Hello,
It has been a while, and things are still fairly glacial on removing the defaults from my credit report, but I did have a good experience with the Subject Access Request team and now have all my communications with O2, including recordings of calls (thanks for the link @Oxonian).
In the very first call after I received a bill by email I didn't recognise, I had the advisor telling me it's not real and to ignore it as "probably a glitch"...
Advisor: "Okay. So over here I can see that you have paid the bills, so no need to worry about that mail it might be a glitch, so just ignore that email, no need to worry about that"
Then in later calls we established that this was a virgin mobile transfer, they tried and sell me some other O2 packages, I rejected all that and asked for it to be cancelled. They explained it would potentially put my virgin bill up, I said that's fine and to just make sure I wasn't being billed by O2, the advisor spoke to their manager and said it would be waived.
I then got a callback the next day confirming the charges will be waived. Here's a key snippet from my account notes after a call once we'd realised the account was from Virgin (19th Sept 2023):
High Level Reason: Bill
Detailed Reason: Bill Dispute
What was the Action / Resolution: Action taken: Disconnected the number told him bill amount will be waived off as informed by [NAME REDACTED] floor manager mumbai ) and after 14 days bill will be generated the bill amt will be waived off
FCA: Non-FCA Complaint
I've removed the name of the floor manager for privacy. If that had been actioned, I think it would have all stopped there, I'd probably still be an O2 customer as well... This was later added as a default on my credit accounts under O2, they then sold that debt to an agency, who added another default for the same amount.
Last week, I got a letter from Lowell (the debt agency) saying they'd finally "returned the account to O2" after O2 requested it back. Now just waiting for O2 credit to remove all the defaults from my previous reports and figure out how to get Experian, et al. to back-date it with all this new info.
Fun times... it was validating to realise I wasn't going mad with the calls and statements I had remembered, I just wish I hadn't had to spend all this time fighting it when it was primed for resolution back in September.
Cheers
