Continued! Long story short, one particular staff member at the Newmarket branch of O2 was the antithesis of helpful. The people at the Cambridge O2 shop were all very helpful, they suggested going to the Apple shop as my phone was a few days over a month old. The Apple shop said a three hour wait or come back on Friday, I had to go to Shanghai on Friday so absolutely useless. Took my SE back to the O2 shop in Cambridge and they sent my brand new phone off for repair as it is not O2 policy to replace, they issued me with a loan 'old tec' phone which worked really well as a telephone, unlike my iPhone SE. As a 'low tec' mobile phone I couldn't tether wifi to my laptop at the airport and when in Shanghai I had to make calls on the phone rather than TUGO which incurred a cost that I wouldn't have had if I had been issued with a loan smart phone. I arrived back home from Shanghai late Monday evening, I went to collect my phone from Cambridge Tuesday morning, the phone was returned with a letter stating the following "...couldn't find anything wrong, so we are returning this to you unrepaired."
All I want is a phone that works, having wasted two half days of my time to have a 'Friday afternoon' (even the lady on the O2 help line couldn't make out what I was saying and had to phone my land line) phone returned, really not happy. I need a phone that works so I traded in my brand new iPhone SE for an iPhone 6 Plus at a loss of approximately £125 at the O2 shop in Cambridge. Fortunately I can afford it; however, not everyone is as fortunate as I am in that respect and I consider it to be pretty shabby treatment from O2. Next time I'll just buy straight from the manufacturer and not O2 as they send you to the Apple shop anyway, fortunately in Cambridge the shops are close together. My new iPhone 6 works as it says on the tin thank goodness, though really I would have preferred the smaller sized SE and I wouldn't have wasted £35 on a nice leather case for an SE in addition to the loss on the trade in. Presumably if the O2 repair shop couldn't find anything wrong with the SE then surely it must be a generic fault? I think not! Apple make good products and I suspect will be absolute appalled when they receive my letter.
Anyway no thanks to the extremely unhelpful chap in Newmarket I now have a phone that works, O2 would do well to keep such people in the back office out of the way of the public, that is up to them I guess. Very surprised that two excellent brands have left me feeling so disappointed, the people at the Cambridge shop were excellent; however, they can only work within their given parameters. I've written to the CEO of O2 and also Apple UK and I'll be interested to see if I actually receive a reply from either.
