Tesco Mobile confirm huge out of allowance price increases

Customers calling 084, 087, 09 and 118 numbers will see an increase of 30p per minute to 55p per minute plus service charge.

Other changes include one-off data bundle price hikes of up to £5 per bundle and international call increases.

Tesco Mobile do not increase their in-contract tariffs as part of their fixed price mobile promise.

Credit: chrisdorney/Shutterstock.com

Price increases

Most out of allowance charges are being increased by Tesco Mobile from Wednesday 9 February 2022.

These include the costs of texts and minutes that aren't included in a customer's pay monthly allowance, but these changes are unlikely to impact customers since most are on unlimited minutes and texts deals.

Other price increases include:

• Picture messages - up 30p to 55p per message
• 084/087/09/118 - up 30p to 55p per minute + service charge
• 5GB one-off data bundle - up £1 to £12
• 20GB one-off data bundle - up £2 to £22
• 100GB one-off data bundle - up £5 to £55

Tesco say they are not making any changes to their Home from Home policy that allows customers to use their pay monthly minutes, texts and data in 48 destinations across Europe and beyond.

There are also no increases to the costs of calling or texting countries in the EU from the UK, although calling other international destinations will cost more.

Fixed price promise

Tesco Mobile is the only major UK mobile network with a fixed price promise.

This gives customers confidence that the tariff they sign up to at the start of their contract will not increase during the lifetime of that contract.

It's a huge selling point for Tesco Mobile and it's something they frequently draw attention to, such as their 2021 campaign against price hikes put forward by their rivals.

So, when Tesco Mobile do increase prices, it's the out of allowance costs that rise as we see in this latest update.

With other mobile networks, we can see annual price increases for their pay monthly costs in addition to out of allowance rises.

For instance, Three increases their pay monthly prices by a flat rate of 4.5% every April but they also increased some out of allowance prices in July 2021 too.

Mobile sector

This is the time of year when we traditionally see pay monthly mobile pricing costs across the mobile sector thanks to the practice of annual price increases by most mobile providers.

Earlier this week, we mentioned that Virgin Mobile customers are set for a hefty increase from April when the next RPI inflation rate is announced later this month. Their customers will be facing an RPI + 3.9% price increase.

Other mobile networks have their own price increase arrangements that will be kicking in over the next few months.

For example, Vodafone, EE and BT all increase prices by CPI + 3.9% each year while O2 have opted for RPI + 3.9% in line with Virgin Mobile.

It's very difficult for customers to avoid annual price increases on their mobile deals, although some providers offering shorter SIM only contracts of 1-month or 12 months are more insulated than those on 24-month or 36-month mobile phone or SIM only contracts.