Outage outrage: O2 dishes out 3 free days, £10 voucher Following last week's O2 mobile network outage, the telco is giving contract customers three days of free connectivity in compensation. Pre-paid users will get an additional topup, and everyone gets £10 to spend in the O2 store. Of the operator's three million customers, only those who suffered connection difficulties will get …
Can't really complain at that :-)
...but how are you going to prove that you suffered connection difficulties? What if your phone registered with a cell and then lost it again - can O2 tell from their logs if problems were outage related vs. something else? I work in an area where the O2 tower seems completely random, so used to reduced or no connectivity (some days I get HSPDA, other times lucky to get one bar and 3G; the joys of the countryside). Reserving judgement until the specifics of this are known...
but that's less convenient as it's bringing your payments forward. Much better to have that extra £30 in my bank account than O2's, until you need the topup. Most networks would love it if you bought your topup sooner -I don't know if it's still on the go but there used to be extra sweeteners available for topping up £50 or more in one go.
Quit your complaining. If you actually suffered a loss that you can prove was caused by their negligence, then give them the opportunity to compensate you for the FULL AMOUNT of your loss. They've admitted fault so, as long as you can prove your loss to your local County Court, they really don't have a legal defence.
Should you accept their current offer, however, then you may find it very difficult to make a further claim. So you really need to weigh up what they're offering with the size of your loss and the hassle of going through the Civil Justice system.
"Not sure why 3 copies in one envelope..."
Because they mean the apology soooo much, that they orginally wanted to supply the apologies on a roll in perforated sheets. However, in a separate customer unfriendly fuckup, the Post Orifice's current charging plan means they now charge an arm and a leg for anything that isn't flat, and so Gnatwest have taken the path of least resistance and given you three sheets (or plies, perhaps).
if you are on automatic top up goody bags there will likely be no difference
what can they give me extra I already get unlimited texts and internet, and 300 calls, of which I use less than 100, giving me £1 back may be useful
but hopefully they will give this all to charity like they did last time they had issues
"Compensation is a tough thing to do – it won't be enough to satisfy customers who had come to rely on their mobile connectivity, but O2 had no legal obligation to offer anything at all (all operators run on "best effort")"
Good efforts for actually saying that instead of some reports that just ran story after story of how much revenue people claimed to have lost..
I'd have been even more surprised if they'd blamed a 3rd party - part of using 3rd parties is that you retain the entire accountability for service. I contract with O2, not their partners. Though having said that, they will tend to blame BT OR for broadband issues...
"but O2 had no legal obligation to offer anything at all"
02 charge me X per month for a service. Last billing period, the provided me with (31-3)/31 days service and I therefore should be charged only that proportion of X. There is a legal obligation to charge only for what is provided and no more. El Reg make it sound as if O2 could have billed for the entire month...
Just phoned O2 to pay my monthly bill for my company of £463.62. Asked them about compensation as mentioned in the above article. The customer service agent said he will check through the ten phones that we have O2 to see if service was affected. Surprised to discover none of my phone was affected according to their system.
I am an O2 reseller, I sell O2 contracts. My clients could nto get hold of me. The only signal I had was SOS. I opened a brand new phone thinking it was the phone. Every sharer and many of my clients whom I sold O2 contracts were affected.
I told O2 that either I am lying or you have a rubbish system in place.
So folks good luck with your compensation. Seems like O2 are just doing a PR exercise.
The Register please feel free to contact me ... I think O2 need to be investigated. A simple call usage pattern will reveal that my phone and that of the sharers and clients were affected. I sent emails to my clients to let them know.
"We have now identified all those customers directly affected (those whose devices could not connect on our system) and we are giving them the equivalent of three days back for the disruption as a gesture of goodwill and to say sorry," the operator added.
How do they identify? Can they explain to journalists what tool they use. Then perhaps they can shed light how my phone that was AFFECTED shows up as NOT AFFECTED.
I don't care for their miserable compensation but it is the PRINICIPAL! O2 execs act now before your PR exercise hits you in the face.
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