My phone damaged in o2 shop! Help!

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, 

New to this forum so a big hello from me! 

Ive been a loyal pay monthly o2 customer for 8 years now and recently upgraded to the HTC one X in April.  Love the handset, especially after breaking away from the iphone 4.  

However Sat 2nd Sep, I plugged my 5 month old phone to charge and it was dead as a dodo, tried all manners of charging it and it was having none of it.  I use my phone for work and rushed off to the o2 shop on Monday (26miles there and back).  They said they would look at it as its still under warranty.  I needed a phone urgently and was told I could pay £25 to use an alternative handset while my phone was in for repair.  

Happily I handed over the money as I hadn't been able to talk, text or access work email's from Saturday.  What did I get? A samsung E212. I didn't realise until I got home that it had no wifi, no email access, not even 3g or anything to access my google mail account.  I don't even think the phone is worth £25.

The amount of work I lost last week was horrendous and I was never as happy as to receive a text from o2 on Monday evening that my phone was repaired! It was too late in the the evening to do the 56 miles to collect it, so off I went Tues to get my phone back.  

Signed everything and as luck would have it decided to put my sim back into my phone in front of the girl working in the shop.  

Took off all the lovely wrapping and discovered the screen on my HTC one x smashed to pieces.  I was totally devastated, and explained to the girl that that was not my phone as it was in perfect cosmetic order when I left it in.  She tried to argue with me that o2 would not have sent it back like that, and it must have been like that when I left it in 

Thankfully, the guy that had originally sent the phone in for repair for me, overheard the conversation.  He had remembered me, and had actually put in his notes that the phone I sent in was in excellent condition.  

After waiting another 45 mins in the shop, I was then told I had to wait another 3 working days for them to get me a replacement phone.  And off out the door I was sent with my Samsung E212 again totally miffed and shocked about what had just happened.  

I'm a bit peeved that Ive to wait another 3 days on to use the handset I'm paying monthly for, never mind the money and business Ive lost in the last week and half, due to no fault of my own.  Has anyone any advice, or any reason as to why Ive to wait 3 days? I was told Id be getting a brand new phone, but Ive a sneaking suspicion Ill be given a reconditioned handset? 

Any advice would be great thank you! 

[Anonymous]

Lukaszw.  If your phone has broken within 6 months of the purchase date, they have to exchange or repair your phone free of charge or your entitled to a refund.  Tell them your aware of your rights as a consumer, and under the Sale of Goods act you want to cancel entirely. Once I mentioned that to them, they were very quick to listen to me, and I got a lot less "we cants"

Good luck! 

[Anonymous]

Well, if O2 is having two large outages during 4 months it really undermines my trust to the network and I'm considering being mis-sold. I have been having my phone in other EU country for the last 10 years. Not a single outage (at least this scale). I really don't care if the O2 is really the only one with a bad luck. At the end of the day I was cut out of my contacts.

I'm not going to refuse to pay bills with no reason. The reason is O2 is actually not providing the service I'm suppose to pay for. I don't care fot the credit score at all, as I'm a foreigner. It cannot work only one way - O2 can do whatever it want and I should shut up and pay nicely. No, I'm paying for the service. No service - no pay. Easy as that.

BTW, MI5, please read the post carefully. I did not tell that O2 is responsible for the HTC phone being faulty. But O2 is resposible for badly handling the situation like mine. No flexibility at all from their part.

Thanks magnersplease, the 6 months hasn't ended yet so I'll probably switch to another more reliable network.

[Bambino]

As stated in a previous post in this thread, you cannot cancel your contract because of the outages that O2 has recently had. O2 do not guarantee uninterrupted service, nor do any of the other mobile networks in this country. Being a foreigner does not exempt you from your responsibility to pay your contract. If you think that you can do that and walk into a contract with another mobile provider in this country, then you are very much mistaken. It will go on your credit report that you have not paid or walked away from your current contract, and you will not get a contract from another provider. I would think very carefully before you do anything rash.

@Anonymous wrote:

Well, if O2 is having two large outages during 4 months it really undermines my trust to the network and I'm considering being mis-sold. I have been having my phone in other EU country for the last 10 years. Not a single outage (at least this scale). I really don't care if the O2 is really the only one with a bad luck. At the end of the day I was cut out of my contacts.

I'm not going to refuse to pay bills with no reason. The reason is O2 is actually not providing the service I'm suppose to pay for. I don't care fot the credit score at all, as I'm a foreigner. It cannot work only one way - O2 can do whatever it want and I should shut up and pay nicely. No, I'm paying for the service. No service - no pay. Easy as that.

BTW, MI5, please read the post carefully. I did not tell that O2 is responsible for the HTC phone being faulty. But O2 is resposible for badly handling the situation like mine. No flexibility at all from their part.

Thanks magnersplease, the 6 months hasn't ended yet so I'll probably switch to other network.

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[Anonymous]

Bambino, thanks for this. I'm not going to just stop paying the bills. I'm not a child. I will try to resolve the situation first before I'll make any legal actions.

As I said, O2 can't just being unreliable without any consequences. I can always bring the SIM card from my country and forget about O2 if I really want to. My point is it's not like I have no options. But I will not discuss them here in case a legal department is monitoring this threads.

[Bambino]

I'm sure you're not a child, but your post did say that you were going to stop paying. I wouldn't want to see you get into credit trouble here, so it was just a friendly warning. 

I think you'll find that all the networks here experience a certain amount of unreliability. It's not an exact science, and things do occasionally go wrong. If you bring your sim card from your country you will incur roaming charges, which could wind up being much more expensive than trying to resolve your differences with O2. Good luck, and I hope you can get your issues sorted out.

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:
. But I will not discuss them here in case a legal department is monitoring this threads.

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The whole point of this forum is that you can discuss anything freely, and with a suitable choice of user name you are anonymous anyway.

[Anonymous]

Bambino, I understand that roaming could be as expensive as O2 or even more. But now I'm not caring too much about the money - more like making the world a better place 😉

Seriously, thanks you guys for toning my voice down, before I will speak with O2. It is a relief there is somebody you can talk about this.

Perksie, thanks for your reply. I'm pretty sure my forum account is connected to My O2, so I will disagree with you about being anonymous.

Thanks for help. I will let you know how the things ended in a couple of weeks.

[jonsie]

Good luck with it:smileyhappy:

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Perksie, thanks for your reply. I'm pretty sure my forum account is connected to My O2, so I will disagree with you about being anonymous.

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There is nothing like a good conspiracy theory, but I can assure you nobody in O2 can access your details from here.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, jonsie!

Perksie, I would say there is no question about the O2's technical ability to identify me. It's just the fact that nobody would care to do that. I agree I shouldn't worry too much.