It's more of a rant than anything....
I've been a customer of O2 for many years, ever since I was a teen. So for the first time as I am new to the whole 'refresh' thing, I decided to upgrade early to the iPhone 6+. I spoke to a lovely advisor/bot on their webchat and they offered me a deal I couldn't refuse. No upfront cost, the 64GB model and the tariff I wanted. Everything was great, and then for some reason my payment wouldn't go through online. At first I thought it was my bank, but nope. Something wrong with the payment system with this site.
So the next day, I called through to customer services on my lunch break (the upgrade team) where they confirmed I could either pay them on the phone to THEN make another payment for it online (which seemed pointless as the whole reason why I was calling was to see whether or not they could take payment over the phone) or alternatively, the best thing was for me to go into store to take the payment.
That was mistake #1. I went into the store and the guy who served me seemed more than willing - until I showed him the transcript of the deal that I had with the advisor/bot and I explained that someone had advised me to come in here to make the payment. He then went out "back" to his "manager" for ten minutes and told me that there was no way they could match the deal I got given. Already hacked off, he then PRESSURISED me into paying an upfront cost of £49.99 on top of the already £260 it was going to cost to upgrade early (at this point, he was rude as anything and just wanted to get rid of me so I wouldn't keep asking him to talk to his manager about the deal), so I walked out the store, knowing full well I got completely shafted.
It then took a further TWO days to try and get through to customer services (tweets, emails were also a way to try and contact too but even that's just as useless) and finally, I explained my situation to the colleague on the phone. She even confirmed herself I was misadvised and shouldn't have been forced to pay that money, so she was sending it to the "back office" (what even?) for them to make a decision so they could see if they would refund me. She told me three to five working days and that O2 would contact me to call them with the outcome. It's been over a WEEK. So I call again, this time a lot more hacked off than originally - where the lady on the phone chucked me on hold for TWENTY MINUTES to even "locate" my details, then proceeded to tell me that they couldn't refund my money until my bill had refreshed on the 14th of april... THEN I WOULD HAVE TO CALL THEM TO GET IT REFUNDED INTO MY BANK! Absolute joke. Of course, I wasn't having this as I would be out of the country at this point and point blank asked for a manager, which to then finally (I say this loosely..) they said they could somehow magically get it refunded back into my account by tomorrow and they'd call me to confirm.
Honestly, they've broken so many regulations and as someone that works in Financial services, they really couldn't have picked a worse person to mess around. This really has changed my opinion on this network and as soon as I can afford to pay off my device plan once more - I won't be coming back. They have sincerely disappointed me and if I wasn't already tied into it, I would have ended my contract with O2.
Sorry for the rant, I guess I just needed somewhere to vent!
