Is O2 customer services always this bad?

[Anonymous]

Last Saturday we purchased an iphone 3gs on a pay monthly contract via o2's telephone ordering system. I was informed that the phone would arrive Monday (yesterday). I chased o2 yesterday afternoon and was told that the phone had gone out of stock, but has come back in, and that o2 would make sure the phone got sent out that evening. The lady I spoke to said she would phone me back yesterday to confirm that this had happened. She didnt phone back.
This morning I phoned o2 again, I got someone in India this time, I tried and tried, but simply couldnt understand him so gave up and rang back, this time I got another lady who I asked if I could be put through to a manager as I was losing faith. She said ok, and put me through to their sales dept! Who obviously couldn't help. I then phoned again and went through to their department that deals with ending contracts, the lady seemed helpful and said I needed to speak to someone in their new business department and that she would transfer me. I asked for her reassurance that she would get me that department and not sales again. She promised. She put me on hold whilst she put me through. You got it, she had put me through to sales again. By now I was almost pulling my hair out. I tried again and got through to customer disconnection. The guy I spoke to seemed very helpful and full of concern and said that he would investigate what has been going on. He took my landline number and said he would phone me right back. This was 4 hours ago.
All I want to know is when to expect delivery of my phone!

[Anonymous]

I work in a call centre myself. Personally i never do anything like that with customers. It's immoral to lie like that and it gives a poor customer experience.

When you call through next time. If they can't deal with your query straight away this is always a good point to go on.

Ask for thier full name (they don't have to provide the surname, but some do)
Ask for thier managers name
Ask where the office is located and / or thier extention number when available.

Insist they warm transfer you (this is where they will speak to the other department before transfering you through)

They'll be that paranoid with all of the above being asked, they'll play it by the book and give you the customer experience you deserve. I.e an answer to a simple delivery query

[jonsie]

I work in a call centre myself.

I also worked in a well known mobile phone call centre myself for 5 years and I have to agree with you Retroman. I would also ask the advisor for their personal extension number or even their employee reference number(everyone has them). In the event of a repeat call I would ask them to read out the notes on your file and also the notes the advisor is going to put on there after this call. If the advisor is going to transfer you to a different department, still ask for their details and ask them to state exactly which department you are being transferred to and request that your query is relayed to the other department before you speak to them.

Ok, this is not the normal way for an ordinary enquiry and I suggest this is only used for an issue which has been ongoing. Please note that business needs, means that sometimes the advisor would not be able to stay on the line to speak with the other department and have no choice but to place you in a queue for that department.
However, having asked for all the advisor's details, he/she will make sure that correct procedures are followed.

[perksie]

Note:

You did not speak to anyone in India, O2 have all UK based call centres.

[Anonymous]

Note:
You did not speak to anyone in India, O2 have all UK based call centres.

Really, I am amazed, well whoever I spoke to had great difficulty understanding me and vice versa.

[Anonymous]

We have a contract with O2 for 6 handsets at work.
Every time I have phoned O2 with a query or to request a repair, the replacement phone has always been there before 9am the next day.
The staff are helpful and to be honest, we wouldn't go with anyone else. We get calls every day from third party suppliers such as CPW and others and we won't entertain them

Credit where credits due......Well done O2!

[perksie]

Er, that sounds like a business account, if so you have a dedicated support line and I believe things are done somewhat differently.

[Anonymous]

I had taken the iPhone Pay Monthly from O2 that included iPhone 32GB 3GS three months ago and till now i don't found any kind of problem regarding to the customer services. I am from Liverpool and whenever i talk to customer support, i got the right info on the right time. If you have some problems then you should do the complains about it.

[Anonymous]

nothing to say here!

[jonsie]

You did not speak to anyone in India, O2 have all UK based call centres

True but there are many Asian customer service advisors in the uk call centres (they need them to interpret irate Asian customers wanting dead expensive handsets for nothing ) sorry guess where I worked?

Same place as me! But to be fair, everyone wants expensive phones for as little as they can get away with. But there are a lot of ethnic customers who can't speak English so there are multi-national employees in order to address translation difficulties. However, all these employees speak English whether with or without accents and so people shouldn't jump to conclusions as to where the call centre is. They are all UK centres