31.25% April 2026 Price Increase from O2

Mckenna

flaneurs_lobster said:

Mckenna said:

Just checking the email says you can cancel the airtime plan within 30 days without charge
whats peoples expierence of doing this? 

I presume the device plan continues as normal and you can just move to a sim only? 

That's how it should work. Be careful, there were reports last year of people having grief trying to cancel one half of their contracts - whole thing being cancelled and demands for remaining balance for phones being demanded, and CS not knowing that cancelling airtime was allowed without penalty.  Hopefully this year their CS agents will know the drill.

I've done it in-store, trying to persuade their online system to only cancel airtime was beyond me and their CS support by phone/chat is not the finest.

Noted I am 12 months in out of 24, I may visit the shop in town then for peace of mind. 

Need to weigh up if it’s worth doing as plenty of cheap sim only deals but can’t make any decision without knowing what the handset cost is

flaneurs_lobster

Having the contract via a reseller (AO) is going to make it interesting, you'll have to go check the (no doubt tortuous) contract terms to find out who exactly your airtime bit is with (the phone bit will be with AO) and see if they can be separated. AO will have received commission on the airtime deal and may not be best pleased if you ditch it mid-term if they face penalties.

Mckenna

flaneurs_lobster said:

Having the contract via a reseller (AO) is going to make it interesting, you'll have to go check the (no doubt tortuous) contract terms to find out who exactly your airtime bit is with (the phone bit will be with AO) and see if they can be separated. AO will have received commission on the airtime deal and may not be best pleased if you ditch it mid-term if they face penalties.

Indeed the original contract from AO has the following statement:

Your iPhone 16 128GB White is supplied by Affordable Mobiles and not by O2. Your phone comes with a 12 month warranty and a 14 day money back guarantee. See 'Your Right to Return' below for details.

The air plan is with O2 and O2 take the full value ( I presume they either shift the handset portion to AO or pay AO outright and then claw back through the plan which I think is more likely) 

NewPieman

Me personally......am annoyed at the notification that they are upping it in April.....but I will be staying with O2.....

My scenario - 12 month SIM only £8 per month via a comparison site for Unlimited Calls, Texts and 32GB data which is Volted to 64GB. We have 4 SIMs on the account.....1 pays £8 pm and the the others £6.20 pm with Friends and Family.

Our 12 months is up in April so we just renew via the comparisons (Inc cashback) and start again.....

EAB2

Great work Martin Lewis. Thanks to your campaign against percentage increases, my £6.99 a month airtime contract is going up

35% in April.

He really didn't think this through did he! 

What should have happened is the banning of in contract price increases! 

nagevnagev

flaneurs_lobster said:

The increase doesn't happen until next April.

Don't sweat it, you've 5 months on your current deal. Diarise something in mid March '26 and see what deals are available (from O2, O2's resellers, O2's MVNOs or another network altogether). 

It's what I do with my O2 PAYM, on the same deal you have via USwitch - been good for the past 3 years, never been more than £8, just make sure it's an UPGRADE rather than a new deal.

Note that this doesn't work anymore for existing customers, you would need to switch away to a 30 day deal and then switch back. 

flashg67

EAB2 said:

Great work Martin Lewis. Thanks to your campaign against percentage increases, my £6.99 a month airtime contract is going up

35% in April.

He really didn't think this through did he! 

What should have happened is the banning of in contract price increases! 

He does acknowledge this in the article but also says he, and others, campaigned for stricter rules eg no above CPI rises, or no mid contract rises at all. It's the greed of the companies that should be questioned IMO

12itagb

The most frustrating thing is that previously you could "restart" contracts by upgrading via Uswitch/MSE or similar sites. You'd simply select the deal you wanted, log in, and choose the upgrade option, but now that's no longer possible. I used to do that after price hikes or if a new deal with better data was offered. I want to keep O2 because of the Volt benefits O2 presales... I just wish loyalty was rewarded better.

sjcsystems

I had to have an O2 SIM as part of the Virgin Media Max Volt package.  Can I terminate that now that this ridiculous price increase has been forced on us?

Debbm2sey

I received a notification email, called O2 and was told it was a scam and to ignore it. Incredible