Well, here's my story about trying to sign up to the new Shared Data service for my family at an O2 Shop yesterday.
The BEFORE situation is like this:
Dad is an account holder for the following contracts:
Dad's SIM: 12 month Pay Monthly SIMO (Simplicity) - 100 minutes, 100Mb Data - £8 per month - out of contract
Daughter's SIM: 12 month Pay Monthly SIMO - 250 mins, 250Mb Data - £11 per month - out of contract
Son's SIM: 24 month iPhone contract - lots of data - worth over £40+ per month - almost out of contract
Mum is an account holder for the following contracts:
Mum's SIM: 24 month Pay Monthly Sony smartphone - 500 minutes, 500Mb Data - £30+ per month with 3 months left to run on contract
The big idea we had was to take advantage of the O2 special offer to upgrade Mum to a £38 per month Refresh contract (with 5Gb of data) to take advantage of th 25% discount on her "3 months left" the termination fee - and make her contract the lead device for data sharing with the rest of the family's SIMs - which we would "downgrade" to the bare minimum SIMO contracts - i.e. make Dad, son and Daughter's SIMs all the cheapest £8 per month SIM only contracts - and get them to share the 5G data pool being shared by Mum's contract. We did all the maths and all the calculations beforehand and came to conclusion that this would meet all of our voice and data needs - and would save us money per month - whilst getting a an addiitonal brand new device for the family on Mum's new Refresh contract.
So we went into the store to get it done - the advisor in-store was very helpful and also sought advice from the other advisors in store and all were aware of what we wanted to achieve.
And despite the hellpfulness and positive approach of the staff in-store (who I have absolutely no gripes with) - here is what happened:
First of all - it turns out that in order to use sharing data - all SIMs need to be in the same account owner name - so straight off the bat our plan to upgrade Mum to Refresh goes out the window. If we'd have known this in the first place we would have modelled our maths differently. Hey ho - so under self-inflicted pressure in-store we decided to let Mum's contract run on as it is - and instead get Dad to sign up to the brand new Refresh contract with 5Gb data for £38 per month - which meant going through all the credit check rigamarole again - which all passed OK. The ideas was that when Mum's contract expires in 3 months time we cancel her service and migrate her number to this new Refresh contract in Dad's name - and all would be back on plan.
So now Dad has a new Refresh contract with 5Gb data - the advisor sets the data on that contract for sharing - and whilst we are wth the advisor in-store we proceed to downgrade daughter to the £8 per month SIMO and activate her SIM to share with the new Refresh contract's data allowance. We do the same with Dad's SIMO - which is already on the £8 per month tarrif. The advisors in-store run into a little problem and they say that I would have to continue the process over web-chat later as it would take some time for the systems to process it - so we left it that - and we left Son's contract as it is until it runs out of contract - on the basis that we would also downgrade his SIM to £8 per month SIMO and get his SIM to share with the new 5G data contract.
So several hours later we get home and we proceed to enter into a Live Chat to get Dad's and Daughter's SIMOs to share with the new Refresh contract's data - and then the next bit of bad news was given to us: "The £8 per month SIMO contracts are not compatible with the data sharing plan" - and after we were kept waiting whilst the advsor consulted with supervisors - we were given the news that completely scuppered our plan - "The only SIMO contracts that will work with data sharing are those that cost £15 per month" - apparently a mysterious type of SIMO contract with pricing that isn't published anywhere, that the store staff new nothing about either - that has unlimited voice and unlimited texts - but no data - because it's designed to share a "leaders" data allowance. So - our plan to have a family full of 3 x £8 per month SIMO contracts sharing a £38 per month 5G Refresh contract (total monthly charge of £62) is now completely out of the question. It's now going to cost us 3 x £15 per month + £38 = total monthly charge of £83 to get what we wanted.
It seems that the data sharing product is so new that not only to store staff not seem to know about all the vagaries of the product, but there is nothing published anywhere that makes it crsytal clear as to how it works and what types of SIMs and ownership restrictions there are.
