Martin Lewis is giving advice on the best way to check if you can get a better deal by leaving O2
Martin Lewis is urging ‘almost all’ O2 phone customers to ‘leave’ the company following the announcement prices for both contracts and sim only are staggeringly going up by £2.50 a month – ’40 per cent MORE THAN IT TOLD THEM’. The money saving expert is urging anyone on O2 who is unhappy to use their right to cancel penalty-free.
The price hikes will be implemented from April 2026, with customers starting to be told now. On X, Mr Lewis stated: “O2 price rise feels like a mockery of Ofcom’s consumer protection! O2 has announced that from April 2026, mobile customers will see their monthly bills rise by MORE THAN IT TOLD THEM, £30 a year – up 40% from the £21.60 annual increase previously written into their contracts. You need act quick.”
His Money Saving Expert site reported that O2 has announced that in April 2026 those who are mid-contract will face larger price rises than they had been informed about. “The original £1.80 a month rise will now be 40% more at £2.50 a month (so £30 a year). As it’s a flat rise for all contracts, those who are on less expensive plans will be disproportionately impacted. Some will see their costs increase by nearly 30%. Even those on O2’s most expensive calls, texts and data plan, which currently costs £34 a month, will see a rise of 7.4% – far above the current 3.8% Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rate of inflation.”
Mr Lewis criticised X, stating: “This move feels to me a bit like it makes a mockery of @Ofcom’s new ‘pounds and pence’ consumer protection regime, which came in at the start of this year. It was the regulator’s solution to hideous above-inflation, mid-contract price hikes was that on sign-up firms should tell you in advance, in pounds and pence, the price hikes you’ll face during the contract period.
“Sky has side-stepped this from the start by saying it wouldn’t tell customers of the rises before they sign up, but instead when it does annual price hikes it will allow them to leave penalty free.”, reports the Liverpool Echo.
“Now O2 is also dancing away, increasing contracts by more than it said it would when people signed up. And while that means all its impacted mobile customers can leave penalty-free – and many should – we know few will. Most will likely just have to suck up a rise that was more than they were told when they signed up.
“The worry is now O2 has opened the door to this behaviour other mobile firms will feel less worried about following suit. It’s a great regret that when Ofcom consulted on these changes it didn’t listen to the proposal I and others made to simply ban above-inflation, mid-contract price rises (or any mid-contract rises).
“And it’s worth noting the rises O2 had told customers of in advance were already usually far above inflation, but now will typically be at least 7% and up to 30%. And all this adds more inflationary pressure to the economy in its own right.”
A few months ago, BT and EE also announced an increase to £2.50 from April 2026. An O2 spokesperson said: “With demand for mobile data at an all-time high, we’re introducing a 70p per month increase to annual price rises for O2 customers, effective each April.
“An annual rise of £2.50 a month – around 8p a day – continues to represent excellent value for services that customers are using more than ever before. We’ve again frozen prices on handset repayment plans and are investing £700m into our mobile network this year to ensure we meet growing demand and give our customers the fast and reliable connectivity they rely on. Customers on our social tariffs continue to be exempt from any price changes as part of our efforts to provide support to those who need it most.”
O2 highlighted that BT and EE had raised their yearly price increases several months earlier, ‘ahead of April 2026’. The firm noted that the yearly hike of £2.50 monthly works out to roughly 8p daily, and ‘continues to represent excellent value for connectivity our customers are using more than ever before’.
O2 revealed it is ploughing £700m annually into its mobile network to satisfy rising demand. The company is contacting affected customers directly and offering them the option to leave without penalties should they choose.
O2 also confirmed that customers on social tariffs remain unaffected as part of ‘our commitment to supporting those who need it most’. The operator emphasised that no charges are changing immediately – the changes take effect from April.
How to find out if you can get a better deal
While the new prices won’t take force until next April, it’s a good idea to check you’re not overpaying now, while you still have the right to cancel penalty-free. Here’s how:
- Benchmark the cheapest deals. Use the Money Saving Experts’ (MSE) Cheap Mobile Finder to compare the latest deals.
- Want to keep your O2 signal? Check piggybacker networks. There are many virtual networks that pay O2 to ‘piggyback’ off its signal. The main ones are Giffgaff, Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile. Within the MSE Cheap Sims tool, you can find the cheapest deal with the amount of data you need – though if you rely on Wi-Fi or 4G calling, you need to check the new provider offers this. You can also see how the O2 piggyback networks fare on signal performance.
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