I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about my troubles with O2 by now, but it’s not over yet!
After my SIM was FINALLY activated last week it was time to wait for my T-Mobile number to be ported to O2. The T-Mobile SIM went dead at around 4pm on Friday and upon calling my number I was given a BT Cellnet branded message saying the number was not recognised. The message has since lost it’s BT Cellnet branding (about time, it’s been what, eight years? since O2 were known by that name) but my T-Mobile number still hasn’t arrived on my O2 SIM.
Multiple calls to O2 have resulted in “yes sir, I can see the number is being ported and should be done by 9pm tonight”. 9pm is, conveniently, when the helpdesk closes.
So my mobile number that all my friends, family and work contacts use for me has been unavailable for four days. Considering what I do for a living, that makes me look like a complete arse doesn’t it?
It could be worse, a cursory browse of O2’s own customer forum shows us that there are still people who pre-ordered or queued on release day who have yet to be activated while people lucky enough to find a store with stock are able to walk out with an activated SIM.
Funny then isn’t it, that according to my online banking, they were very quick to set up a direct debit. I might just click that big red cancel button and reply to my first bill with “I’m sorry, due to unanticipated demand I am unable to deal with your bill as quickly as I’d like, I hope to have your payment processed within the 14-28 days. If you’d like to discuss this further, please call me on 0870….”.
Why do you still persevere?
Jeeeeeesus that is crap. When my company moved over to O2 it was very painfree, sounds like the O2 systems have just broken under the load of such a big surge of registrations! My advice – cancel the direct debit until its sorted 😉
i had a similar pain when i ported my orange no. into o2 several years ago.
and similar pain porting it out to voda.
no probs with voda -> tmoby though
I can't seem to get through to you on your mobile, Dan? 😉
Not to be harsh, but why should O2 care about you whinging on a blog? Maybe a few people will think twice about O2 next time – but the majority will look at minutes/
Ah hah a Pratchett fan!
You obviously don't live in the south-east of London otherwise you'd have heard me having loud conversations on the phone with them!
A stern (but quiet, I was in someone's office) call today got me escalated to a second line person who told me that they had no record of my PAC or any porting request… I explained that my T-Mobile line had deactivated on Friday and that there was no chance T-Mobile would be playing a BT Cellnet branded error so there must have been a record of it because it was pointing at their network, I threatened to confirm this by doing an SS7 lookup to find the HLR… to cut a long story short, my number was ported and working within the hour.
What a bunch of monkeys!
Don't think that just because, as far as I know, I'm all up and running that I'll be happy now, I'll be complaining and moaning to all the relevant people and if I can't cancel my contract and keep the handset I'll at least be looking at getting my first month or so free. And rest assured that if there is even the slightest chance that I can terminate my contract early (due to terms changes etc) I will do so and inform all our readers how they can do the same and port to a proper network 🙂
Sometimes you just have to be forceful to get things done. I suppose that because you actually know your stuff when it comes to the techie side of mobiles if anything that should have made things easier, although these days it seems that a lot of companies don't have the ability to speak to techie people and just expect customer service to deal with “normobs”.
I had a situation a long time ago with the orange broadband setup for a friend, he'd had it all sent to him (free on certain mobile contracts) and it never worked, I spoke to customer service and technical support a number of times, shouted at them to do line tests etc.. the funniest part was being asked what operating system I was using (bear in mind that the orange modem thingy wasn't syncing with the exchange), so I told them it didn't matter (they said they had to ask), so I said it was CPM which probably didn't help. Eventually sorted when they figured out 2 months down the line that they hadn't activated the line (despite telling me dates that it was activated). This was at the start of their free broadband offer, so I suspect that it was largely down to over subscription, which seems to affect a lot of launches 🙂
At least you're up and running.
On the subject of O2, my partner lost his business phone in Paris yesterday. A frantic call to o2 to cancel blah blah.
He is o2 business client, they inmediately offered to replace the phone (a SE P1i) for free as long as he renewed his contract (contract was due in september anyway) O2 also offered and promised to port the number to his personal phone, also o2, in four hours!!!!
I know what you're thinking : “Yeah, like they're going to do it” … you're right, 24 hours later the number has not been ported yet. If you dial the number you just get a weird disconnected tone which is embarrasing on a business number.
At the time I post, o2 apologised a million times and offered next month for free but they have not succeeded on porting the number!
