Hi there,
I am incredibly frustrated with the service I have been receiving from the O2 contact centres. More so than any other call centre I can recall.
The service is appalling. It's embarrassing.
This started with me calling on Thursday the 24th October 2024 to request a SIM migration due to my Wife's SIM card being destroyed as part of a phone repair.
We went into an O2 Shop to purchase the £10 8GB Bundle SIM as a replacement, to then migrate the old number onto the new number. We got the new number set up and it was connected just fine (before the migration), but where the old number was in use since 2020, we wanted to keep this so we then later called to start the migration.
Old number: **984
New Number: ***582
Within a few hours, the SIM card went offline (No Service, emergency calls only) and after 24 hours it still had not reconnected.
On Friday 25th we called to understand why this had happened. I called from a non-o2 number and after being hung up on a few times, I got through to Zenele who works in the South Africa Office.
After a 2 hour call I was eventually hung up on... with no call back.
Summary of the call:
- no idea as to why the SIM was not working.
- The ***984 number has expired
- The new number is apparently working, but on my end its still not connected.
- I had ordered a free SIM beforehand as a backup, we tried to set this up and was told I would need to purchase a £9.99 Pay monthly to get it set up.
- I got frustrated as I have/Had £10 credit on the Old number, just purchased the £10 New number, and then being sold yet another bundle.
- After taking my Wifes details, I got a confirmation email about the new pay monthly and the name on the email was wrong.
- Going through the credit checks, they got my wife's name wrong multiple times.
- When giving the address for the credit checks, I mentioned that we had not lived at the address for more than 1 year, and Zenele said that was fine. Credit checks require three years of addresses to my memory.
- Zanele then said she would call the credit provider, and transferred me onto the call with them so I was listening in.
- The credit provided said the application was rejected, which under my assumption was because she has repeatedly got the name wrong and the addresses were not sufficient.
- I was then hung up on shortly after this.
We were left incredibly frustrated, more so than any call centre I have experienced. Now I don't know what is happening, if a new SIM is on the way, and what is happening with the migration of numbers.
I then called back Sunday morning to try and speak to a manager to escalate this issue.
I called and spoke to the first person who then transferred me to a 'manager', but was in fact another colleague. I asked this new colleague if they were a manager and confirmed they were not. I then made my frustrations known to them, and they passed me to someone called Blaine in the India Office.
Blaine was the first person to provide helpful information who called himself an SME on the subject. He mentioned that the SIM would be connected before Midday Monday 28th 2024. He also mentioned that your AI tooling on the phones could report back on the call from Friday with Zanele and that they would look to follow disciplinary actions if wrongdoing was found. He then mentioned that if it had not been connected, to call back and ask for him.
We were left less frustrated after this and assumed he knew what was going on and that someone was taking us seriously.
Come Monday 1pm, and the SIM had still not connected, and as I write this, it is still not connected. We called back to speak to the contact centre, to raise a complaint as we are beyond frustrated at this point.
The first person I spoke to said they couldn't transfer us to someone as they could not guarantee we would get through to the right person. They transferred us to yet another colleague, not a complaints person nor a manager. I asked this person if they could transfer me to Blaine, and they had no idea who I was talking about... I then asked this person to transfer me to a manager and was eventually hung up on, again.
I then called back and the person said they would raise a complaint, only to be put on hold for a while and then they too hung up.
No one ever called me back. No one listened. No one cares.
I just requested what I thought was a simple number migration, and I have now spent hours on the phone and no actions have been taken. The same questions get asked, the script is diligently followed, but no one has been able to actually be helpful. Strange that they would put "How to contact our helpful UK customer support team - O2" as the leading link on Google.
Just a rant, apologies! We seem to have gotten through after 4-5 hours total call time to someone who said it will definitely be fixed in the next 4 working hours. So we will see...!
