O2 does Apple-flavour customer service

O2 seems to have picked up more than the iPhone from Apple - the operator has also been taking lessons in how to ignore press enquires and stonewall its customers. O2's network seems particularly prone to problems lately: iPhone users travelling abroad have been erroneously charged for roamed data, while those at home have …

[eJ2095]

O2 Sims

Now I have a unlocked dongle and nice Iphone o2 sim pay as you go with the 12 months Mobile Broadband deal.

Not had any probs at all with it to be fair.

Bigest file I have downed is about 150meg.

Squezzed 123k a sec out of it saturday morning.

But can not moan for a tenner for teh year

[Matthew Ellison]

My Ar*e

"We identified the cause of the issue quickly and service was restored"

Yeah so how come I was stuck in San Francisco with no phone service for 36 hours with repeated emails from customer service extending the 'anticipated time of resolution'. It wasn't until a further 48 hours at least before service was apparently restored, I was back in the UK by then.

Absolutely shocking service, they really don't give a toss.

[Andy34]

O2 really need to get their act together

O2 are having network problems again, apparently affecting only iPhones 'which could take a few hours to fix'. All calls are sent to voicemail, can't call out or use any data services.

Isn't this the 3rd time in 10 days now? O2 really need to up their game as they are failing miserably at the moment.

[Shane McCarrick]

Why is anyone surprised?

Their customer service is simply beginning to ape everyone elses :(

If you imagine you'll get better service from any other carrier- you're sadly mistaken.

[Ian Davies]

Visual voicemail...

...has been out of action all week for me. Pretty poor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pffft

Well, I've had to turn off 3G on my iPhone to actually use any data services this afternoon. It's been pretty patchy this week at best!

Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember kids...

o2 has other customers that don't use the jesus phone.

Service has been fine.. that is all.

[Anonymous Coward]

complain, get refund

I complained, got a month free.

[John Chadwick]

I'm still wiating for O2 to explain why...

To use GPRS data through my iPhone I need to pay £15 a month, where as my Nokia 6310i does it for peanuts on a per K basis. My data use doesn't even use up the allowance for surfing the net, let alone the additional allowance I get for my £15.

(Just in case you wondered my 6310i pairs with my car's SatNav to provide the traffic, which is why O2 want to charge me extra)

I asked them why I needed to pay £15, and their answer was to sent me the list of connection tariffs, and say that I couldn't possible be doing what I said I was, (Swapping the SIM between phones), as it wouldn't work, well it does, and with by old SE 630T as well.

[elyob]

MMS

My charges came from trying to send an MMS, my data roaming was switched off so was about to call O2 about these roaming charges when they sent me the text.

Personally, I have more of a gripe about the stability of their 3G network.

Also, why can't the phone companies just let each of them share each others masts? They no longer go on about how much of the UK they cover as they all pretty much cover the same. However the locations of masts can make a difference to my local signal. It's not like I can test the signal on a new network at all the locations I regularly use before changing.

[long_fella]

O2 are twits

You call O2 to complain about coverage problems, because you've got not coverage (natch). Their response? To tell you that coverage is fine. "But I have no signal" you say. Their response? "Coverage is fine".

The iPhone is lovely. O2 are twits.

[Jim_aka_Jim]

No 3G for me in Budapest

Maybe this is O2's way of reducing roaming charges. Atleast the EU board will be happy

[Jolyon Ralph]

Can't connect to OpenZone at the moment either

Which is a stupid arse. Some tosser around here has enabled OpenZone on their router and it seems my iphone takes that as priority over the wireless network in my office.

Tried to connect to openzone anyway (on the basis that if I'm paying for it I might as well use the clueless person's bandwidth) but it's refusing to acknowledge the mobile number for my iphone.

Jolyon

[Tony Hoyle]

O2 have always been poor

Round my house they claim 100% HSPDA coverage, but they don't even have voice coverage let alone 3G... their coverage maps are a complete fiction.

All the other providers give 5 bars of signal and HSPDA.. funny that.

Call them up, they blame anything but themselves.. they have absolutely no procedures for adressing coverage issues.

Wherever I've been my O2 phone has had crap/no service and my Tmobile phone has worked fine... god help me if I ever leave the city..

[Si 1]

O2's network is a load of bollocks

I don't know why but in Cheltenham their GPRS seems to get turned off every night after 12pm or so. Beyond that the network is flakey wherever I go, and it usually starts giving error messages after 15 mins or so of browsing. I assume this is a temporary "fault" designed to stop you browsing and using the bandwidth you've paid for.

[Richard Cartledge]

No problems here

I have found support from both of these companies. O2 business (not iPhone related) and Apple in Ireland to be first rate and wonder why all companies can't be like this. I phone O2 and get a guy in the UK just like one of us and on the same wavelength they answer straightaway and know what they are on about and no bullshit. When I call Apple iPhone support, they are also competent and send box with online tracking and emails, pop the iphone in, ring the courier to collect, and a new one is sent along with another email and tracking. Usually all over in 3 days and kept informed of the progress at every step.

