As an o2 customer since the beginning when it was BT cellnet back in the 1990's I've experienced much of what they have to offer and in general have been ok with the service. But the past few months things have gone downhill. In the early days they had charlatans like ventura mobile who would take every opportunity to rip off their ccustomers with over inflated bills that bore no resemblance to the tarriff prices and angry customer services who would refuse to fix things. Thankfully times have moved on slightly and I can't fault the customer services whom I have dealt with. But today I'm wondering whether O2 will tackle the truly awful service they provide via o2 wifi and some of their other products. I say service but in reality it's not even that as i've yet to be connected to it.
Well the process goes as follows for those that haven't tried it. O2 have partnered with various establishments whose sole purpose is to spam you and breach your privacy.
After they detect phone you receive a text to enter the code into the rehistration web page. So now you have to leave the web to get to your message app to retrieve your code. When returning to the page it detects your arrival again thus generating a new code. This may happen several times 3 or 4 with me until you manage to enter the correct code of the several sent as text messages. Now it tells me I'm registered with o2 wifi. Unusual as i already did this previously several times online months ago as well as on the phone with CS.
Now O2 or should I say Macdonalds wants all your info including names/dates of birth/email address etc. For starters this section should not be allowed and be removed from the process as it is a breach of privacy and we should NOT have to give our personal info to macdonalds just to get o2 wifi. After this we are now told all is well and we can connect in future to O2 wifi without any username and password. Well sorry that isn't quite true as after this you can't do much else. You're now at a page that has 99% adverts for macdonalds with a google search bar at the top below an ad. You can't get to any other webpage even google as you're just redirected back to the macdonalds page. This is obviously a totally useless service. at the bottom of the page there is a link that says login to my o2 wifi, but clicking it does nothing and even if it did how would you know what your o2wif login details were?
Now drive a few miles up the road and the next o2wifi establishment wants you to go through the same procedure all over again wanting all manner of personal private info just to use their provision of wifi for o2. So apart from name/email and date of birth they also now want your address. Why do 02 allow this? As a pay monthy customer they have all my details such as name/address/email/ bank details for direct debit so I object strongly to having to fill in this info every time only to be NOT provided with any service. The info remember is NOT for o2 but purely for these establishments to spam you and obtain your personal info to add to a database that they can sell on to companies who will then spam you with texts, emails and unsolicted silent call. I bet it won't be long before we hear about this shady practice on BBC watchdog and o2 will get a shed load of bad publicity and lose many customers. They really should know better. Whoever's idea it was to set up their wifi provision by such a manner needs to be fired. Sure it might seem profitable and cost effective if you look at it in isolation but you factor in the dissatisfied customers and those who leave as a result it soon becomes obvious that it isn't
And this is Leeds by the way where 4G has been introduced 1st and wifi is sorely needed as the introduction of 4G has caused a deterioration of data services for 3G (HSDPA).
And as for the TUGO app haha well that really is terrible despite it being a great idea.
In the few areas that 4G is available the speeds are phenomenal if you are close to the mast but no better that HSDPA in most other areas. The signal level for phone when connected to 4G when not right next to a mast seems to suffer profusely, making voicecalls sporadic.
And as for the 4G take up I suspect this is going to be very disappointing. The problem being that the tarrifs offered are just bleak with meagre data allowances and inflated costs.
Without retentions willing to offer extra free data bundles i doubt that there would be the take up there is at present. I for one if not given the free 5GB allowance in a year will just switch, but hopefully they will realise that a gigabyte of data at 32Mbs download speed doesn't last very long. 5GB should be the bare minimum data allowance on 4G tarrifs. You're gonna have to compete with three who already offer unlimited high speed data with a 1000GB per month cap (compared with O2 4.5GB a month) and when their 4G is launched it will be truly unlimited at no extra charge or tarrif change.
O2 have the advantage as they have their service now and with the 800Mhz band which has longer range but unfortunately the have failed to use this by offereing competitive tarrifs to encourage early adopters,.
