O2 pulling a fast one?🤔

iamnotasoldier

As many on this forum recently, I'm going to be affected by the O2 price hike in April. I contacted them to discuss but the outcome was "contact us in Mid April to discuss as we can't do anything now due to a discount already applied to your account". 
My thinking is they have tried to stall me leaving & miss the cancellation penalty free window (I'm right in thinking it's 30 days from when you receive the notification email yeah? It was last week I got the mail) ? 
Tempted to leave. 

EdSanRo

I did call them. Took me 2 attempts and took ages to get through.
But I managed. She tried to scare me off with "but you know you're still in contract". I acknowledged and told her politely that I wanted to use my right to terminate my contract as offered per email.
Not even an attempt to try to keep me. No problem sir, I cancel your plan with a 30 day notice.

As I am lucky where I am based, I took out a monthly Talkmobile (Vodafone network) and will look how that works. 9.50 for 100Gb. That suits me. From 44.69 down to 9.50

Bye O2.. 

The real reason for leaving was that I am frustrated with an insurance that I can't cancel without it affecting my free benefits included in the Ultimate plan. 
However, I checked all documents send to me on contract start, including all contracts and information online and nowhere is mentioned that these are linked. I filed a complaint. Now this opportunity came by, I did not hesitate and got out.

Sachakins

Just leave. If you want or need o2 signal, switch to giffgaff, they run on o2 network. I've not notice any change in signal strength or the data speeds. Last speed check on 5G signal was 145mb download and 45mb up load. Which was the same as the o2 contract speed before l jumped on the ditch and switch on the day i got the o2 email.
Went for a 30 day sim only deal, but will move to contract when it suits me.

bagand96

Sachakins said:

Just leave. If you want or need o2 signal, switch to giffgaff, they run on o2 network. I've not notice any change in signal strength or the data speeds. Last speed check on 5G signal was 145mb download and 45mb up load. Which was the same as the o2 contract speed before l jumped on the ditch and switch on the day i got the o2 email.
Went for a 30 day sim only deal, but will move to contract when it suits me.

giffgaff are a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 so may not be the best choice if you're leaving to prove a point and stick it to O2.  

Sachakins

bagand96 said:

Sachakins said:

Just leave. If you want or need o2 signal, switch to giffgaff, they run on o2 network. I've not notice any change in signal strength or the data speeds. Last speed check on 5G signal was 145mb download and 45mb up load. Which was the same as the o2 contract speed before l jumped on the ditch and switch on the day i got the o2 email.
Went for a 30 day sim only deal, but will move to contract when it suits me.

giffgaff are a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 so may not be the best choice if you're leaving to prove a point and stick it to O2.  

bagand96 said:

giffgaff are a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 so may not be the best choice if you're leaving to prove a point and stick it to O2.  

Yes I agree, but the point was to react to unfair mid contract price rises. If its a contract why is it variable pricing, you don't variable contract ending options, you end you pay a fee you broke contract, they entice you in with an offer, then destroy it mid term with price hikes.

My other reason for wanting an o2 signal was that in the recent Vodafone outage our household lost all ability to use phones and Internet with exception of O2 fone.
So have now split suppliers

1 now Spusu/EE ex talkmobile/vodafone
1 now GiffGaff/O2 ex O2/O2
Fibre broadband through Vodafone.

Can't ditch Vofdafone for broadband yet, too many months. But at least when the mid term upgrade offer prices changed, I haggled it down to the price that a new customer could get and got an upgrade to latest router that was on offer to new users.
So ended up on a better deal anyway.

Decided the all eggs in one basket approach i had for easy management no longer a good idea, after the vodafone debacle and Then O2 doing a sidestep shuffle around ofcom rules.

This and the constant rise in cyber attacks has me reviewing my entire online strategies

Splitting my digital life from single service combined suppliers back to compartmentalised suppliers. Takes time and effort,  but reduces my digital risk from single point of failure.

