4G problem not solvable by o2 guru

[Anonymous]

I've got problem which online o2 gurus and one shop have been unable to solve.  Just wondering if anyone here has any ideas.  Sorry this is a bit of a long explanation.

I have been an o2 customer for many years, first as a pay monthly contract 3g, but the last two years I have been on 4g pay and go.  Two weeks ago I decided to convert to contract (Simplicity) as the cost of a 4G tariff is now the same as my pay and go, and I'd like to take advantage of the 'unlimited' data on O2 Travel.

When I got my new pay monthly SIM, I found that I could only get 3G on it.  Swapping back my pay and go SIM achieved 4G immediately and consistently on the same handset (LG Nexus 5).  O2 customer care took me through a number of things I'd mostly already tried (eg APN re-entry) and then concluded I'd been sent a 3G sim card.  The agent issued a new sim, which I tried and found had the same problem.  Further attempts to fix it with another O2 guru via online chat, including 'boosting my signal' yielded nothing.  He then suggested I take it into a shop, which I did yesterday.  The shop claimed they were familiar with this problem, issued me another SIM and advised me to go home wait for the new sim to be activated when I should get 4G.  Of course, that failed.

Things that have been tried:

- APN deletion and re-entry. 

- switching 4G Recommended off and on

- handset restarts

- as described, 3 new pay monthly SIMs

One idea I have had relates to the fact that I used to have a pay monthly SIM on my account, before I ported that number to my current pay and go.  My plan is to port to the new 4G pay monthly SIM when I am happy with it.  I wonder if the old pay monthly contract is somehow interfering with the ability of the network to fully configure my new pay monthly contract.  (This reminds me that when I set up my pay and go SIM, O2 had a great deal of trouble merging the pay and go onto the same account so that I could see its details in My O2. I wonder if the source of the issue could be there?)

I'm about 7 days from the end of the cool down period, so I need to cancel my contract by then unless I can resolve the problem.

Any ideas muchly appreciated!

[MI5]

Let us know how it goes for you.

[Anonymous]

Well I admit I feel a bit better that I am not the only.

My customer services interactions have all resulted in the CS saying they are confident that they have solved the problem.  Luckily for them, they can always tell me that I need to wait "between 2 and 24 hours for it to work" or something similar, so they always close the call thinking they have addressed it.  I've come to realise that their over-confidence is based on the fact that they can't be proven wrong before the end of the call.

I spent an hour on online chat with another one yesterday.  S/he claimed that my pay monthly account did not have the '4G bolt on', which sounds so obvious it's hard to believe the others didn't spot it, particularly as two of them said I have 4G set up on my account and one of the others claimed to be adding it during the call.  Sure enough yesterday's CS told me to wait up to 24 hours.  3 hours in, nothing had changed and I expect I'll be contacting complaints when the 24 hours is up tonight.

So complaints really work?  If so how quickly, I wonder.

[MI5]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So complaints really work?  If so how quickly, I wonder.

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It's not instant and can take upto 10 working days for them to respond to you but they may also be able to offer you something in the way of compensation too.

[Anonymous]

My to my surprise I now get 4G.  So it did take more than 3 hours, and the problem was the lack of a 4G bolt on.

I'll say a bit more for anyone else with the issue.

The previous calls to O2 are described earlier, but the summary is that I contacted O2 via online chat multiple times, and a guru at a shop once, tried 3 different SIMs, all to no avail.  Yesterday's CSR contact was also via online chat, since the wait by phone was expected to be 45 minutes. S/he was not a team leader.  I asked to talk to someone who had access to both my pay monthly and pay and go account details, but she claimed not to be able to do that.  After spending some time trying to 'bring in' the pay and go account, which was already 'brought in', as I had told her, she said she needed to add the 4G bolt on to my pay monthly account. She then spent a few minutes assuring me that this would work in the face of a high level of cyncism from me.

The 4G bolt on is not visible from My O2 as far as I can see.  Beneath Tariffs, which reads "O2 Simplicity 1000 12M 1GB" for me, there is a Bolt Ons section, which says "You have 1 data allowance Bolt On and 1 additional Bolt On.".  After she added the 4G bolt on, this changed to "You have 2 data allowance Bolt Ons and 1 additional Bolt On.".  It did this within a couple of minutes, but there was no 4G at that time.  This evening it says "You have 1 data allowance Bolt On and 1 additional Bolt On." once more.  When I inserted the SIM I got 4G and a text welcoming me to 4G, which I had not seen before.

So the question is:  why did 3 other CSRs, plus a shop guru not spot this?

I'll never know.  Let's hope the number porting I now need to do works.

[MI5]

Who knows why but it was as we said. Glad they found it for you eventually.