Poor signal

[Mel393]

Despite being an O2 customer for decades, my phone is not fit for purpose. 

I cannot use it for calls or internet at: my local town, near my children's school, my carpark at work, on the route home from work, in a main town slightly further away. 

This has significantly impacted my life from not being able to play Amazon music in my car to not being able to call the GP surgery urgently from my children's school. 

I live in Buckinghamshire on the Oxfordshire border, not some remote part of the UK. 

Can anyone tell me if they have successfully made a claim in a small claims court? 

I am thoroughly disgusted with O2 and simply do not have the time to waste on their customer services. 

[Enlli]

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@jonsie wrote:

@japitts 

Because it's normally the easiest option to get the sim checked

Of course common sense would be to try the sim in another phone first but not everyone has a spare phone knocking about hence the advice to change the sim

I'm not sure why you feel the need to be so critical of members trying to help solve issues when normally the first advice when contacting customer service is to order a new sim leaving customers with an inactive sim for a week or so.We try to stop that happening by using the instore method.

I notice when you reply you usually give out congestion or mast issue without suggesting a fix for the customer. Easy to be an armchair critic and as they say, a little knowledge is dangerous/

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@japitts Works in the industry, I think on the network side, so not exactly 'armchair'

However, we do seem to have problems with ex Virgin SIM cards and some of the older O2 ones.

O2 don't help. Most new plastic SIM cards in store seems to support SA, however, going on some posts on here they are still doling out eSIMs that aren't. And as I have pointed out from experience those cards can give different reception results, complicating matters

[japitts]

Interesting enlli - that would require NR700Mhz without any co-located 800Mhz or 900Mhz, which for a low-band operator would be most unusual. You're one of the more sensible posters on this board, so I won't dispute it. I'd be interested in checking the local deployment if you're happy to share some example locations with me via PM.

Mid & high-band operators have gained the most from low-band deployment, and it's they who justifiably claim improved coverage from 4G/5G. Marketing focuses on the technology where the benefit is actually gained from the frequency band, but that's another argument entirely.

As for jonsie's points, I do post with some experience of both sides of the fault-reporting fence and would never criticise anyone for volunteering their time. But as you rightly allude, quantity of posts without quality is as dangerous as anything - I'd always be happy to explain my reasoning.

The purpose of a SIM is to provide authentication between the user-equipment & radio network - so any issue with a particular service not working, phones randomly not connecting to network regardless of location etc - absolutely likely to be SIM or account-related.

The radio network provides coverage, so issues with "I can't use data in xyz" or "I don't get signal in abc" ares are rarely SIM-related. Many users confuse "I can't use data" with "I don't have coverage" which doesn't help.

If you can find an example of where I've jumped straight for "mast issue" or congestion, without any reasoned basis, please post it up or PM, and I will gladly either explain or apologise.