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Spend Cap

Help and support

What is a Spend Cap?

You can now choose to apply a Spend Cap with your monthly tariff, to help control your spend on out-of-bundle charges. Any chargeable usage outside your monthly allowance or outside of any Bolt On allowance will count towards your Spend Cap.

We’ll text you when our systems detect that you’ve used 50% of your Spend Cap, and again if you use 100%. If you set a £0 Spend Cap, or once you reach 100% of your Spend Cap, any further chargeable out-of-bundle usage will not be possible. This means that if you use up your monthly or Bolt On allowances, any additional chargeable usage will be barred.

Want to know more? Check out our frequently-asked questions below.

You can add and manage your Spend Cap in My O2. 

Sign in to your My O2 account and select ‘Spend Cap’ from the options in the main menu. You can choose a Spend Cap value between £0 and £200 from the drop-down menu. You can also view your Spend Cap history. 

If you took out your contract before 1 October 2018, you may need to upgrade to add a Spend Cap. Log in to My O2 to see your upgrade options.

You can choose not to have a Spend Cap, or you can choose to have a Spend Cap set at £0, £5, £10, £15, £20, £30, £60, £100 or £200.

Any chargeable usage outside your monthly or Bolt On allowances, such as:

  • Additional calls, texts and data usage, when your standard bundle or Bolt On allowance has run out.

  • Calling and texting non-geographical or premium rate numbers, aside from those premium rate numbers relating to charities, as these sit outside your Spend Cap, as set out below.

  • Calling and texting any international number from the UK.

  • Calling and texting any number outside of our Europe Zone, when you’re in our Europe Zone (excluding the UK).

  • Calling, texting and using data, when you’re in a country which is outside of our Europe Zone.

  • Calling directory enquiry services.

  • The charge you pay to O2 for accessing any third party services.

  • Recurring elements of your bill, such as your Airtime Plan, Device Plan, and insurance.

  • The price for buying a Bolt On which you opt in to.

  • Any charity donations made from your phone.

  • Charge to Mobile, such as buying digital content and apps from your phone.

  • Any charges relating to the management of your account, which includes, but is not limited to, paper bills, itemised paper bills and late payment fees.

  • Any charges for third party services (our access fees for these services are covered in your Spend Cap, as set out above).

Any further chargeable out-of-bundle usage will not be possible. If you use up your monthly allowance and any Bolt On allowance you may have, additional calls, texts and data usage will be barred. You’ll always be able to make calls to O2 customer service and the emergency services from your O2 phone.

You can increase or remove your Spend Cap in My O2. 

Sign in to My O2 and select ‘Spend Cap’ from the options in the main menu. Then you can view, remove or change your Spend Cap.

If you choose a £0 Spend Cap, you won’t be able to use your phone for any chargeable usage outside your monthly call, text and data allowance or outside of any Bolt On allowance. This means you won’t be able to do things like call international numbers, send premium SMS messages or use directory enquiry services. If you use up your monthly allowance and any Bolt On allowance, any additional chargeable usage will also be barred.

Once a day, you can add, remove, increase or reduce your Spend Cap in My O2. This can take up to 24 hours to take effect. 

For each monthly billing period, we’ll apply the Spend Cap which is active at the end of the month to the whole of that billing period.

You can choose to apply a Spend Cap with your monthly tariff, to help control your spend on out-of-bundle charges for individuals under your family account. Only the bill payer can change and remove Spend Caps, unless they give consent to let members within the group change or remove them.

There are a number of things you can do:

  • Increase or remove your Spend Cap in My O2

  • Buy a one-off or recurring Bolt On if you need extra minutes, texts or data

  • You can opt in to buy our O2 Travel Bolt On, which can be used for roaming in destinations where we offer O2 Travel.

As an example, if you expect to pay your monthly tariff price plus a £15 Spend Cap this month, you could find that there’s an additional charge of up to £15 on your bill, under the heading Spend Cap. 

This is because sometimes we receive charging records from other networks late. If this happens, we’ll charge these late landing charges against the period to which they relate, if you had Spend Cap allowance left during that period. Any late charges will be highlighted on your bill.

We won’t charge any late records to your current Spend Cap (if you have one), just to the Spend Cap which you had in place when you made the calls and only if you had Spend Cap allowance left at the end of your billing period.

Last updated: 25/02/2025


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