Martin Lewis issues urgent message to 14 millions Brits

Millions of UK residents are just one text message away from potentially saving 'shed loads', according to the country's resident finance expert Martin Lewis.

Money Saving Expert (MSE) founder, Lewis, took to social media on one of his recent walkabouts after getting thinking about quick ways to save us money. Not all heroes wear caps.

Of course, this isn't anything new, with Lewis recently speaking about how you can get up to £200 for free by switching bank accounts or his simple advice on tax which also saw one woman refunded a whopping £2,000.

Taking to X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok on Thursday (21 March), Lewis spoke about the looming price hikes for those of us with phone and broadband contracts.

It's not good news.

When it comes to phones, an average bill is going up by 8% for millions of us.

But there's a quick way to get around this, the MSE man says, and it's via a simple text message.

"It's free and it will tell you whether you're one of 14 million people in the UK who are currently out of contract and therefore free to switch and likely save a shed load," Lewis says.

"I should note there's a few times it doesn't work such as if you've got a contract where there's multiple phones in a household. In which case if you've been with the same provider for more than two years you're likely out of contract.

"The reason I'm doing this right now and had the thought while out having a walk is because at the start of April prices on most mobile phone networks are gonna rise 8% even if you're mid-contract, which is absolutely outrageous that they can do that. It's something I've written to the Chancellor about, lobbied about, but we've not had any change on it yet."

Lewis is talking about texting the word INFO to 85075.

He explains: "It's a really good opportunity to see if you can save. As for what you get, the best deals aren't direct. They're doing through comparison sites where they have put marketing budget in to giving you cheaper prices.

"You can currently get 100GB of data a month SIM for less than a tenner a month, and a lot of people are paying far more for less.

"Now, I know what you're probably saying is 'yeah but I like my signal I don't want to change'. Well if you do remember there are only four mobile networks in the UK. Every other one is piggybacking off of one of those four.

"So you want to do a comparison that says 'what's the cheapest deal on the signal that I currently have'. And if you go to the cheap mobile finder on my site, you can do that type of search and see what's out there, see what's available. "You have to be careful, they might not have Wi-Fi calling or 5G. But you get the big point. My main message do that text, see if you're out of contract and check before prices go up, whether you can save a shed load by switching."

Responding to the advice, one X user posted: "I just did mine and got reduced from £23 to £6 per month with extras! Thank you."

Another said: "I got my bill reduced by around 45%."

Looks like it's definitely worth a go.