O2 Live Chat- waste of time and full of empty promises and lies.

Question

I just wanted to share with you my experience of 'problem resolution / customer care' with o2. This post is directly linked with my as yet unresolved previous post titled 'lack of support from o2 when things go wrong.' Although this is shown as resolved, trust me, it is not !! Below are exerts from the 'Live Chat' sessions that I have had with o2. For fun, you could play spot the offer of a promise, and then try to find where this has been upheld by o2. (to save you wasting your time looking, I'll tell you now, there are none) Thought the matter had been resolved, it looks good, but looks can be deceiving……….o2: I've arranged the credit amount for you.o2: I've forwarded your details to our Support team and filled the Consumer credit request form for you nowo2: And I'm waiving off the amount of cancellation fee £104 for you now.o2: Please be with me while I do this for you now.Me: ??? that is great. I really do appreciate your help. I'll stay connected.o2: Thanks.o2: Thanks for your patience and I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you.o2: I can appreciate how frustrating this may be for you.o2: I've done this for you now.02: This will be processed for you in next 3 days and You'll receive the credit in the next bill .o2: Yes, be assured and you can trust me. I've personally arranged this for you now. I hope I've resolved your query to your satisfaction. After seeing that the money has NOT been refunded onto my bill as of yet……………………. o2: Thanks for waiting.o2: You'll receive the refund in next bill.Me: So what does this mean, that you will take 105 from my account on 2nd May and then refund it a month later?o2: Yes.Me: But that is crazy, you have not claimed the money yet, so still have time to apply the credit and thus cancel the bill. Why should you have 105 pounds of my money for one month, when you have already agreed to refund it? This just does not make sense.o2: It's already generated and the request is also been made.o2: I'll request you to call our customer service number for the same. The next month and the next bill, and ………………………… still no refund……….. o2: I'm sorry the refund isn't showing on your account. I understand that this has been stressful for you. Don't worry, I'll ensure that after today, this is sorted for you once and for all.O2: Ken, your details on the previous contract were with phones4u and I'm not able to refund it on that account at the moment. I can see the bill for the termination charge though.o2: Now, would it be fine, if I put the credit on your current account that you've signed up the new contract for?o2: This credit balance can be adjusted with your future bills or I can transfer it to your bank account directly from my end.Me: can you please transfer it directly to my bank from your end please, as it has been outstanding now for over a month, and I don't want it outstanding for longer.o2: Yes, absolutely. I'll do this for you.Me: Thanks, and out of interest why did (previous o2 customer care employee) not do this at the start. Either this or just cancelled the bill that had been created for this amount. This would have saved a lot of time and stress on my behalf in having to chase this now for the third time-albeit I will state again (third customer care employee who I am talking with today) that I know this is not your fault- but I am sure you can understand me being unhappy about this.o2: What I'll do for you is keep an eye on your account from my end and ensure that the credit balance is in your bank account immediately after the next bill is adjusted.o2: Yes, I can understand that this has been stressful for you Ken and I'm sorry that (previous o2 customer care employee) didn't do this for you.o2: I'll try my best to get this transferred to your bank account as soon as possible. I'm sorry for the trouble you've had to go through to get this sorted. Please give me a chance Ken and I won't let you down.Me: Okay, I'm happy to do that, but do you have a time frame for this being sorted. I appreciate that you are doing your best, but the phrase 'as soon as possible' is rather open ended.o2: I'll email you by the end of day to tell you when the amount will be in your bank account. Would that be fine? Despite the ‘Please give me a chance Ken and I won't let you down,’ no e-mail and no refund to my bank account so here we go again……………………………… o2: I've checked and can see that we have already credited the £105.50 to your O2 account which is still in the recent charges section of your bill and will reflect on your next bill.Me: okay, but as per my chat with ??? , that will be another month and ??? said that he could / would arrange to have the money paid back into my bank accountMe: He also said that he would send me an e-mail later that day re when the money would be paid back. However, by the looks of it this has not be done, because I certainly have not received any e-mails from ???.o2: I'm sorry, you'll have to call us on 202 free from your phone to get the amount transferred onto your bank account as due to the security reasons, the bank account details can't be shared online.Me: Can you provide me with details as to who I should further my complaint to, and do you have a legal department that I should contact if I proceed with this to the small claims courto2: I'm really sorry ken.o2: I can understand now what you are feeling.o2: But please don't take us wrong. I'll definitely add a note to your account and will see that your complaint is soon resolved.o2: You can email our complaints team [email protected]: Will someone from your complaints dept be able to call me tomorrow. If they can then I will happily speak with them. But I feel that I would be wasting my time to contact / e-mail them.o2: As I'm from an online chat team, I won't be able to arrange a callback from them.o2: But I'll request you to call us on 202 free from your phone and you can speak to a manager and resolve your complaint. The above are exerts only from the live chat sessions thus far, as I would not want to post the whole sessions for fear of crashing the system. I have also removed employee names, as I believe that o2 do this anyway when they edit these posts. Please let me know if you have received poor service also, as I am currently seeking to take this further and one option could be to contact someone such as Watchdog from the BBC, thus others may not end up with o2 and this level of poor service. 

