Virgin Media Community

[PaulFWarrick]

Started a new Ultimate Volt 18m contract in Mar22 & have just been notified of an 11.3% increase taking the O2 unlimited data, phone & text component from £25pm to £27.92pm. Can I downgrade my O2 SIM to day 15gb data which is £15pm and keep my VM Ultimate Volt benefits?

[Kath_F · Accepted solution]

Hi PaulFWarrick, 

Thanks for your post and apologies to hear about the issues you have been having with the O2 billing. Each year, your Airtime Plan will be increased by the RPI rate of inflation announced in February plus 3.9%. If RPI is negative, O2 will only apply the 3.9%. You’ll see this change on your April 2022 bill onwards. The increase is due to RPI.

As long as you still have the O2 SIM then you would qualify for the VOLT benefits however it will depend on the terms of the offer you joined on whether you are able to downgrade. 

You'll need to contact O2 directly for them to check your account and discuss any options you have. You can reach them here. 

Let us know if there is anything else we can help with. 

Thanks, 

[PaulFWarrick]

Hi Kath - Many thanks for your response. I spoke to Upgrades in O2 and the very helpful gentleman said that he could offer me a new 12m O2 contract for 12m for £20pm with 100gb of data, free calls and text. He went on to say that he could make this change with 24hrs but before doing so it would be worth checking with Virgin Media that none of my other Volt benefits would be affected. So can you please confirm this is the case ASAP? Thank you. 100gb of data is plenty and in this challenging times and soaring costs, I need to manage by limited pension very carefully. Would appreciate a quick response so I can speak to O2 tomorrow and thereby control my costs.

[Serena_C]

Hi @PaulFWarrick

Thanks for getting back to us. I am pleased to confirm that your Virgin Volt Benefits will not be affected by making this change with O2 🙂

Kind regards,

Serena

[PaulFWarrick]

Thanks Sarah. I will contact O2 today. Have a great day!

[Serena_C]

Happy to help! 🙂 Have a great day,

Serena

[impy1]

Hi,I was contacted by the Virgin media sales team in December .however I thought my SIM was a bit expensive,so I went on a comparison site and found a cheaper O2 SIM for more data and a shorter contract,.The O2 sales team changed me to this contract with no problem and didn't effect my Virgin media contract and also the new SIM data was doubled after a week,might worth looking into this for you?

[unisoft]

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@PaulFWarrick wrote:

Started a new Ultimate Volt 18m contract in Mar22 & have just been notified of an 11.3% increase taking the O2 unlimited data, phone & text component from £25pm to £27.92pm. Can I downgrade my O2 SIM to day 15gb data which is £15pm and keep my VM Ultimate Volt benefits?

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You are nearly always better to go via uswitch.com or moneysavingexpert.com, select an O2 SIM for the price you want, then during the O2 checkout, login to your O2 account and simply upgrade and say you don't need a new SIM when checkout asks you. Yes, its another 12 months contract starting from that date, but you can substantially reduce your SIM price and the original contract for the O2 SIM is null and void as replaced by the new one albeit with a reset contract start date for the O2 contract (currently 12 months). VOLT comes off the new O2 contract for a few days but gets re-added on average 7-14 days after (i.e. double O2 data and travel roaming) assuming you still have the VM cable services.

As an example, in 2022/2023 it was quite common during various months that you could get unlimited mins/texts and 40Gb of data from uswitch.com for £10/month which gets doubled under VOLT to 80GB on average 7 to 14 days assuming you have VM cable services. Many O2 SIMS had 3 months free Disney+ subscription too.

Many people done this on here so public information. I wouldn't normally recommend this, as there are many people who just wanted Ultimate VOLT at cheapest price and not in the original intention of the contract offer. Seeing as the price rises are ridiculous then fair game as no contractual terms say you can't. Sky for example is only 8% and bad enough, but VM / O2 at 13.8% and many did not anticipate that being as high when they may have taken up the package offer.

Check the VM and O2 T&C's - you will see if you cancel one of those services (O2 or VM) - the other one keeps its VOLT benefits until you try and change your package again. For safety best to do a cancel of one of them when outside it's contract period, otherwise it could be claimed you were just trying to cheat the original agreed package of both O2 + VM.