the outset. The clue to why is in grumbler's comment.

Mobile phone agreements are NOT fixed-price contracts. They have never been, so the claim is actually perverse - seeking all fixed-price contracts to be, er, fixed price!

If they meant contracts with a minimum term commitment, then that not only makes sense, but gets my vote.

As it stands, the networks will be shaking. (With laughter).

carolineb23

I took out a new contract with O2 last week, it was after the price increases were announced and to be honest, I thought they would have taken the increase into account when advertising contracts from the moment it was announced. It seems very shady practice to offer at a certain price and a matter of days later tell me that will be going up. Surely they shouldn't be offering contracts without the increase added on at this point as its after the announcement?

MiserlyMartin

Well there's inflation for you. All the money printing comes at a cost and I fear inflation due to QE has hardly started. Central Banks all over the world are meddling with the money supply and doing all sorts of things against the laws of economics.

diamonds

MiserlyMartin wrote: »

Central Banks all over the world are meddling with the money supply and doing all sorts of things against the laws of economics.

Well its good they got the Tories in power doing exactly the same.

digp

Funny that on their website the prices are still showing no increase.

mije1983

digp wrote: »

Funny that on their website the prices are still showing no increase.

That's because they are not going up until 28th February. It does say the prices are going up by 3.2% on that date though as I saw it while browsing their online store last night.