I'm sooooooooooo getting a free Iphone out of this 😉
Now, a question I need answering
– what really happens when a phone gets lost or stolen and you report the IMEI ? The operator says the handset is cancelled and useless.. is that true? Does it become “bricked” and the info (i.e docs, pics, contacts etc) stored in the handset is no longer accessible? How about the info stored in the memory card?
For the record, nothing embarrassing or sensitive was store in the lost P1i 😉
Sometimes you just have to be forceful to get things done. I suppose that because you actually know your stuff when it comes to the techie side of mobiles if anything that should have made things easier, although these days it seems that a lot of companies don't have the ability to speak to techie people and just expect customer service to deal with “normobs”.
I had a situation a long time ago with the orange broadband setup for a friend, he'd had it all sent to him (free on certain mobile contracts) and it never worked, I spoke to customer service and technical support a number of times, shouted at them to do line tests etc.. the funniest part was being asked what operating system I was using (bear in mind that the orange modem thingy wasn't syncing with the exchange), so I told them it didn't matter (they said they had to ask), so I said it was CPM which probably didn't help. Eventually sorted when they figured out 2 months down the line that they hadn't activated the line (despite telling me dates that it was activated). This was at the start of their free broadband offer, so I suspect that it was largely down to over subscription, which seems to affect a lot of launches 🙂
At least you're up and running.
On the subject of O2, my partner lost his business phone in Paris yesterday. A frantic call to o2 to cancel blah blah.
He is o2 business client, they inmediately offered to replace the phone (a SE P1i) for free as long as he renewed his contract (contract was due in september anyway) O2 also offered and promised to port the number to his personal phone, also o2, in four hours!!!!
I know what you're thinking : “Yeah, like they're going to do it” … you're right, 24 hours later the number has not been ported yet. If you dial the number you just get a weird disconnected tone which is embarrasing on a business number.
At the time I post, o2 apologised a million times and offered next month for free but they have not succeeded on porting the number!
I'm sooooooooooo getting a free Iphone out of this 😉
Now, a question I need answering
– what really happens when a phone gets lost or stolen and you report the IMEI ? The operator says the handset is cancelled and useless.. is that true? Does it become “bricked” and the info (i.e docs, pics, contacts etc) stored in the handset is no longer accessible? How about the info stored in the memory card?
For the record, nothing embarrassing or sensitive was store in the lost P1i 😉
Sometimes you just have to be forceful to get things done. I suppose that because you actually know your stuff when it comes to the techie side of mobiles if anything that should have made things easier, although these days it seems that a lot of companies don't have the ability to speak to techie people and just expect customer service to deal with “normobs”.
I had a situation a long time ago with the orange broadband setup for a friend, he'd had it all sent to him (free on certain mobile contracts) and it never worked, I spoke to customer service and technical support a number of times, shouted at them to do line tests etc.. the funniest part was being asked what operating system I was using (bear in mind that the orange modem thingy wasn't syncing with the exchange), so I told them it didn't matter (they said they had to ask), so I said it was CPM which probably didn't help. Eventually sorted when they figured out 2 months down the line that they hadn't activated the line (despite telling me dates that it was activated). This was at the start of their free broadband offer, so I suspect that it was largely down to over subscription, which seems to affect a lot of launches 🙂
At least you're up and running.
On the subject of O2, my partner lost his business phone in Paris yesterday. A frantic call to o2 to cancel blah blah.
He is o2 business client, they inmediately offered to replace the phone (a SE P1i) for free as long as he renewed his contract (contract was due in september anyway) O2 also offered and promised to port the number to his personal phone, also o2, in four hours!!!!
I know what you're thinking : “Yeah, like they're going to do it” … you're right, 24 hours later the number has not been ported yet. If you dial the number you just get a weird disconnected tone which is embarrasing on a business number.
At the time I post, o2 apologised a million times and offered next month for free but they have not succeeded on porting the number!
I'm sooooooooooo getting a free Iphone out of this 😉
Now, a question I need answering
– what really happens when a phone gets lost or stolen and you report the IMEI ? The operator says the handset is cancelled and useless.. is that true? Does it become “bricked” and the info (i.e docs, pics, contacts etc) stored in the handset is no longer accessible? How about the info stored in the memory card?
For the record, nothing embarrassing or sensitive was store in the lost P1i 😉