My miserable experiences with O2...

[Anonymous]

I typing this purely to vent my frustration at O2, I'm sure it probably won't make a bit of difference but I don't know what else to do....

I've been on a Simplicity monthly rolling contract for about two years now. Everything was fine until I saw O2 were doing offers in May for yearly sim only contracts, as it saved me a few quid and essentially offered the same things as my current contract I decided to sign up.
I received my sim a few days later and wanted to port my old number over to it. I rang up customer services and asked if this was possible, I was transferred to retentions who send they'd send the PAC code to me within a couple of days. A week passed and no sign of the PAC code so I rang retentions again, the chap said they'd been no evidence of a PAC code on the system so he gave me one over the phone. I filled in the online ˜port your number" form and waited...
A few days later my phone went down so I assumed the port was in progress, unfortunately things didn't exactly go to plan. Instead of porting my old number to the new sim, O2 ported the new number to my old monthly contract. I rang up O2 again and they apologised for the mistake and said it would take a couple of days to port my old number back. They also offered to cancel the 12 month contract because of the inconvenience I'd experienced and said they would put me back onto my monthly simplicity contract. Everything was then fine, well, for a couple of weeks that is...
Whilst checking my bank account balance I noticed it was a bit short. It turns out that O2 had decided to take the whole years payment (£114 odd) for the 12 month account that had been cancelled. I rang customer services again who told me it had been a mistake but they couldn't refund me directly. They suggested that I filed an Indemnity Claim with my bank to recoup the funds.
So off I trudged to my bank to make this claim. The chap in the bank said this was quite a common occurrence and that the phone companies could refund you directly if they really wanted to. Anyway the claim was made and voila the money was refunded by O2 within 48 hours.
I thought that was the end of this saga until about a month later I received a letter through the door from Moorcroft Debt Recovery, asking for (you guessed it!) the £114 that O2 had refunded me! They threatened to cut off my number (well the contract that had already been cancelled so it was meaningless) and possibly take me to court.
Back to O2 customer services, this time the call took well over an hour. I spoke to a lady who went through to the debt recovery department; she apparently managed to get the debt withdrawn so I questioned her as to why this had all happened.
It turns out that as well as O2 refunding the £114 back to my bank account they also kept the new account open (hence the debt collects involvement) and at the same time credited my old account to the tune of £114! So they then used this 'credit' to pay my monthly payments of £19.99. The woman assured me that as it was O2's mistake, they would waive those two months payments and return everything back to normal this month (September).
Two weeks passed and everything was fine, no more debt collectors letters so I assumed everything was back to normal. It wasn't until I tried to send a text which was blocked or make a call which was also blocked. I tried to ring 202 and it played a message saying that payments on my account were overdue and I should pay it immediately.
I was obviously unable to speak to customer services so I then wasted another hour trying speak to someone on the web chat, he basically fobbed me off saying he couldn't help me and was unable to get anyone to call me. I then fired off an email to customer support purely out of desperation.
Unable to use my phone I logged into 'My O2' on the net in an attempt to find out how much I owed, the bills were all over the place, showing credits here and payments there but on one page I found a figure of £40.48, roughly two months line rental. I paid this online and within a couple of minutes I was able to get through to customer services on 202 again.
I spoke to another lady, and yet again I had to regurgitate this long and rather tedious (sorry!) tale. She went off to debt recovery again and didn't have any luck, so then had to speak to another department. Finally she said that she didn't have a clue what had happened to my account, but the £40.48 was for the two months that I hadn't paid. When I told that I was previously informed by her colleague this had been written off she said "No, that would never happen, I don't know why she would have told you that?"

[perksie]

New sim order, PAC, number porting, why didn't you just ask for a simple change of tariff?

[jonsie]

It's a crazy situation to find yourself in and unfortunately when things go badly wrong, O2 usually compound their errors with even more errors. It's distressing in the extreme and as perksie says, you don't need a PAC code to change contract or tariff, you are merely transferring from one platform to another.

Not sure how far you have taken this complaint but I suggest writing to the Complaint Review Service if you haven't already done so.

Complaint Review Service
Read the document here.

and write with your complaint here ::

O2 Complaint Review Service

Email Address ::

complaintreviewservice@o2.com

 
Tell them :: 
• Your name and address 
• Your mobile and account numbers 
• A daytime phone number 
• A suggestion of how they can put things right 

Postal Address ::

O2 Complaints Review Service

PO BOX 694

Winchester

SO23 5AP
More information here : How do I make a complaint?

I have PM'd you with the phone number, otherwise it will be deleted from the post.

Hope you get it sorted soon, 'sorry' is not good enough from O2. You are due some compensation and O2 need to remove any notes on your credit file.
Good luck

[Anonymous]

There is no getting away from it, when O2 cock it up, they do it big style. They are not shy when it comes to clearing out bank accounts.

These "mistakes" are all too frequent and leaves me with no confidence in O2's "system".

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys. I suppose I may have been partially to blame by opening a new account in the first instance but apart from that I cant see where I've gone wrong?

The operators I spoke to were all generally helpful but were ultimately confused when I told them my story. They seemed to have to consult with various other departments before trying to come up with a solution. A couple of times I'm sure that I got fobbed off but I'm guessing that the consequent actions of these O2 staff members gradually helped this situation to snowball out of control.

As I said my experiences with O2 had been decent up to this point, in fact better than the likes of Orange and T Mobile in my opinion. It's just frustrating that during this saga not one of the O2 staff I spoke to was able (or willing?) to take charge of this situation and actually sort it out.

[perksie]

A very frustrating experience for you, I have no doubt they'll sort it out eventually, but their systems for anything slightly out of the ordinary do seem at times to throw them into a state of chaos.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

[Anonymous]

Whilst I can understand your frustration, I can also understand why it is so difficult for O2 to sort.

What you should have done is just change tariff. Its easy to do and only involves a phone call. By creating a new account you end up having to close one.

Then you asked for a PAC to port your number, when you should have just asked to migrate your number to the 'new' account.

Unfortunately, its one of those situations when both you and O2 are at fault. With the best intentions things like that get very complicated to sort out.

[jonsie]

O2 do stress to all their employees that when a problem arises, the adviser is to take ownership of that problem and to follow it through until the problem is resolved even if it involves speaking to other departments. It's time someone did! Just leaving notes on an account(or not) for the next person to pick up is just not good enough.

[Anonymous]

Whilst I can understand your frustration, I can also understand why it is so difficult for O2 to sort.
What you should have done is just change tariff. Its easy to do and only involves a phone call. By creating a new account you end up having to close one.
Then you asked for a PAC to port your number, when you should have just asked to migrate your number to the 'new' account.
Unfortunately, its one of those situations when both you and O2 are at fault. With the best intentions things like that get very complicated to sort out.

I didn't actually ask for a PAC code, I was told by an O2 employee that it was the only way they could move my old number to my new account.

[Anonymous]

O2 do stress to all their employees that when a problem arises, the adviser is to take ownership of that problem and to follow it through until the problem is resolved even if it involves speaking to other departments. It's time someone did! Just leaving notes on an account(or not) for the next person to pick up is just not good enough.

Yes, I believe the note thing is a bit of bluff. One of the operators I spoke to said that it would take about half an hour to 'write my notes up' so a future operator would be aware of my situation. I asked the next person I spoke to about these 'notes' and it quickly became apparent that very little information had actually been written down.