Where is the love for long term loyal customers?

[Anonymous]

Hi all, i've been a loyal o2 customer for over 8 years now.  

My o2 contract is due for renewal on the 12th of this month (November 2012) so I thought I would contact an advisor through the chat system to see what offers/discounts o2 could give me against an iPhone 5.

I got nowhere!  The advisors excuse was that all payment plans are pre-set and that there is no leway for change, the advisor couldn't even move my upgrade date forward by two weeks!!

It seems that o2 are happy to make us fork out hundreds of pounds purchasing a handset year after year and then hundreds more on monthly contracts (on average £40 per month @ £480 per year) to run them but they are not prepared to give anything back, not even 2 weeks advance on an upgrade!

What makes this even more unbelievable is that Orange have activated 4G and so o2 sales will be effected.  

I think it may be prudent to wait until my contract has finished, then move over to Orange!

thoughts?!

[Anonymous]

I just left O2 for Three UK last week.

1 - O2 network going down AGAIN was an absolute disgrace

2 - Tariffs are far higher than other companies

3 - I've been on GPRS at home for years and now get H+

4 - They chucked me off international for exceeding the stupid 25mb allowance after 2 days of my holiday.

5 - Really long wait to speak to CS. Three UK connects you instantly.

6 - 140% increase in non-EU Roaming, that's commercial suicide.

Keith

[jonsie]

Good luck with your new provider Keith, hope all goes well for you:smileyhappy:

Strangely enough I just changed my phone. On the iphone I got a veryweak signal in my home on 3G very often losing 3G altogether and had a very slow connection on GPRS.

On the new S3 I have H+ with no loss of signal. I spoke to customer service this afternoon, just a 3 minute wait and was on the phone for 45 minutes whilst the very patient adviser went through the set up with me. At the end of the call he told me he was going to email me a few tips about using the phone and using Kies.

I now have 26 emails about the S3 which to be honest I haven't had time to read yet. All in all, excellent customer service from a very knowledgeable and patient adviser.

Different day, different time and maybe my experience wouldn't have been as good. I like to think not as I haven't had a problem with them in 14 years:smileyhappy:

Good point about the roaming charges though!

[Anonymous]

In January 2012, O2 gave me a £5 loyalty discount as a thanks for being a customer with them for 4 or 5 years. It was all done through the online chat advisors as well and was no hassle at all.

[Anonymous]

that will be a one off £5, three is the worst network, cheaper phones on great tariffs but no signal practically everywhere

[macblank]

the things I would say about three and their CS and network, I couldn't repeat here!!!

I would lime to say it's changed but from what I hear from friends. it's still a bad network and even worse CS from India.

when I was with them I said I was in the center of bristol and I still couldn't get a signal. I was told to try a big town. that's when I must confess to losing it!!!

at least O2 CS is English. tbh I've never had a serious prob with o2 CS. any serious issues I go direct to the organ grinder!!! lol

[Anonymous]

O2 do not remember the market lessons of the mid 2000s.

Remember all those mobile phone shops that littered the High Streets ?

They made fortunes for their owner operators.

The networks ( orange, 3, Vodafone. T Mobile) used to pay as much as the value of the first years mobile contract revenues in commission to the phone/airtime seller. It was a licence to print money. A feeding frenzy.

So if the commissions paid out by the airtime providers to acquire a new customer in a saturated/static market were between £200-£300 per punter where is the LOVE from O2 to keep us onside ? Those private phone shops used to turnover millions.

So when I come to renew my O2 contract going since 2007 on Simplicity I expect it to a) reflect the economic cost of customer retention and b) to be competitive with the market current offerings and c) to be at least inline with their major reseller Tesco.

But no. O2 are subscribing to rip-off Britain.

Sulking because they got caught sleeping by EE.

So I'm voting with my feet. You can belatedly see the errors of you ways and spend millions trying to halt the churn because your marketing department are incompetent (& probably self-serving).

Look Ma, no old customers.

M&C

[Liquid]

But a shed load of new customers:)

All networks are the same these days, so many different devices cling to the carrier signals no wonder its costing more to provide the same service we had 5-10 years ago.

Year 2000 it was almost unheard off for a teen to have a phone. Now in 2012 if your 10 years old theres a good chance you've got more than one device connected via 3G. The population is increasing due to better medical care. Even more devices on the network.

It's not a cheap process to subsidise all the devices with suitable connectivity.

I'd much prefer companies didn't cost themselves into running on a loss. Imagine if some of these huge carriers went into liquidation, the costs other networks would levy for picking up the slack would be astronomical.

[perksie]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

 But no. O2 are subscribing to rip-off Britain.

Sulking because they got caught sleeping by EE.

---

There is a world recession, you can't run services at a loss.

O2 were not caught out by EE and will have a network running at much the same speed at the same time as them.

You have misunderstood the publicity.

[Anonymous]

Dear Liquid

China has over 400M mobile users. What's that about new customers ?

(The UK market has no new customers since it reached saturation; it churns.

Notice, there are many fewer mobile shops)

There is no downtime, the network is highly resilient in China.What's that about subsidies, I own my own handset & I dont want to subsidise anyone's kids ?

Mobile calls into China are free

No domestic roaming fees between operators !!!

Mobile calls within China are 4p per minute (not our 25p)

A typical 4G plan with 1600 minutes and 500GB data pcm is 25GBP in China.

Welcome to rip-off Europe.

I'd love a UK\Spanish airtime operator to go bust.

It would prove to the market what the true operating costs were.

[Anonymous]

I seem to recall all the airtime operators taking Oft Com (and EE) to the High Court screaming 'foul'. Er, they lost.

My Russian neighbors laugh at the telecoms infrastructure in the UK. Mobile is bad and broadband a joke, its faster in Siberia they say.

They should know. 3G & 3MB; third world speeds.