credit has now appeared on the bill, however to wait 5 - 10 days to reach my bank is a bit of a joke
Ive emailed the CEO of O2, Mark Evans regarding this whole process, if i get a reply i will of course upload onto here. email to mark as below
Good Morning Mark,
It pains me to send this E-mail to the CEO of a company as O2, however as an O2 customer i feel that i need to escalate a recent issue i have had over attempting to recover a deposit i had to pay on a recent contract i took out with O2
contract telephone number - xxxxxxxxxxx
the contract was taken out in April and as part of the vetting process i was asked to pay a reasonable £125 deposit as i have only recently came back into the UK from working overseas, this imo is fair and the deposit was paid. i was also told that the deposit would be returned to me after successful payment of the 3rd bill, this confirmed in an O2 statement in the URL below
http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New,Kb=Companion,question=ref(User):str(Mobile),C...
All bills have been paid on time, and after the 3rd bill was paid in July. everything to this point was fine
On calling Customer services to process the refund, this is pretty much where my opinion of your company nose dives.
the 1st call to O2 regarding this, was quite pleasant whereas the CS agent explained the process and that a refund should appear in my back within 5 to 10 working days, this is acceptable.
after the 10 working days, i called back and was told that the information i was given was wrong, however the agent would process the refund and this would appear on "MyO2" in a few days from there i could arrange a refund, this did not happen
another call to CS and to be explained that i need to pay a 4th payment in august for the refund to be granted, on asking for an explanation on this as O2's policy clearly states 3 month i was told this is standard process within O2. call ended with me as the customer being both confused and annoyed
another call to CS, where it was explained that when the 4th bill is generated, THEN the deposit would be generated, (this is not explained in the URL within this email). at this point i was totally confused, and annoyed at the lack of knowledge of O2 internal processes. call ended
so this morning 20th July, my 4th Bill was generated, on checking the bill in "MyO2", there was no reference to the deposit, yet another call to O2 customer services, to be yet again told that i must wait until the 4th bill is paid, (early august), before the refund would be generated. at this point i demanded to speak to a supervisor to be told that " the supervisor would say the same thing".
so i now have 4 conflicting processes on this, i am now utterly confused, and extremely annoyed, as of this i asked the agent what is the complaints process, in which i was told that a manager would call me in 24 hours, (as a manager in the Oil and Gas exploration industry), if i were to resolve a complaint, i would ask the customer for a time that would be convenient within the 24 hour window, especially as this would strafe into the weekend, and the time with my family outside of work is of importance to me.
closing, iv'e just re-checked "My-O2" and the credit has been applied. as of this i have called and arranged for the credit to be applied to my bank, this however taking between 5 to 10 working days. come on O2, transactions in this day and age can be made instantly.
Mark, i hope this email gets the attention it deserves. as a process manager i would suggest the following to mitigate confusion, and potential loss of business
customer facing agents to have access to factual knowledge. i would assume that O2 CS agents have access to a Knowledge base of sorts as a point of reference, (please encourage agents to use this), rather than let me put you on hold whilst i speak to a supervisor. i appreciate that not everything can be resolved at 1st line, however promote the tools to give the agents a uniform level of knowledge to assist customer queries.
your website URL as above to be amended to reflect the process, (as long as 3 payments have been made on time, the credit will show on the 4th bill). if i had known this at the time, i would have not called after the 3rd bill was paid
finally, if a manager is to call a customer to resolve a complaint, empower the customer. ask what time is convenient to call, not offer a 24 hour window
i really hope you do read this, and please reply with any comments you may have. your O2 community forum, has a lot of reference to similar issues like this around deposits, so this is not an isolate incident
https://community.o2.co.uk
regards
Mr Thomas Qaid
