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Virgin Mobile and O2 UK Customers to See HUGE Price Hikes UPDATE

Wednesday, Feb 16th, 2022 (5:47 pm) - Score 6,376
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Customers of both O2 and Virgin Mobile (Virgin Media) today found out what sort of price hikes they can expect this year after the latest Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation was published, which hit 7.8%. The operators then add another 3.9% on top, which means customers can expect their bills to rise by a staggering 11.7%.

The change, which will be reflected on bills produced in April 2022 onwards, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise because we already warned about it (here and here). We should point out that this does not impact Virgin Media’s fixed broadband service, which uses a different approach and doesn’t link price rises to inflation (they’ve already released their price increases for 2022).

NOTE: Most other operators use the softer CPI + X% approach, usually as published in January (CPI of 5.4%), not February.

By comparison, both O2 and Virgin Media will increase mobile plans by the Retail Price Index (RPI) rate of inflation announced in February plus 3.9%. But if RPI is ever negative, they’ll only apply the 3.9%. “You’ll see this increase on your April 2022 bill onwards,” said the operators. But expected or not, this is still one of the single biggest telecoms price increases seen so far.

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In fairness, it’s worth remembering that some of the same cost of living increases hitting consumers today are also impacting businesses, including mobile operators and broadband ISPs, which will often end up being passed on to all of us. At the same time, operators are also adding all sorts of new services (e.g. 5G), developing new systems, facing higher charges from suppliers, implementing costly new Ofcom rules and consumers are gobbling significantly more data every year.

Customers of both operators, once formally notified of the increase by their provider, could try haggling for a lower price when the hike hits (Retentions – Tips for Cutting Your Broadband Bill), although your mileage may vary. Likewise, there are still some operators around, often smaller MVNO players, that don’t play the same game as the big boys and may be a better bet.

Interestingly, Virgin Mobile’s RPI price rise notification page (here) also states that those unhappy with this change “can choose to end your airtime contract(s) without any early cancellation fees by heading here or calling us on 789 from your Virgin Mobile phone by 28th February 2022.” Worth considering, as not every operator is being that flexible (this may only apply to the 2022 increase, as the addition of 3.9% was a change to their previous RPI only policy).

As for O2, most customers will receive a straight RPI price increase only. This is what is outlined in their T&Cs for those who joined or upgraded prior to 25th March 2021, while the rate of RPI + 3.9% will only be applied to monthly bills for customers who joined or upgraded after 25th March. We should add that they only apply a price increase to the airtime charges for customers on O2 Refresh (not the handset side).

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UPDATE 17th Feb 2022 – 6am

Added a bit of extra detail above about O2’s increase and a comment below.

An O2 spokesperson said:

“We recognise price changes are never welcome, and always balance keeping our prices competitive with the need to continue investing in the services that our customers use and love. For most customers the price increase only applies to the airtime part of their bill and with our most popular tariffs costing from as little as 33p per day for superfast data with unlimited minutes and texts, our customers receive incredible value as well as extra perks such as Priority.”

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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28 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo SM says:

    “… can choose to end your airtime contract(s) without any early cancellation fees …”

    Get out while you can. Jump providers every year or few years and chase the best deals.

    1. Avatar photo GNewton says:

      Good advice! But can you keep the same mobile number? That is, is it always portable across different mobile networks?

    2. Avatar photo anon says:

      @GNewton if you mean SIM Card then yes you can keep your number when you switch providers

    3. Avatar photo DJI says:

      GNewton yep it’s a piece of cake. You can even text PAC to a number and get your porting code without having to have someone wiggle out of giving you it. They have to, by law, provide the PAC code.

    4. Avatar photo John says:

      “Good advice! But can you keep the same mobile number?”

      It’s the same process on every single MNO /MVNO.

      You send the word PAC to 65075 and they automatically text you a porting authorisation code.

      Some networks also ask for your D.O.B (in the format DDMMYY) as an additional layer of security.
      So in that case it’s simply PAC 250567 to 65075.

      No network can refuse to let you take YOUR number to another network. Even if you have a very lengthy contract remaining they must give you a PAC.

  2. Avatar photo Bob Thornton says:

    Why does this story no longer feature on the home page? Has it been taken down?

    1. Avatar photo Lister says:

      Still there for me

  3. Avatar photo Chris says:

    I signed a new contract with vm last year and was specifically tiled the prise was frozen for 2 years.

    I got a letter that it would go up in March.

    I could leave early but there is no one to leave to as our cab is so far we can only get 20/1 on fttc while next door but 1 gets 80/20 from the cab down the road.

    I could go for 3 home broadband, or just wait for toob and suffer the £4 increase from vm they said I’d never get.

    I’d rather switch from vm just out of principle though.

    1. Avatar photo Ram homes says:

      This is about mobile not fixed bb

    2. Avatar photo Phil says:

      Call virgin, they gave me discount equivalent to the increase for the remaining contract period.

  4. Avatar photo Adrian says:

    >In fairness, it’s worth remembering that some of the same cost of living increases hitting consumers today are also impacting
    >businesses, including mobile operators and broadband ISPs, which will often end up being passed on to all of us.

    Not really ideal if a business is unable to forecast as far as a typical consumer contract and build those increases in to the price advertised.

    These baked-in price rises are all about being able to show a cheaper headline price and then hit customers with an increase later that can’t be gotten out of. It needs to be stamped out.

