O2 repairs travesty - please help!!

[Anonymous]

Hi guys - please bear with me - it's a bit long but necessary to tell the tale.

I have an iphone 4s under contract from O2 since Sept 2015.
At the end of Feb I noticed a problem with the microphone - when I received a call I could hear the person calling me, but they couldn't hear me. There was no trauma to the phone and it was working fine otherwise.
I immediately brought it in to my local O2 store. The chap looked at it, confirmed the problem and sent it off to 02 repairs. He reckoned it was a straightforward case and if they couldn't fix it they would simply replace it.
A few days later I got a call from the O2 shop guy - we had neglected to take the lock off the phone - it had been sent back to the shop. I gave him the code and he unlocked it. He then sent it back to O2 repairs. No problem.
Then it gets odd.
A couple of days later he calls me again and says that the company the phone had been sent now no longer did iphone 4s repairs, and so they were sending it back! He apologised and said he found that strange as well. He said he would then send it to the new O2 designated repair company (Nova).
A few days later I received a text from O2 repairs (Nova) to contact them by phone to give some more details about the fault - this I did - there was a problem with the mic. The nice lady I spoke said she would pass the information onto the engineers.
2 days later I got a text on my replacement phone from O2 repairs to say the phone was on its way back to the store. "Great!" I thought - sorted. A matter of minutes after the text I got a call from the O2 shop chap to say the phone still had the fault!!! - It wasn't fixed at all. In addition the O2 repairs company Nova reported that they could not find any fault with the phone!!!!
I just didn't know what to say! I was pretty cheesed off by now.
It gets worse.
The guy in the shop apologised a lot and said he'd send the phone back straight away, with added info for the repairs company.
Whilst away on a break I got a text from Nova, the repairs company to say that they had now found the fault, but because of damage to another part of the phone the warranty was invalidated so I would have to pay circa £120 for them to fix the problem!!!!!!!!??????
I said no way, send that phone back, I'm not paying that. When the phone returned to the shop I went in there and met the manager - he was and is most apologetic and can't believe himself what's happened. I asked him where the was the damage the company said invalidated the warranty. He said the port. Indeed if you looked into the port there is now obvious damage. I asked him does that mean that the phone would charge or not? We checked and it wasn't able to charge at all.
Please note I never bought the phone to them with a port problem - it was a mic issue. The phone was charging fine when I bought it to them, and indeed was charged. Now, after being in their possession the phone was not charging at all, (and now sits lifeless on my desk).
Now since I've had the phone back these last 2+weeks the store manager has been trying to rectify the issue to get me a replacement phone but for a variety of reasons (which I don't fully understand) he seems not to be able to do so. I know he's sent emails verifying that the phone was charging when I first brought it into the shop. Apparently the repairs company Nova have said that the reason they didn't find the fault when it was first in their possession was because "it's temperamental". Can you believe that?! It's not temperamental now - it just doesn't charge. And it wasn't temperamental when I first brought it in because there was NO problem with the port - because it was not damaged!!!

Guys - I'm getting to the end of my tether here. It just seems like an open and shut case to me (and also to the O2 store manager!) but it just seems like higher up the chain they just don't care and I can't see that they are going to replace the phone. The manager is kind of telling he's doing all he can but I just get a sense he's getting nowhere. I think he hopes I just go away

Can any O2 rep reading this help me out? I can assure O2 I will not be letting this go.

Many thanks for your advice in advance - Jerry.

[MI5]

Start here http://www.o2.co.uk/how-to-complain but if the phone was under a year old you should have just gone straight to Apple.

[Anonymous]

Well now I've researched things I realise that now! I just didn't know any of that beforehand.

However this still is a complete injustice. It's just plain wrong and I can't believe it isn't being righted.

Saying that I should have just gone to Apple is hardly a defence of O2.

[MI5]

I didn't say I was defending o2 at all and I completely agree with you.
Anova are con artists and no one here would ever recommend you sending a phone to them for repair. I would trust them to darn my socks let alone my phone.
Use the complaints link so you have registered the problem officially and keep on to the store. At least you have the store manager supporting you and confirming phone condition before Anova wrecked it so they should get it sorted quickly for you.

[Bambino]

We're not here to defend O2. We are customers, just like yourself. If you had done a search on the forum before bringing the phone to O2 for repair you would have gone straight to Apple. No one can repair their phones better than they can, and O2's repairers have a very poor reputation. What @MI5 commented on was just stating a fact and in no way a defense of O2.

[Anonymous]

Thanks - I really appreciate your help. Sorry if I sounded snappy.

It's just I went to O2 in good faith. Like a lot of consumers when they suggest they send it to their repair company under warranty you just do so without suspicion.

The fact that the repairs company they use are as questionable as I'm now finding out is really a dreadful reflection on O2.

I think I'm a reasonable guy but really I find a) this situation staggering and b) that O2 actively use a company as seemingly as sinister, if not as downright crooked, as this repairs company quite unbelieveable.

[MI5]

We have no idea why they continue to use them either mate.

[Cleoriff]

The complaints against this shambolic company get worse and worse. Also as you say @Anonymous unsuspecting customers get caught out frequently. Unless its within 28 days for a faulty phone which should be swapped by O2.... we always recommend returning any phone to the manufacturer for repair.

[jonsie]

Oh dear, yet another victim of these cowboys who do everything to uphold their terrible reputation throughout the O2 community. It's a public disgrace to be honest and it needs putting out there so that no one will ever return a phone to O2 for repair as long as they deal with this disreputable sham of a company.

You certainly need to make a complaint but also google 'CEO O2' and drop his office an email with your daytime phone number.

They've turned a piece of technology into nothing more than a paper weight with not a care in the world other than trying to embezzle funds from customers.

[viridis]

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@jonsie wrote:

Oh dear, yet another victim of these cowboys.....

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To be fair, cowboys can actually do their job, Anovo are more akin to the white crud that forms at the side of your mouth when dehydrated., useless.

I have nothing good to say about them, but like the op, my experience is similar, where O2 staff are sympathetic and helpful... But Anovo are the bad link..