My son lost his phone on 25th August. I'm the account holder so I asked O2 to freeze his phone. Thankfully it was found the next day so I called to ask for the bar to be lifted. 48 hours later after several calls, he was able to make calls, send and receive texts and use data. But we couldn't call the number as it said number not recongnised.
Many hours and live chats later, we were told a sim swap would sort it. We spend an hour in the O2 shop, get a new sim card for absolutely nothing to now work on the phone. Many more hours on the phone and live chats later, we're told pretty much every day that there are bars on the account (front and back end system bars), they'll be lifted and we need to wait 24 hours.
We wait, call back, get confirmation that there are no bars on the system and we should wait again. We call back, lo and behold there is a bar on the account, it needs up to 24 hours to be lifted. We've now been told we'll be referred to Technical Support and they can take up to 7 working days to look at our request as there are absolutely, most definitely, no bars on the account but they don't know why things aren't working. Shocking service.
Last night, I tried the O2 sim in another handset, we're back to where we were last month, it can make calls, send and receive texts and use data. However, the number is still not recognised and can't receive incoming calls. We try a different O2 sim and also EE sim in the iPhone but nothing works.
So, I'm left with a phone that's only 2 months old that can't be used on any network but was working on 30/8 and a sim that still can't receive incoming calls.
I've seen multiple posts about people having problems with bars being lifted so it seems that I'm not alone.
Does anyone have any ideas on how we fix this other than waiting for Technical Support to possibly get back to us?
