O2 to hike prices by 1.4% for millions of customers – how much is your bill going up?

MILLIONS of O2 customers face hikes of 1.4% on bills from April.

Customers affected by the hike won’t be able to cancel their contracts without paying a penalty fee. 

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This price rise affects both sim-only, contract and mobile broadband plan customers who are still in contract. 

The telecom provider confirmed to The Sun that customers are being contacted this week to inform them about the rate increase. 

How much will my bill increase?

The level of increase does depend on the type of contract you are on. 

For example, if you have an O2 Refresh contract, which splits your bill into separate airtime and phone costs, you’ll only see an increase on the airtime part of your bill. 

O2 says the maximum increase for their Refresh plan would be on the highest airtime tariff they sell – which is £35 airtime per month for unlimited data, mins and texts.

So, a 1.4% increase on that is a rise of £5.88 across the year.

There’s also no price change for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) customers.  

O2 told The Sun that customers are informed when they take out or upgrade a contract with the company that their pay monthly airtime tariff will be adjusted annually in line with the Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation in their April bill. 

So if you took out a contract with them from March last year, then you will have known your April 2021 bill would increase.

This news follows other telecoms companies such as EE and BT who have also announced price increases for customers this year, along with Three and Vodafone. 

A spokesperson for O2 told The Sun: “Our Refresh tariffs mean that this industry increase is just 36p a month on O2’s most popular plan.

“Unlike other operators we only apply RPI to the airtime part of our contracts on O2 Refresh, so customers are up to £50 a year better off.”  

If you’re affected by this price change, get hold of O2 by contacting their customer service team. 

How to find the best deal 

Ready to look elsewhere? Pay-as-you-go deals are better for people who don’t regularly use their phone, while monthly contracts usually work out cheaper for those who do.

It’s worth using comparison websites, such as MoneySupermarket and uSwitch.com, to compare tariffs and phone prices.

Billmonitor also matches buyers to the best pay-monthly deal based on their previous three months of bills.

It only works if you’re a customer of EE, O2, Three, Vodafone or Tesco Mobile and you’ll need to log in with your online account details.

There’s also MobilePhoneChecker,which has a bill monitoring feature that recommends a tariff based on your monthly usage.

If you’re happy with your provider then it might be worth using your research to haggle a better deal.

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This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk