Stranded with no signal abroad due to migration shortcoming

[Rake722]

Dear all. I am fuming with steam coming out of my ears at what has happened.

my wife is in Greece for work for 3 weeks and has lost service to her mobile which is absolutely essential for her to be able to remain safe, speak to our kids and most importantly access her works Remote Desktop as she cannot authenticate without mobile signal. She is supposed to be working from Greece. This has caused significant problems and I called the O2 help line only to be told on 2 occasions that they will deactivate her sim twice and it did not work. On my third call to O2 I was told that the sim cannot be re activated unless it connects to a UK mast or cell tower which is impossible from Greece without her buying tickets to fly to the uk and then back to Greece which is what customer services suggest !!!!!!!

O2 seems to have not implemented a contingency in the migration for people who are abroad and has probably left hundreds without signal as their migration process does not been well enough planned to include those abroad when migrated to O2.

all customer service offered was a measly £25 compensation when this sim comes nowhere near the amount of greif and stress this has caused. I told them that I don’t need £25 I need my wife to have service. They admitted that O2 was responsible and advised me to complain in writing which is what I will do. She is now stranded with no service and no ability to authenticate to her work and will most likely be in quite a bit of trouble when she gets back to the uk !!!! This is ridiculous!!!!

to be told to come back temporarily to connect to a uk mast !! Who’s going to cover the costs !!!

[Enlli]

Assume this is Virgin to O2 and yet Virgin are claiming they will only migrate people when in the UK for the reason you mention

Have you spoken to Virgin, because if the migration fails then the customer is supposed to still be connected to them 

0345 4541111 or 0345 6000 789 are the numbers for Virgin.

[MI5]

@Rake722 

Worth trying a reset of the network connections as there is nothing to lose.

[Rake722]

Been on the phone to O2 and when you call it asks if the call is for VM or O2, spoke to both which are Indian call centres and both useless in helping. They don’t know their business at all. Now that is assuming that they connected me to VM when I opted for VM on the O2 number. I’ll try the VM number direct tomorrow.

yes full reset of handset done many times to no avail.

as a comma engineer myself I would have hoped that there is a process that would not disconnect a sim if not in the UK, if there is then the process is flawed as she had been in Greece for a week before this happened 

thank you

[Bambino]

@Rake722 It probably won't help your wife regarding her work situation, but if she gets a local Pay & Go sim from a Greek network provider, you, and she, and your kids can download WhatsApp. If you use it over a WiFi connection you can keep in touch by call, text, or video call for free while she's there.

[Rake722]

Thank you - already on that idea but it’s the work thing that’s of the highest importance as there is a solution for family contact based in the local sim.