    If the increases were truly needed to offset increased costs then we’d see prices offered to new customers increase at the same time, but we don’t.

    1. Avatar photo Iain says:

      Exactly, Adrian. Business can price in their expected cost rises over the 18 or 24 months of a contract. This is entirely about deceptively advertising lower prices.

      A number of years ago the ASA had to stamp down on “£5 broadband” sales pages, that didn’t include line rental. ISPs were told to make total costs. Now they need to stamp down on price rises being relegated to small print, especially when within the minimum contract period.

    2. Mark-Jackson Mark Jackson says:

      Since the banks, politicians and regular people struggle with such forecasts right now, then I don’t think ISPs would fare much better. It would also not be practical (administrative burden and billing complexity) to increase costs at the same time as prices change, since they’d end up changing quite a lot, as nothing is particularly stable right now.

    3. Avatar photo Adrian says:

      I disagree that a business shouldn’t be able to forecast their approximate costs within a margin of error 24 months or less in advance.

      I think it is also a mistake to conflate these price rise clauses with the current inflation situation. Don’t forget the majority of these inflation+3.9% clauses were implemented at a time of low inflation. They were implemented as the original inflation only price rises weren’t allowing ISPs and operators to understate their headline price enough.

      I don’t think anybody is saying that headline prices should follow inflation in real time, but it doesn’t make sense that if you have an existing customer on, for example, a 10GB of data for £10 a month deal, that once you increase that for the existing customer via these price rise clauses that you can continue to sell 10GB for £10 a month plans to new customers.

    4. Avatar photo Iain says:

      One think you’re forgetting, @MarkJackson, is that broadband and technology is deflationary. Computers over time get faster, cheaper, or smaller (including cheaper to run). Compare data costs, both retail and wholesale, a decade ago vs. now. Compare the electrical running costs of computers, then vs now.

      These price rises aren’t about ISP costs increasing; they’re about increasing ISP profit margins.

    5. Avatar photo Iain says:

      … and if it’s too much “administrative burden” to update costs for new customers, then ISPs shouldn’t be updating costs for existing customers on fixed term contracts.

      Businesses need to suck up the costs of running a business, and bill transparently.

  5. Avatar photo Mike says:

    Money printer go brr has consequences…

    1. Avatar photo anonymous says:

      Sure does. Mostly on asset prices that amount that actually ends up in the wider economy rather than financing government debt.

      If you’ve another way the economic impact of the global pandemic could’ve been mitigated a lot of very smart people would like to know. Pretty much everywhere that didn’t become a fortress with draconian actions upon infections has set the printer running.

    2. Avatar photo Buggerlugz says:

      As does China infecting the world with COVID. That doesn’t seem to have any consequences against them though, does it. Just the rest of the worlds population having to face a cost of living crisis.

    3. Avatar photo Mike says:

      @anonymous

      It has been shown that printing loads of money or shutting down was unnecessary, so my answer would be to have done neither.

  6. Avatar photo alan says:

    In Jan it took me 9 days to get the PAC out of Virgin Media and this was only after the intervention of OFCOM.
    During the 9 days I contacted them every day and all I got was the stock answer “your request is with our IT Dept, there is nothing more we can do”
    Day 9 OFCOM contacted VM with instructions to issue the PAC with immediate effect.
    VM called and gave me the number, then I was informed the delay was my fault
    I had requested the PAC on the stroke of midnight, when their IT systems are flushed – so it was lost in the system
    WHAT !!!

    1. Avatar photo Neil says:

      i bet any billable charges you made weren’t flushed and lost.

    2. Avatar photo alan says:

      Midnight I was well asleep
      The rep also said, if I was requesting a PAC and I didnt wait for the process to complete and disconnected, it would also leave the system in limbo.
      When I asked how many other customers suffered from this problem, the reply was
      “Only you at the moment”
      Idiots !

    3. Avatar photo Neil says:

      did you request your PAC via text sending PAC to 65075 from the number you wish to port out?

  7. Avatar photo Phil says:

    I think it time for OFCOM to act to stop mid term contract price hikes and put capped at CPI Plus 3.9% (no more!) and banned if above it.

    1. Avatar photo Mike says:

      They’ll just find others way to get it back.

    2. Avatar photo Neil says:

      or at least limit it to the anniversary of a contract. my contract ends this month with my provider, any new contract deal i take with my existing provider or moving to a new one, i’ll still be hit a month or two in, with any long term contract (18 or 24month) it’s compounded a year later by the next increase. as we’ve seen, people joining straight after the price increase will often get it cheaper than my price increase for the following term.

  8. Avatar photo Neil says:

    i’ve raised this before, my contract has just ended this month, any new great deal (new contract) i’ve been offered gets a price hike in march / April if i go to another provider or even if a stay.
    they use the excuse, prices will be going up for everyone taking out a new contract post increase (in real terms it’s reported 20% cheaper than 5 years ago on mobile and internet).
    what i’ve observed during the past 5 years, new customers prices have gone up for a few weeks following the raise, but then drop back to the same deal or less in the months that follow. so those coming out of contract at that point would be getting 10/11 months at a lower price, than those taking out the same price contract just before the price hike hits them (like me).
    personally i’d like to see a fixed price contract for the whole duration, failing that, to be fair to all consumers equally, then price increase can only occur on the anniversary of the contract (not a month into a new contract like me).
    the question is, who do we press on this? ofcom ? gov dept involved? something needs to be done.

Comments are closed

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