Okay, I'm on O2 with a 24 month contract, paying £45 (more like £50 after VAT), but anyway, I don't use anywhere near the minutes I have, and they're a waste.

Is there anyway I can reduce my tariff? Can I just phone up, plead a little and they'll do it? Or am I signed into this until it's up? I know I signed the contract etc, just curious, £50 a month is a fair amount now I'm back in education and unemployed atm, wouldn't be so bad if I had a job, but I'm still waiting to hear back from places I've handed CV's into.

Anyway, back to the question, can I phone up and request a lower tariff?

Ta,

Contractually, no.

However, if you get someone who is kind-hearted enough on the phone and you do a "puppy dog eyes" voice and act stupid as though you didn't realise you were tied to the tariff as you thought you could change down after 3 months, etc... then they may be able to do something.

With my Orange contract I was able to drop a tariff and they gave me a £5 a month credit also

That was also helped by the fact that I've been a customer with Orange for about 6 years I think.

Thanks, didn't think I could, I'll just play the idiot, had the contract 8 months now.

Plus I carried on my contract with O2 and put it up at the time. Hopefully they'll be nice, if not I'll phone back later

I don't know about O2, but when I was with Vodafone there was a mechanism whereby you could reduce your monthly payments by £5 each month after you were half way through your contract. So in your case in month 13 you could drop to £40, then £35 in month 14 and so on...

O2 have this and I think it is after 9 months, but there is a limit as to how much you can drop your tariff.

It clearly pays to keep your free minutes close to what you actually need. I asked Tesco about their terms and you could only go up. So on a 12 month contract at £35 per month if you needed more minutes you have to extend the term to two years, at £45. No going down.