25 July 2017. North Hertfordshire. Sandon.
Over past two weeks mobile service has got worse at my location (inside and outside property). Delayed reception of texts, banked-up emails; no internet connection at all; sometimes no register recognition to allow me to ring 202 on mobile to report fault.
A call to O2 elicited this sequence: Your phone's sim card could be at fault; for better connection switch phone off and on again; "no it's not your phone the local mast is having issues"; the mast will be functioning again by 21 July; (did get revived internet use for about two days, then outage again). I was awarded £7 in compensation for days offline and up to 21/7.
I tested lots of locations around my home and found what might be called a "blind spot" for transmission there and a few hundred metres around it. That is, very fast internet connections (even in a dip shaded by dense tree cover) elsewhere in the village but not on my "trajectory" (and tested at different times).
My call today to O2 (25/7) had this response: switch your phone to just use 2G (after a previous O2 call promised "you will have 4G by the year-end"); oh, the mast is 4km away (as if it had just got up and walked further off); we could release you from the contract and you can find another provider.
I said I was not going away and that O2 should visit this area and its mast and ascertain the faults. Insistence brought a manager to the phone who simply relayed the original call-taker's platitudes. I said that for the sake of others affected, too, I wasn't going away and wanted technical answers. You cannot ring the technical department directly but have to be transferred - by which time, after half an hour speaking or more usually left on hold, I had run out of time to continue the call.
But I shall persist another day. And I will get a technical assessment.
