I have wrote to O2's CEO, who passed down my complaint to an Executive Relations Officer. Her reply and my response below. Here is a link to the email addresses to CEO's of companies in the UK
http://www.ceoemail.com/On 17 Jun 2011, at 18:24, Executive Relations wrote:
Dear Mr O’Connor
Thank you for your email to Ronan Dunne, who has asked me to reply on his behalf.
As your wife is the account holder I’ve tried to call her direct but unfortunately she was unavailable. I’ll therefore explain to you in general terms about our business upgrade policy.
You’ve been correctly advised that our business Terms and Conditions have recently changed but this has nothing to do with a charge being quoted for a mid-term upgrade. Any customer taking a business contract after 29 March 2011 will not be entitled to a mid-term upgrade. This is the change to the Terms and Conditions and clearly doesn’t apply to the account in question.
Our upgrade policy has always been that a customer, when entitled to upgrade, can choose any particular phone and many of these are free. Whether a phone is free or not depends on a customer’s tariff and the value of the phone. I think the term upgrade can maybe be misleading as some people automatically assume it’s going to be a superior model of phone, when it really just means you are entitled to a new phone. This applies to both consumer and business tariffs.
The sale price of an iPhone 4 is £504.99, so a customer has to be on a high tariff to qualify for one free and an even higher tariff to qualify for two free in a 24 month period.
The cost of a mid term upgrade to a 16GB iPhone 4 on a small business tariff should actually be £290.40 so a quote of £150 is substantially less and I assume must have been offered as a gesture of goodwill. We also have an 8GB iPhone 3GS for which the sale price is £399 and the mid-term upgrade price is £216. Due to any possible misunderstanding at the time your wife took out her contract, I’d be willing to offer this phone at £110.
I hope this clarifies everything for you. I will be away from the office now until 1 July but I’ll put full notes on her account so if Ms Cornean wishes to take up either of these offers, they will be honoured.
Regards
| Telefónica UK Limited
Executive Relations
My reply:Hi
Thank you for your response and that of Ronan, your CEO, passing this down to you.
I happy that you have pointed out that, infact, O2's change to it's terms and conditions do not apply to my wife's contract, as her contract was taken out well before the 29/03/2011. However, it is evident that no one in your customer service teams and managers are aware of this fact and quote to the contrary.
The term 'upgrade' according to a free online Oxford English Dictionary definition for English learners states:
upgrade
verb
Pronunciation:/ʌpˈgreɪd/
raise (something) to a higher standard , in particular improve (equipment or machinery) by adding or replacing components:
(as adjective upgraded)
upgraded computers
raise (an employee) to a higher grade or rank.
noun
Pronunciation:/ˈʌpgreɪd/
an act of upgrading something.
an improved or more modern version of something, especially a piece of computing equipment.
The definition of 'upgrade in anybody's English, is infact the above and in the context of this issue, 'an improved, or more modern version of something, especially a piece of computing equipment'. So are you telling me that O2 has created its own definition of the term 'upgrade', which no body else in the English speaking world knows about, including the Oxford English Dictionary?
On the O2 website it states:
Upgrade your mobile phone
You may want to upgrade your mobile phone to take advantage of new features, or perhaps you just fancy a change...
My wife's 24 month contract is on a high tariff (small business) and has not simply been offered a mid-term 'upgrade' for £150, but also extending her current contract by another 24 months. Thus, would only receive one free iphone at the beginning of her contract for a 36 month period and paying a high tariff for this pleasure and still is. Although not happy about it, my wife would have accepted an extension to her contract for a free iphone, bearing in mind that she was sold this contract on the basis of receiving a free upgrade (the Oxford English Dictionary definition and your websites statement) after 12 months without an extension to her contract.
I'm not sure where you get your figures from below, regarding the mid-term upgrade cost, as I have not seen them anywhere, but the £150 offered, with a 24 month extension to my wife, has also been offered to several other people I have been in contact with, who are also facing the same issue. So this is a gesture of good will to everyone on a small business tariff? Infact, its not. A close friend of mine was offered an iphone 4 for an additional cost of £110 with of course a 24 month extension to her contract. You are offering my wife a 3GS for the same price and extension?
As stipulated in my previous mail, my wife wants to terminate her contract without fault (penalty), due to O2 not honouring her contract and reimbursement of the extra cost to her since moving from her residential/personal contract, to a small business one for over a year now. She is no longer requesting an 'upgrade' that she should rightly have. Her experience with O2 has been very disappointing and continues to be so.
Your customer services are charging £400 to terminate her contract.
regards
Shaun O'Connor