Any help gratefully received, thank you. Including to whom I could address this issue and hope to get it sorted.
On 15th March at 18.21, I contacted O2 with my girlfriend, Julie, on my girlfriend’s telephone, to ask O2 simply to move her phone to my account, so that I could pay her phone bills going forward. Her telephone number is:
XXXXX XXX 541
I have two accounts with O2, despite having asked O2 to amalgamate both accounts under one address and a total of 5 lines, which I pay for in full every month no problam.
Under account one up until yesterday, I had the following numbers:
XXXXX XXX 065 my main mobile number
XXXXX XXX 548 a spare, mostly unused SIM
In the phone call on 15th March, my girlfriend and I made it very clear that we simply required her phone to move to my account and we though it would all be fine, that's what we were told after all.
Shortly after the call, we discovered that the person, to whom we had previously been talking, had made a gross error and moved my girlfriend’s telephone number to my phone (I expect changing the phone number on my SIM) making her SIM useless and simply removing my phone number altogether. This is the first mistake of many, but it is a complete abuse of trust and an awful thing to have done to us at a time when we just couldn’t make contact to sort it out. The stress caused by this and the work involved in contacting friends and family to sort it out ruined our evening. How can an O2 employee remove phone numbers and move phone numbers without the specific and clear permission of those to whom those numbers belong? This action strikes at the heart of the duty of care O2 have for their clients and the trust they take responsibility for, in short it was an awful breech of O2’s duty of care, both to myself and my girlfriend. The stress and worry about what we could do to rectify this gross error was awful and a direct result of employee error, totally unacceptable.
The next day, I contacted O2 and explained what had happened. Luckily, the employee we contacted seemed unfazed by what had happened and said he would sort it out. He did not, indeed, he made the problem worse, I believe. Instead of restoring the phone lines to the SIMs they had happily been sitting on, he moved XXXXX XXX 065 to the SIM I don’t use that previously had XXXXX XXX 548 on it. This was totally unhelpful as I don’t have that SIM and it was not what we asked to happen or even what the employee said would happen. My girlfriend’s phone remained without her phone number on it either. So we were in an even worse position again because of more errors by O2 employees. This renewed fiasco destroyed our lunch as we again tried to work out how to sort things out, especially as we both had to take trains in different directions and my girlfriend needed to contact her employer and family and to remain in contact with them while travelling. This is again completely unacceptable. The lack of care of O2 employees has a terrible effect on customers and what happened again, after being told everything was sorted, is completely unacceptable.
As soon as I got on my train, I contacted O2 again. After a few failed attempts to get through to someone who didn’t disconnect during the conversation, I got through to someone who appeared to understand what had happened and how to put it right. After some time, the chap to whom I was talking, at around maybe 15.40 or later, started talking about the phone line tariffs. I explained that I didn’t want to discuss that at all and that all lines should remain on the same contracts as they were on the day before. It became clear however that my girlfriend’s telephone number had been disconnected from its contract by the first gross error by an employee the day before and that was causing problems for the "system" and the person who had promised to sot the problem out. It seemed that the systems were unable to deal with the problem that the employee created, so, I was asked to set up a new 24 month contract to reconnect my girlfriend’s number. That was obviously unacceptable and I explained that not only was I not about to sign up to a new 24 month contract because of an error caused by an O2 employee, but that I simply required him to do what he said he would do and restore us to the position we were in before O2 caused the problem. We argued a little, were disconnected and the employee did not deign to call me back. After finally thinking that someone at O2 was going to sort this problem I was disappointed again. More wasting of my time and further time with my girlfriend’s phone not working.
I waited a bit for the previous chap to call me back, but after waiting a while, I decided to call again and again it took some time to get to talk to someone who also agreed to call me back if we got disconnected, me being on a train. I spoke to a very helpful lady from about 16.48, I think. She managed to understand what had happened and each stage of problem I had had and she again promised to sort it out. I again explained that she wasn’t the first person who had said they would sort it. In time, we got to the same problem as before, the fact that my girlfriend’s phone number was no longer attached and could not be reconnected to her SIM, the one in her phone, now over a hundred miles away. This lady asked me to confirm security on my girlfriend’s phone – not so easy when, of course, her phone is not working properly, but we managed to do it. Now O2 had all they had asked for and more than they needed simply to reverse what the first negligent employee had caused. But no, I was then again asked to sign up for a 24 month contract. I explained that was not going to happen and the lady explained it was the only way she could go forward. She then said she would try to speak to a supervisor, I am not quite sure what happened then, but I remember thinking that I just needed to get my girlfriend’s phone reconnected asap, so I said I would agree to anything and sort it out later. This then led to this lady having to go through the whole sales and customer process, which is ridiculous, because, I am already a customer with 5 lines paid for on time in full every month since their inception. She asked me about setting up direct debits and things like that and I made it clear that they were already in place and did not need doing again! Anyway we finally got through that process, only for me to fail the credit rating stage. This I believe was because they used my old address XX Xxxxxx Road SW6 7EJ (which I still own), and not I am now at XX Xxxxxxxxxx Road., SW66JR, where I am now on the electoral roll. Of course O2 have been told before that I moved about 3 years ago. but still have my old address for some reason. Anyway, now having jumped through all their hoops desperately just trying to get my girlfriend's phone working again, despite this whole problem being caused by and O2 employee’s error, we appeared no closer actually to restoring my girlfriend’s phone number, the number cancelled in error by that first O2 employee. I spoke to the lady and she said she would talk to a supervisor and contact me back. I waited and waited and did not hear back and when I tried to call back the lines were closed.
Any thoughts or help please?
Regards,
Julian
Obviously, you have wasted a great deal of my time and caused me a great deal of stress, because of your gross errors; my girlfriend is still without her number and rather stressed about it as would any reasonable person be. When will you restore her number to her phone, we don’t even have an answer to this?
Please may I ask that you save all the recordings of the phone calls between ourselves, these may well become important evidence should we need them in the future.
Most importantly, how do I get this all sorted? How do we get the telephone number reapplied to my girlfriend’s phone asap
