O2 - complaint blog
55 of us signed a petition and complained to O2, MP's, Oftel, the whole 9 yards. Its all online and can be found here: http://www.billbuchan.com/o2/
What I've found is that no-one at O2 knows whats going on. Even the chairmans office cant get the network team to give dates for fixes, etc.
In the end the particular base station we were complaining about - Southwark Street in London - magically burst into life.
What they try and do is claim that because I'm in an area with unforseen demand, they don't have to actually provide network coverage. In our case, the base station was less than 400 feet away - my fillings were picking up the signal - but the bandwidth available to the base station was underspecced.
We're now trying to press them for some sort of compensation - which of course they're refusing.
One comment on this page needs further explanation though:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49302921-2,00.htm
"In 2008, Ofcom warned O2 that if it didn't pull its finger out and improve its 3G coverage, it would take back its 3G licence early."
The O2 blog is the usual corporate-lies marketing rubbish but some of the comments are hilarious: http://blog.o2.co.uk/home/2009/11/two-years-on-ten-facts-about-o2-and-iphone.html
And finally: Top Tips while calling O2 customer service:
- Settle down for a long wait - 30 mins on average. Dont try and do this with a weak bladder. Warn co-workers in case they want to listen and laugh.
- Always get the operators full name and ask them for a number to get back to them should the call accidentally drop. Oddly enough 1 in 3 calls to O2 mysteriously get dumped, but not if you ask em for their name and make clear that if the call gets 'dumped', you'll get right back to em
- Get a reference number for the call. Even the O2 chairmans office don't know how many support calls are actually answered, nor when you called in to complain. If the operator doest allocate a reference number, its not logged. You might as well have been howling at the moon.
- Keep a written log or blog, and dont be scared to escalate to the chairmans office. The complaints escalation team are a joke and have never got back to me.
- Dont believe anyone who claims that the network team will call back. I've been promised this dozens of times. Never happened. Its as if the 'network team' dont actually exist. Perhaps they were outsourced first ?
Paris ? Because she's the only thing I know that sucks more than O2.
---* Bill