I've just had an equally fruitless discussion with Andy, an online chat advisor. I took out a Business contract 3 years ago when I was unemployed and renewed it after a year. At this point I was working away and was talked into (while driving home) renewing for 2 years to "protect against rising costs". Of course costs have dropped and Data allowance has become more important to me in the last year (got a smart watch...) When I tried to upgrade my data allowance I was told by O2 that they are not in control of my account any more, I have to deal with Aerial Communications. The whole online machine of the mighty O2 is no longer available to me, instead I have got to deal with Aerial by phone. Incidentally their office closed at 3pm today, they have no apparent online backup service, but looking on the bright side, they are open for normal business hours from the 4th of January. So I took a contract (unadvisedly) for 2 years with O2 but they cannot help me in terms of contract switching or upgrades, that can only be done through a different organisation with a much smaller customer facing profile.
All I have requested is to switch to a current O2 Personal contract for the same £16 a month I pay now on sim-only. My data allowance would rise from 500Mb to 2Gb. O2 won't discuss it and Aerial (when their office re-opens) will presumeably say, as they offered in early December, they will charge an extra £2 a month or so for the privilege of getting what other O2 customers get for nothing. I'm not a stroppy customer by nature, but I think O2 need to take back control of their customer care. The chances of me, my wife or my son having O2 contracts in 10 months time is looking slimmer by the day.
