Downgrading Tariff on O2 partway through a Contract

Lee_Howden

I've started hunting round for upgrade deals on O2 for when my contract is up in a month or so. One of the criteria I have is keeping the monthly cost down or only a moderate increase.

If I take out a contract now at say £37 per month but want to reduce my tariff part way through, can you still do that? You used to be able to do it at 9 months on an 18 month contract.

I asked this question to O2 Twitter page today and they told me that you have to stay on the same tariff for the whole contract. They however, didn't grasp that you could downgrade in previous years. This was very worrying seen as they are a first point of contact for anything O2.

Does anybody know if it has recently changed so that you cannot change tariff during your contract? I don't know whether to believe the O2 staff who manage the 02 page or not!

grumbler

I am pretty sure this changed, and not very recently.
In the past the T&C clearly allowed downgrading. Check the current T&C to make sure that it's not the case anymore: http://www.o2.co.uk/termsandconditions/mobile/our-latest-pay-monthly-mobile-agreement

[Deleted User]

£37 a month seems expensive to me but I don't know the details of your O2 package. It might be worth taking a look at the Tesco Mobile website as they have some deals that seem good to me.

For example £15 a month on a 12 month contract will buy you 2000 minutes, 5000 texts, 3GB data a month with a Standard/Micro SIM on their sim only deal so you keep your present phone.
I mention Tesco as they run on the O2 network so you shouldn't need to get your phone unlocked to change provider.

Also they do deals on a one month basis for you to try them out before committing to a longer period. And you can add 4G for an extra £2.50 a month.

They have a range of deals from £7.50 a month - worth taking a look at on their website http://shop.tescomobile.com/sim-only

macman

As above, if you really want to keep the cost down then the obvious solution is to switch to SIM only and keep the existing handset (Or buy a SIM-free handset). You could reduce your ongoing costs by around 75% that way.

19lottie82

I think its obvious that the OP is looking at a £37 a month tariff because he wants a top of the line handset for "free", you won't get this with sim only.

Sure you can buy it outright and then a sim only deal but a ltlot of people don't have the money for this hence why they take out these contracts.

Back to the OP...... Yes you used to be able to downgrade your tariff but handsets are getting more expensive so the network providers need to reclaim this money through high monthly fees.

Techhead_2

Lee_Howden wrote: »

I've started hunting round for upgrade deals on O2 for when my contract is up in a month or so. One of the criteria I have is keeping the monthly cost down or only a moderate increase.

If I take out a contract now at say £37 per month but want to reduce my tariff part way through, can you still do that? You used to be able to do it at 9 months on an 18 month contract.

I asked this question to O2 Twitter page today and they told me that you have to stay on the same tariff for the whole contract. They however, didn't grasp that you could downgrade in previous years. This was very worrying seen as they are a first point of contact for anything O2.

Does anybody know if it has recently changed so that you cannot change tariff during your contract? I don't know whether to believe the O2 staff who manage the 02 page or not!

It's been several years since o2 changed this. First to only down one tariff step and then not at all.

It's no surprise that the staff didn't know about a change several years .

Lee_Howden

O2 answered me on Twitter this morning, telling me that you could downgrade on contracts that were taken out before 30/03/12. Contracts taken out after this don't have this facility