[Vince]

Sharing... do wake up....

"Also, why can't the phone companies just let each of them share each others masts?"

Er, wake up, they are starting to do just that. You've missed presumably the zillions of press releases touting this for the past god knows how long?

[Steve Todd]

@John Chadwick

Like all the mobile providers O2 are offering you a package deal. £15 gets you unlimited 3G/EDGE/GPRS/WiFi mobile access. TMobile for example will charge you an extra £5 for 1GB of (non-WiFi) mobile data per month. Vodaphone will charge you £1 for 15MB and £2/MB thereafter. Orange want up to £1.47 per day for browsing. Since the iPhone is designed for email, browsing, wireless media and application downloads etc (and is actually usable for these features, unlike the Nokia) then £15 isn't a bad deal (your peanuts per kilobyte rate can bankrupt you if the phone is using hundreds of megabytes).

If you still don't like this then buy the iPhone on pay-as-you-go, get a year's free wireless data and only pay for the minutes you actually use (bundled minutes, that's a standard mobile package deal that you don't seem to be complaining about).

[Anonymous Coward]

Roaming charges

this happened to me while I was in India two weeks ago. Data Roaming was set to Off, but on two occasions the iphone connected and downloaded all my emails without any user intervention. Nice of O2 to promptly text me and refund though, no questions asked.

[Red Bren]

@John Chadwick

"Just in case you wondered my 6310i pairs with my car's SatNav to provide the traffic, which is why O2 want to charge me extra"

Even if you do pay O2's ridiculous additional data charges, you may still be unable to get satnav traffic updates through your iphone! My TomTom Rider only supports the bluetooth dial-up networking profile, but the iPhone shares its data connection using the personal area network profile so the two won't talk to each other.

I've asked both Apple and TomTom support if they will include the other profiles and was told there's no need as I can soon buy the new TomTom for iPhone app. So I asked if this would come with a handlebar mounting bracket or did they expect me to break the law and ride my motorbike with my iphone in my hand? That shut them up...

[Mike 119]

Joyceln

If you have had a number change, your iPhone will not connect to btopenzone

try sending a text to 2121 with WIFI as the contents to have your mobile number updated in the system. It worked for me.

[Christopher A Newman]

The reason is

I went on holiday and sent some MMS from my iPhone, roaming data WAS turned off but roaming data charges were charged to my account. It IS a bug with OS 3.0 due to the fact that when the iPhone connects to the gateway to send the MMS it automatically downloads any email that's waiting for you in the background hence the data charge. So not a fault of O2 just a bug in the OS.

On return from my hols I checked my account again and the roaming data charges had been deleted from my account so pretty seamless to me and no contact with O2 made to fix it so fair play to O2.

Oh and yes I don't work for O2 or Apple!

[James Melody]

I was overcharged!

I had a call yesterday evening from O2 to let me know I had been overcharged for data on my last bill. They told me I would see a credit for it on my next bill. The amoun? 24p!

Paris, as I feel rich like her now.

[marc 9]

It's the iPhone...

I have an iPhone 3GS on 02. I live with someone who has a Nokia 5800 02. Their phone can have full 3G signal while my iPhone has one bar and intermittently switches to standard GPRS. The iPhone doesn't seem to have a very good 3G radio. I still wouldn't swap any day, the Nokia's interface is laughable. But the iPhone may be to blame when it comes to network issues.

Leo Laporte from the podcast This Week In Tech said he experienced unexpected data changes with AT&T while in China - don't know how widespread that is, but there seems to be some sort of issue with the amount of data the iPhone uses, or reports that it has used.

[Anonymous Coward]

And again

Looks like data isn't working again this morning...

[SharkNose]

Lots of strange behaviour with O2 and iPhone at the moment

I was in Joburg with my O2 pay-as-you-go iPhone when the roaming problems cropped up. Couldn't top up for some reason, so had no credit on the phone whatsoever. Couldn't get any network signal, yet remarkably data worked absolutely fine, emails coming through, could browse the interweb, all seemingly for free, as there was no credit on the phone to pay roaming charges!!

Spending the last couple of days in London with the phone was a nightmare. Patchy or non-existent cover, 3G constantly dropping out to edge or worse, even when there was a 3G signal, mail and web apps would just sit trying to connect. Restarting phone, or toggling 3G on/off seems to help sometimes but not always.

Can't believe the problem is the iPhone, as back home in the midlands it usually works just fine, London just seems to be particularly bad for some reason.

[Andrew Woodvine]

Re: Can't connect to OpenZone at the moment either

I've also experienced this problem - I've never been able to use OpenZone when it's provided via a BT customer's router.

After checking out O2's forum it turns out that nobody has been able to use OpenZone with an iPhone unless the hotspot is BT's own. There was a reply pasted onto the forum by a BT representative that confirmed that they don't allow access to OpenZone hotspots that are provided via their customer's equipment. Another reason to hate BT.