Are O2 customer services unable to help 'Classic PAYG' customers?

[wiganken]

My phone SIM is a ‘Classic Pay As You Go’ type and I am trying to get O2 to disable balance notification pop-ups that are shown after every call.

I rang customer services (4445 using my O2 phone) three times. The first two times were answered by someone in India and it was difficult to understand what they were saying. I persevered for 20 minutes each time (being patient and courteous) but each time I was left on hold and forced to end the call. No racism intended but it really is impractical trying to communicate effectively to someone who speaks English with a strong Indian accent. They understand me but I cannot understand them.

The third time (hoping to speak to a UK call centre) I rang early in the morning at 08:01 hours but was still answered by someone in India and I asked to be transferred to a UK call centre but they said they could only transfer me to a ‘Pay monthly’ UK call centre so I said “okay”. The line went silent and I was left unable to speak to anyone for 10 minutes so, again I was forced to end the call.

All three times I was forced to hang up due to silence from them and nothing happening.

I really want these pop-ups to stop but (reading between the lines) it seems that customer services are unable to help ‘Classic PAYG’ customers. It seems that they need a customer ‘Pay monthly’ account in order to carry out adjustments. Is my guesswork correct?

Is there any guaranteed way to stop the balance notification pop-ups or do I have to live with the annoyance?

[Cleoriff]

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@jonsie wrote:

Not altogether sure the medication is working though....

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My opinion as well!

[pgn]

The bromide seems efficacious though 👍🏼

[coolcity]

You won't get any joy from O2 trying to stop anything. They're doing their best to try to get people off the Classic tariff, although it does beg the question why are they still producing them (unofficially anyway).

I think the remaining balance message is a minor annoyance. I spent 5 days trying to port a "better" number which I found by chance on a Big Bundle sim, over to my Classic sim. It was ported, then later disconnected and this happened 3 times in 4 days. In the end I could get no sense out of them (also had one guy who as totally disinterested in what I was trying to tell him and only wanted to sell me a contract, hung up on that that one - I know "they're people too" but their behaviour sometimes is completely unnacceptable.

In the end I lost my original number, and pelnty of credit on the Classic sim, AND lost the number I was trying to port and couldn't get to speak to anybody to resolve it. I did once get through to a UK centre (ask for the technical dept) who said they would look into it and get back to me but nobody ever did.

I lost both numbers, £28 credit, several hours/days of my life (over 17 phone calls) and have since emailed 3 times and got no response. This was back in May. Ofcom is my next port of call. They lost a customer of over 15 years and 3 contracts as a result and they're just not interested. 

[Enlli]

@coolcity OFCOM will not be interested. They do not deal with individual consumer complaints.

You will need to go through the official complaints procedure with O2 (running at about 8 weeks) or get a letter of deadlock then go to the Communications Ombudsman