Answer 1

Couldn't have put it better myself.  I have a 24 month contract with O2, £37 a month for the iPhone 4s. My iPhone 4s was faulty, Apple advised me it was a common hardware problem they were aware of and that I should contact O2. The first advisor I spoke to was very helpful. Agreed to swap my phone for a reconditioned 4s free of charge. I asked if I could pay extra for the iPhone 5 and he agreed to sell me a reconditioned handset for £75 and a doorstep swap for my old phone. At first I thought this was fantastic and said yes. Later on, my partner reminded me that I'm paying £900 for a 2 year contract, and for a phone that is supposed to remain fit for purpose for that period (as per the Sales of Goods Act). I started to think they should have provided me with a brand new phone as the fault was not due to me, but due to a common hardware issue. I became even more annoyed when I realised £75 for a second hand phone on top of what I'm paying in my contract was crazy. I contact O2 and explained this matter at length. No joy. Now - that problem might be a matter of opinion, but what happened next was disasterous. The following day I met with the delivery driver, who handed me a grubby iPhone 5 - no case, no box, not so much as a plastic bag. It was covered in some kind of white dust/powder and dirty with fingerprints. The more I looked at the phone the more I felt I'd been dooped. When I went to charge the phone, I realised my old iphone 4s charger didn't fit. I had no idea I needed a new charger and nobody advised me. When I went to insert my sim card, I realised that wasn't going to fit either. No one had advised me. I didn't even get the fork to open the sim card slide. So there I was, stuck without a phone. I opened the live chat. After explaining myself at length, I got a series of "Please hold while I do my best to try to sort this problem for you now" and loads of other cheesey meaningless lines. By this stage I was furious. When the person came back to talk to me, he advised I borrow a friend's charger to use my phone. I explained there was no one and I needed to use my phone that night. I also explained about the sim card, and the dirty phone and lack of box etc. They kept fobbing me off and telling me they would send me a charger, totally ignoring the fact this transaction was unacceptable. I got nowhere, so I hung up.  I went to the O2 store to get a nano sim. I explained the situation to the advisor, and he told me to go home and use the Swap My Sim page. Given that I'd explained the entire situation to him, I expected everything would be ok. No. Turned out I needed my old phone and old sim to do this. Back to the live chat. I explained the whole situation to the new advisor and hoped for the best. I went round in circles with him for about half an hour before he got the gist of my issue.  That seems to be the general vibe from live chat - round and round in circles, nobody listenting properly and cheesy lines like "my heartiest thanks".  My whole situation has made me think I'll leave O2 when my contract expires. Better with a tin can and a string.