O2 Useless Customer Service

What’s that crashing sound I hear? Thats O2 dropping the ball again. Surprised are you? No, I didn’t think so!

5 days later, Two emails and No Reply….. Hello O2.. Anybody There

In trying to confirm what upgrade I’m entitled to with my current contract I check the website which tells me ‘entitled to 1 upgrade at…. the lowest discount level’. So what does that mean! this is not useful information, its ambiguous to say the least. Last time I checked (a few months ago, it said maximum discount, and my local shop, the Carphone Warehouse is telling me gold, which is the middle band of discount. Somebody has got to be right.. but who.. and why is this so difficult to find out?

No problem I think so I email support, qouting the website, three days pass. is it my fault, have I given the wrong email return path. No, because the a the auto replys find me just fine ‘We Value Your Custom… bla bla bla’. Clearly they’re miss-guided in that statement!

So I bang off another email, referencing the first and asking the same question, and guess what… No Reply.
Now Lad’s and Lasses in o2, how difficult is this really, you see that screen and keyboard in front of you… thats called a computer. Don’t be afraid, It does amazing things like ALLOWING YOU TO CONTACT YOUR CUSTOMER

I check the website again and guess what, you now have no upgrade whatsoever! obviously the cogs are turning in o2 head office, but its a good idea to tell the customer too you know.

I realize now not everyone can be as good as Innocent Smoothies, often cited for their impeccable customer service, and a new name to add to that list Carphone Warehouse, On Grafton St, the Sales Guy (Peter) has also contacted o2 on my behalf and phoned me twice to follow up… Props to him and his company.

A phone and contract is not a small purchase buy ‘09 standards,

You know, A phone and contract is not a small purchase buy 09 standards, so I’d expect better. My bills run between €100 and €190 a month, thats price of a car loan. I’m quites sure if I walked into a main dealer today with that spend, they’d be pulling out the red carpet.

So lets get Down to scoring :O2 Suprisingly living up to their name with a total of 0 points out of 30, sorry O2, could you please take to the floor for your final dance.

O2 living up to their name and reputation with a total of 0 points out of 30

So the Saga continues; Now I’m like a dog with a bone;

After 5 days I receive an email from Sharon In Support; saying;
I note from your account that you have since upgraded your phone as I
trust your query has been addressed.

Then Ruth Says;
I have checked your account and can see that my
colleague Sharon emailed you earlier today. I therefore hope that this
matter has been resolved for you.

Then @O2 on twitter says;
Our friends @Talk2O2 may be able to help with your problem

5 days later, 3 replies, All of them Useless “I’m infuriated now by all this messing around, and not going to let go until of this till I get a solution”

and so the buck gets past from Billy to Jack, No I haven’t upgraded my phone, nor will i ever at this rate.

But; carphone warehouse have rung to very kindly say; they will pick up the cost of the upgrade personally because they value my business, accourding to my account which they can see on their computers I’m entitled to a gold upgrade, which has no bearing to the online data, but their willing to make up the difference.

Thank You Carphone Warehouse, You guyz rock..

Still waiting on O2, cos I don’t believe that they should walk away from this, letting there retail sort out their issues.

Yet another annoy issue about O2 support is that, you don’t get assigned a support number, or given a direct email path back to your support personnel, which means that every time you reply, you start at the beginning of the food chain, with another operator.

Carphone Warehouse Score Card;

Carphone Warehouse... lovin your work

O2… I’m still waiting, have now emailed head office directly… can they sort it out? The song “I have high hopes… I have Hi-HiHigh Hopes” is buzzing through my head

And So The Solution Comes

In the space of a month my upgrade as gone as follows;

I guess for many of us myself included the big issue with these automated menu driven systems, and large support centre’s are that
a) they’re impersonal
b) they have no ability to move outside the box

Thus probably they’re very good at handling 95% of customer queries but absolutely useless if your in that 5%.

With that in mind, I bypassed standard support, the joy the internet; a few clicks later I’m dialing Head Office switchboard, and talking to a very nice lady whom I believe is one of the Local Market Customer Support Manager’s, mentioning the words no company want to hear;

“and then I started to Blog and Twitter about it”

Hey Presto, About 6 minutes later; she’s ringing me back with the problem solved. Why I inquire have I lived through this debacle? In her own words “a mistake was made on your account” and yes that is good enough for me, human error happens.

I don’t so much have an issue with errors, I do however have an issue with how they’re resolved, and O2 as a group have failed, the day saved by one senior person while all others flounder.

So what have I learned?

O2’s support system lets them down badly, good people obviously exist in the company, but they seam few and far between. If I’m in this situation again I’ll phone support once, after that just go straight up the food chain to higher personnel. I urge you to do the same.

seriously O2 please upgrade email support system, and get your website information in order.

Tags: Crap Service, O2