O2 Price Increase - How Should I Handle This?

krippo

Hi everyone,

I just received an email from O2 about some upcoming changes to my Pay Monthly mobile plan, and I’m not sure how to proceed. Here’s a summary of the key points:

1. Price Increase: From April 2025, the cost of my airtime plan will go up by £1.80 per month, but the device plan cost will remain unchanged.
2. Discounts: They’ve said that recurring discounts won’t be adjusted annually anymore. Previously, they increased with inflation +3.9%, but now they’ll stay frozen.
3. Out-of-Bundle Charges: Some costs for things like calls, texts, and data outside my allowance are going up too. From April 2026, some will increase annually by 5%.
4. Roaming Changes: They’ve extended their fair usage policy for roaming outside Europe and increased international roaming rates (e.g., calls from £2/min to £3/min).
5. Cancellation Option: Because of these changes, I can cancel my airtime plan within the next 30 days. However, I’d still need to continue paying for my device plan.

The issue is, I had negotiated a great 2-year deal, and now they’re planning to raise prices. I’d like to know the best way to handle this so I don’t end up paying more.

Do you think I should try to negotiate a new deal with O2 that’s better than what they’re offering now? Or should I consider switching providers? If I stay, how can I ensure the new terms are more favorable?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

ButterCheese

£1.80/month is nothing.  Mine went up £4.20 mi-contract.  They all do it.  I'm not sure how they get away with it, but they do.  Presumably when you sign a contract for a fixed price per month, it's written in it somewhere that it is subject to rise in line with inflation or CPI.  You can shop around for a better deal providing you won't incur any cost for early termination of contract.  But I bet if you moved to someone cheaper it'll go up by even more than £1.80

Kim_13

Not my contract but they’ve sent an email to a SIMO customer in contract saying that their data only or watch plan will go up by 75p. This creates confusion for their customers who will have seen £1.80 elsewhere. It’s also price gouging in my view given they were only obliged to put new and re-contracting customers onto pounds and pence from January, but instead force customers to do the contract dance early or take an increase that even if 75p is the correct figure for Sim Only, is still double what the inflation based rise is likely to be. 

No doubt if inflation was projected to be higher than their pounds and pence schedule, they’d have let the inflation based contracts run until their end with no right for the customer to exit. Because it’s gone down, they’re kicking them off early.

If you want a fixed term, you should have to stick to a price. Period. Their way of going about this is a disgrace.

jimjames

If you're not happy then switch to another provider. There are loads of good deals out there via MSE and USwitch

hockeypop89

I received the same email with the same amount of increase (£1.80). However, less than 24 hours ago (yesterday afternoon) I agreed a new 2 year sim only deal at £7.99 a month. Both their jargon of annual increases whilst confirming the deal, their O2 app and O2 website still states annual increase would be based on RPI rate of inflation plus 3.9% and would be confirmed in Feb 2025..... This £1.80 increase means come April 2025 my bill will increase by nearly 25%!!! On chat to them as we speak to confirm whether new deals through 3rd party companies such as USwitch will also fall victim to these price hikes.....  

hockeypop89

*Update*
O2 advisor saying £1.80 is being applied to all tariffs rather than a % increase and the increase is for air time costs. So the better and lower priced your current tariff/bill, the bigger the increase.
Ridiculous 

housebuyer143

Have you considered leaving and going to Giffgaff or something? Depending how much you pay a month you might save money while getting to keep your handset. 

Neil49

What deal do you have at the moment in terms of data allowance and monthly cost? 

You can easily get a new deal with O2 by going through Uswitch (who offer competitive rates) and this doesn't involve having to get a PAC and all the associated issues with that.

At the moment they are offering 40GB of data plus calls etc for £8 per month on O2. 

pedrodelgado

Neil49 said:

What deal do you have at the moment in terms of data allowance and monthly cost? 

You can easily get a new deal with O2 by going through Uswitch (who offer competitive rates) and this doesn't involve having to get a PAC and all the associated issues with that.

At the moment they are offering 40GB of data plus calls etc for £8 per month on O2. 

Thats what I did last week. Then couple of days later got the email to say it'll be going up by £1.80 in April. Even though the terms said Rpi plus 3.9%. It's a disgrace they can just do that. Going up by 23% now instead of the 8% it should have. 

flaneurs_lobster

pedrodelgado said:

Thats what I did last week. Then couple of days later got the email to say it'll be going up by £1.80 in April. Even though the terms said Rpi plus 3.9%. It's a disgrace they can just do that. Going up by 23% now instead of the 8% it should have. 

Think there's a couple of options. That email should have said that you can leave your contract without penalty because the terms have changed - get a PAC and shift to another operator.

You've got 4 months at the existing rate. Try to upgrade again just before the price increase to renew your contract again at the same rate (or maybe lower). There's a chance that this won't be allowed after only 4 months but I've never had a problem doing this.

Frozen_up_north

We had a couple of SIM only O2 contracts, but switched to GiffGaff. These MVNOs offer the same coverage (O2) but have great flexibility. I don’t see any point in sticking with O2…

We have since switched one to 1p Mobile (EE network) for free roaming in the Channel Islands.