mobiles.co.uk & 02 have made a right mess of my new contract

[Anonymous]

I had taken out a new contract with mobiles.co.uk at £39 a month and i moved my current number (out of contract number that i wanted to keep) over to it.


That was all good, then i seen a better deal at £29 a month on mobiles.co.uk website and i asked them if they would change me across to it instead as it was only a few days into my contract, they agreed however they closed/disconnected the current new contract (£39 a month) I had (along with my preferred number) and they created a new o2 account and a new sim with a new number was sent out.


That wasnt ideal as I wanted to move my preferred number to my new contract (£29 a month) but i couldnt do this as my number was disconnected with the account (£39 a month), so i rang o2 on 202 to reactivate the account to get access to my preferred number, as per o2 chat live advice.


This however, reactivated the full contract (£39 a month) again so I now had two o2 accounts with two contracts, after another o2 chat live session I was advised to contact o2 directly via 202 to sort this immediately.


I explained the situation and the woman said that all she had to do was merge the two accounts as the £39 a month contract was a duplicate. No mention of early termination fees or anything bad like that.


Flash forward to today and I received my "bill" for the £39 a month account with a substantial early termination fee (all 24 months worth).


o2 have been passing the blame to mobiles but the o2 account was reactivated due to the poor advice from the o2 chat live and I am not sure where to go with this.


Any help?

[MI5]

You took two accounts so unless you can o2 cancel it under the 14 days rule you’re stuck with paying it I’m afraid.

[Cleoriff]

You could make a complaint but as @MI5 said you took out two contracts so I think they will lay the blame at your door, unless you have a transcript of what O2 chat advised https://www.o2.co.uk/how-to-complain

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

Chat advised correctly as the only way to get the original number back was to reinstate that account.
The cost of the contract is the cost of retaining your number unfortunately.
If you are still inside 14 days for the second £29 contract just transfer your number and close it down as not required.
If the 14 days have passed it's gonna take a Christmas miracle to get out of it.

[Cleoriff]

That's that then...

[MI5]

Unfortunately so, I fear.

[MercedesS]

Hello @seanie346

We are sorry to hear about your bad experience. Did you get it fixed? The O2 community is a group of customers like you, happy to answer questions, discuss O2 or chat about any related topic but we are not Customer Service I am afraid. Maybe the best could be to get in touch with Customer Service here to see what they can do for you.

Please let us know if there's something else we can do to help you out.

Thanks @Cleoriff and @MI5 for your help!