I have just got off the phone with O2's pay as you go broadband people and am seething. Ive just wasted an hour on the phone and all I got was a sorry they dont have the answer. Here is what happened:-
I was playing an online poker tourney last night for 3 hours with a decent sized stack. During the 5 minute break, I went away to make a cuppa. On coming back I found the poker software telling me there had been a connection problem. Thinking it might be the poker site's servers, I went to check. Firefox came up saying that I was being blocked(the same page as when u run out of data usage). That surprised me a little as I had only topped up a few days prior.
Thinking the service might be down or I had run of credit, I checked their broadband page and that came up, no problem. I assumed that I had run out of credit and topped up. Payment through,the connection restarted(I had looked on the windows connection and seen I had used 100mb over a day, alarm bells ringing on that) and still the same. So while I restarted the computer, I gave O2 a ring to be told that there was nobody to answer my call till 8am!! You can imagine how angry I am getting now. So I thought I might try the broadband page they give for info or support. Theres nothing on it and I cant even get to their support page because they have blocked it, why? All u get is a ticking clock and not how much of my usage I have left. Pretty pointless really because u are more than likely going to use that data before the clock has counted down. I even turned my firewall off just to be sure and nothing still
Well it did finally start working nearly an hour later. I went to check the poker and had been knocked out. I had 53 hands folded upon checking and some nice cards at that. That made my blood boil even more because the total prize pool was $15982.50 USD with the first place alone being around $2,500 and I had been playing good poker all day with some 1st and 2nd places along the way.
So after having a restless nights sleep, I rang customer service to get to the bottom of this. So after telling them my story and them checking. I was told I had no data usage left!! Well I replied thats funny I just topped up last night which I felt I didnt need to as I had only topped up a few days ago. Well you dont have any was the reply. Which is strange because I was surfing while talking?!? Upon checking saw that I had paid last night. Then the blame was pointed at me saying it was ends problem that I couldnt connect to the world wide web. Not a very clever statement as I pointed out that I could get on your payment page which is on the www but not nothing else was coming up. I was obviously getting blocked by them.
At this point, having enough of being treated like an idiot by someone who didnt know what they were on about, I asked for a manager and was told there wasnt one available!! I was getting angry now. So after raising my voice and making my anger known, low and behold a manager was put on the line.
Went pretty much down the same road. They checked for issues in the area and nothing. Said it was probably my end but as I pointed out it couldnt be. So I had to point out some major flaws in their pay as you go business.
Why have a 24/7 service and not round the clock support? We do pay for this service and support should be provided round the clock.
Why no data usage display? The time left is really secondary to the data usage. I had complained two months earlier while being sold a pay monthly package. They said u can check it online. Yes that is right but not if they block you surfing the web. Of course you can get to their broadband payment page and thats it. You only get a countdown clock.
All I got was a little pause and I am sorry. I said is that it? I am sorry thats all I can do is the answer. Well refunding my money would be a start and getting the simple things right.
Well Ive got some sterling advice here for them, why dont they let broadband users have access the O2 site whether they have data or not? Its a selling and support vechile plus has our account details!! I feel I was duped into buying more data needlessly. TBH probably what they want being a big profit over quality service company. Cut corners rather than deliver a decent well oiled service. This service has been running since november 2008 and I am appalled that they have people getting paid to be told how to imporove their service by a paying customer.
So ive lost out on earnings, frustrated for 6 hours and wasted more hours trying to get an answer. I want to take this further as I feel let down and I am sorry is not good enough. Any advice?