EdSanRo

Sachakins said:

bagand96 said:

Sachakins said:

Just leave. If you want or need o2 signal, switch to giffgaff, they run on o2 network. I've not notice any change in signal strength or the data speeds. Last speed check on 5G signal was 145mb download and 45mb up load. Which was the same as the o2 contract speed before l jumped on the ditch and switch on the day i got the o2 email.
Went for a 30 day sim only deal, but will move to contract when it suits me.

giffgaff are a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 so may not be the best choice if you're leaving to prove a point and stick it to O2.  

bagand96 said:

giffgaff are a wholly owned subsidiary of O2 so may not be the best choice if you're leaving to prove a point and stick it to O2.  

Yes I agree, but the point was to react to unfair mid contract price rises. If its a contract why is it variable pricing, you don't variable contract ending options, you end you pay a fee you broke contract, they entice you in with an offer, then destroy it mid term with price hikes.

My other reason for wanting an o2 signal was that in the recent Vodafone outage our household lost all ability 

Agree, more work but you save money. I don’t make per hour what I saved there for a year. 

Don’t mind paying for a service, also not at a premium, but then offer something to make it worth my while.

now 1 line with Talkmobile and I am seriously shocked. Their customer service on chat is soo good, fast and knowledgeable… Never had that from O2.

Before I was with EE. That I really liked. Unfortunate due to black hole in network we moved to O2

EdSanRo

One more addition… 
Don’t see the reason to join one of the big providers. The MVNOs are so much cheaper.
Give me one good reason

PHK

EdSanRo said:

One more addition… 
Don’t see the reason to join one of the big providers. The MVNOs are so much cheaper.
Give me one good reason

It depends on your use.

My EE Full Works contract gives me:

Unlimited calls,texts and uncapped speed data
Network Prioritisation (when it's busy I get priority for calls)
5G standalone and Vo5NR
Apple Watch line (eSIM) with unlimited data
EU Roaming
ROW Roaming (rest of world)
Apple One ( Apple TV, iCloud Plus, Apple Arcade, Apple News) - you old choose another add on such as Discovery Plus


This costs me £29 a month. 

If you price individual parts separately you'd get much more than £29.  

Cheapest unlimited with an MVNO is £15, speed capped. 
Apple One is £20.00
An watch eSIM is £7 to £10 IF the provider supports it's. 
No MVNO offers network Prioritisation 
Some offer limited EU Roaming
I"m not aware of any offering ROW Roaming so you'd be looking at a travel eSIM at £10 to £20

So to get near to my monthly package you'd need to pay a minimum of £52 and still not have all the facilities. 

EdSanRo

PHK said:

EdSanRo said:

One more addition… 
Don’t see the reason to join one of the big providers. The MVNOs are so much cheaper.
Give me one good reason

It depends on your use.

My EE Full Works contract gives me:

Unlimited calls,texts and uncapped speed data
Network Prioritisation (when it's busy I get priority for calls)
................

So to get near to my monthly package you'd need to pay a minimum of £52 and still not have all the facilities. 

Oh yes, you’re 100% right. You get value for money. I must say that EE is better in this respect than, for example, O2.

I left O2 because of a difference of opinion regarding their insurance. Around the same time, the now-famous annual price-hike email landed in my inbox, and that really gave me the final push to leave.

I’m currently with an MVNO on Vodafone (only O2 and Vodafone have decent coverage where I live and work). Since last Wednesday I pay £3.75 for 100 GB (I use a maximum of 25–30 GB per month), with unlimited calls and texts, 30 GB roaming, and 1,000 minutes of international calls. It’s a ridiculous deal. It’s time-limited, so I’ll review my options again in about 6–7 months.

Most of the things people value in an EE plan are not relevant to me. If they were, I’d probably make a similar choice. I was with EE for a long time, but had to move to O2 because of coverage.

What really shocked me about O2 is their customer service. It’s subpar. Not just because of my insurance dispute, but in general when you try to arrange anything. The call quality is very poor, with frequent drops when speaking to an agent. I’m not a native English speaker, so the accents can be difficult for me to understand, and I’m sure the agents have the same issue with me.

By comparison, EE’s customer service really stands out. That said, the chat support at both Talkmobile and Lebara is second to none. They’re so good that they make O2 look very weak by comparison.

(O2 shop manager: sorry to say, your insurance dispute is almost secondary. Even without it, O2’s service culture pushes people away.)