Since maybe the end of May, I've been having problems with receiving short code messages - mainly verification text, but also other texts from companies like Royal Mail, Paypal, my bank, and many others. It seems to be intermittent - some days those I receive them fine, but most days I don't. Sometimes when I manually reset my network I get a few of those texts all at once - for example, today I did a reset and I got 10 texts all at once, including texts from Paypal and Royal Mail that I should have received yesterday. This is causing me a lot of problems when I need to login into something that uses 2 step authentication and the text is the only way to confirm your identity.
I've tried everything - reset my phone settings, updated software, deleted messages from my phone, upgraded iCloud, got a new Sim card, a new phone. I've been on the phone with Customer Service countless times. Not one person seemed like they had any clue what the problem is, so they just tried different things on a hit-and-miss basis. All they could do was to pass this over to the Technical Team, then I had to wait for them to call me. The Technical Team would call when I was not available, and if I missed their call I was unable to call them back because you can't ever call them directly. Any other company would leave a voicemail to say what number to call back on, but annoyingly this is not how the O2 operates. After a long wait for them to call me again, I was finally told that those messages are not being received by the O2 network, therefore they can't investigate. They can only investigate if the messages are received & fail on the O2 network. The guy couldn't answer my question why the network is unable to receive those messages - as they are sent from so many different sources it's impossible the fault is with the sender. He made this judgement based on one example of one message from Royal Mail that he checked if he could see it on the network. He didn't even ask me for more information, instead, he made a very clever suggestion that I contact the 'IT department' of those companies whose message I'm not getting - PayPal, Royal Mail, Google. Laughable! I asked him what I should do next - what he would do in my place. He just kept repeating they couldn't investigate blah blah. So no solution to the problem, as far as the O2 is concerned I'm just supposed to live with this issue.
After that I called 202 again, almost in tears at this point, to ask what my options are if I want to move to another network, as this seems to be the only remaining option to try. Unfortunately, I recently renewed my contract and got a new phone - mainly I was advised by Customer Service that my old phone might have been faulty and causing the issue. Of course, it turned out it wasn't a faulty phone, but as a result of this try-and-error approach from Customer Service, I'm now past the grace period on my new contract and would have to pay almost £700 if I want to move to another network! If they had told me they couldn't help me when I first reported the issue I would have not renewed my contract. They messed me about for 2 months only to tell me it's not their problem.
I don't know what to do now. I asked to make a complaint and someone was supposed to call me, but no one has yet. To say I'm extremely disappointed would be an understatement. I've been an O2 customer for many years. I don't want the hassle of moving to another network, and I feel I shouldn't be made to pay £700 for this when I was falsely made to believe a new phone would fix the problem. I don't understand how a company can behave like this - if they can't fix the actual issue they should offer some alternative solution to provide the full service the customer pays for.
