Hope someone can help me, as the experience I have had with O2 so far has been awful.
My wife had her phone stolen some 2 years ago. She immediately called o2 and they blacklisted it. We didn't have any insurance, so got another phone for her. 2 years later, the police have actually recovered her phone, it's in perfect working order, and is back with my wife. As she has a phone, we want to give it to my dad to use. The imei was still blacklisted, so my wife called o2, passed the security checks, and the customer support rep said they'd submitted a request, which should take up to 24hrs.
24hrs passed, and no joy. Phone wifi works, it's been factory reset etc, and the Apple store have confirmed that it is fully functioning, but it's still blacklisted. Call O2 again... Same story. Wait a day, doesn't work. Call O2 again... Every time going through the security checks and having to re-explain the details. Painful!
Finally went in to a local O2 store, my wife sitting for hours trying to get someone to help her. O2 customer service were saying that the phone is not blacklisted anymore, but checking any free imei checking website shows that's not the case, phone is still blacklisted, and an employee in the O2 store confirmed the same thing. Eventually after multiple attempts, the assistant store manager said he would pass on the query to the Helping Hands team (a sort of 2nd line support for problem cases). They advised that they had looked into the problem and resolved it, just wait up to 24hrs. Waited again, and again no success.
Very disappointingly, the store manager AND the Helping Hands team just washed their hands of us, saying there was nothing else for them to do. The HH team unhelpfully pointed out reasons why a phone might be blacklisted, which isn't the point. The phone was correctly blacklisted back 2 years ago, but now is back with its rightful owner, so why can't it be undone!?
This has been going on for weeks, with no-one being able to give any assistance. The phone is my wife's property, but she cannot use it properly because O2 have repeatedly failed to remove the imei from the blacklist.
Please can someone help with this!? What can be done?
