To not understand O2's tariffs?

[jurneezend]

Help me out here Mumsnet. My mum has a cheap O2 tariff which only gives her 1GB a month. She has less than a month to live and I want to help her upgrade to a tariff with more data so she can stream music and make video calls from hospital without worrying about how much data she is using. You'd think it would be easy, but O2's tariff options are nonsensical. I've attached a snapshot of 4 of them. There is no logic to the pricing and no way to compare them side by side to see what the differences are. Clicking "View Details" brings up the same standard information for all tariffs, and it doesn't make any sense because it lists prices for calls and text that are supposed to be included in the tariff. We really don't want to switch provider - we just want it to be easy to get more data - what am I missing?

I think I'll just end up paying over the odds for a bolt-on of data instead. But I wanted to vent my frustration in the meantime.

Switch her to giffgaff or the line, £25 for one off month on unlimited data.

Am.sorry for your mum

Sorry to hear about your mum. It is confusing and to be honest if your mum is already a customer you'll probably get the best deal by phoning them up and explaining the situation if you can.

I'm so sorry. I agree that a switch to GiffGaff would be ideal - she can keep her number and pay monthly with no tie in.

www.o2.co.uk/shop/sim-cards/pay-as-you-go

I would buy a sim card rather than tying yourself into a plan

Download the app on your mums phone and do it from there as it is much clearer using the device you are upgrading for. Go for sim only,they won't send you a new sim just swap the tarrif so don't worry. When I've been stuck before I've called them and they were very helpful, or use the online chat function.

I found a good deal on O2 by looking on U Switch. £10/month for 20GB (unlimited calls/texts. I couldn’t find it in the O2 website at all.

I can't see from that what the differences are but I recall O2 does bolt ons so you can just buy a chunk of data without changing tariff.

@Kebabandchipsplease

When I was in hospital a couple of years ago, they had free wi-fi, do they not have that in the hospital she is in?

There are signs everywhere advertising NHS wifi, and a popup appears on our phones saying something like "NHS wifi available" but when we follow the link we just get an error.

I've paid for the expensive bolt on now. My mum will have got a text/email confirming that by now, and won't be happy about how much I paid for it, but hopefully it won't put her off using it. She's thrifty by nature.