[meldrewreborn]

I’ve been notified by O2 that my phone contract price will change soon. The old formula was inflation + 3.9%, but now it’s going to be + £1.80. As my contract price is £8.00 that works out as an increase of 22.5%.

Customers on less expensive tariffs face the same cash increase, so in percentage terms the increase will be even greater.

the increase by O2 is higher than that being imposed by other mobile companies. However ther irony is that mobile contracts on comparison sites are not going up, indeed they’re falling. So I’m switching to ID mobile, 40GB of data for £7 on a one month rolling contract, so I can easily leave if the service falls short of my expectations. And roaming to 50 countries is included.

I would encourage everyone to consider switching this month if their loyalty is being exploited by their mobile company. The switch to set cash amounts allows customers to leave their current contract without penalty.

[geoffers]

@meldrewreborn - here's a breakdown of all companys' increases on M.S.E (not all have been announced yet)
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ne...ce-hikes-2025/

[meldrewreborn]

@geoffers

on the comparison sites you can see what increases ae planned!

[Andy65]

@meldrewreborn

This is the result of OFCOM acting 'in the interests of consumers'. BT/EE are applying a £5 increase to their broadband packages, which like the O2 increase is far more if you're on the cheaper packages in percentage terms than it would have been with inflation + 3.9%.

It's another example of a regulatory body that just isn't fit for purpose, certainly not where the consumer is concerned.

[meldrewreborn]

@Andy65

It would have been better if they had said that no in contract increases were allowed at all.
then suppliers would have to set out from the start what prices would apply and customers could choose their contract appropriately. I’m always on SIM only deals. I’m usually using a cast off from my sons, but bought my self a 2023 SE a couple of years ago which should last me another 5 years hopefully. It’s annoying when apps are revised but not made backward compatible so that older phones loose functionality and need to be updated.

[Andy65]

@meldrewreborn

I agree, but that would have meant doing something for the benefit of the consumer. I sometimes wonder how they come up with these decisions.

There's a certain irony about all of those people who complained about inflation + 3.9% etc, they've now got a fixed increase which, as in your case, is far more than it would have been and I doubt that they have the intelligence to work it out for themselves.

[meldrewreborn]

@Andy65

In a way I'm happy that they have provoked me to change contract. I was paying £8, and they wanted it to go to £9.80 an increase of 22.5%!!

As it is I'm paying £7, a reduction of 12.5% on my current price, or 28.6% on what they were proposing. Perhaps O2 are sending a message that they no longer want to sell comparatively low price contracts. Whether that's a good business decision will come out later. Many people will , foolishly in my view, just take the hit.

[retrotecchie]

@meldrewreborn

I'm one of those people that keep a lot of eggs in one basket. Which has worked to my advantage. Our entire village and the surrounding areas have had no phone service for over a month now thanks to storm damage and some idiot crashing into a pole with a tractor and taking out the trunk cable feeding 200 properties in a seven mile radius!

My current comms package is with Vodafone for around £42 a month. That's purchase of my phone, mobile services, fixed line home phone and broadband. Losing service for a month will involve a payment of £9.73 after 48 hours, plus £9.73 per day thereafter. So they are on the hook for about £300 in penalty payments, just to me. But that is per service, so as I have landline, broadband and mobile in the same package...that's about £900. And the meter is still running as they haven't replaced the infrastructure yet. So let's say it will be getting on for a round £1k. Or about two years free.

But that's just the statutory minimum payment as laid down by OFCOM. Last time I lost service for a couple of days, I moaned like a drain and got an extra £100 in Tesco vouchers as a goodwill gesture.

So 200 customers at an average of £1000 each....obviously we all use different providers, but that's still a payout of getting on for £200,000 in total.

And a long conversation with Vodafone yesterday got them to agree to not increasing my monthly charges for the next two years.

Never take a price hike. There is likely not one provider in the UK for ANYTHING who won't negotiate on price if you threaten to take your business elsewhere.

[Tommysgirl]

@retrotecchie

That's terrible about your phone lines being out of action for a month, and you all deserve a decent amount of compensation for both the outage and for the stress it will have caused everyone in the village, Well done you for getting Vodafone to agree to not increase your monthly charges for two years.👍

I never take 'auto-renewal' on anything now, I always do a bit of haggling. I recently got a £40 reduction in the renewal price for my AA breakdown cover, and I've paid £13 less than I did last year, so it was worth a free phone call. £40 isn't a vast amount but better in my pocket than the AAs😁

[meldrewreborn]

@retrotecchie

we’re all so grateful that you are managing to still post on the forum given your communication issues. Most providers piggy on openreach for services in remote areas and all will be in the same boat.