My girlfriend had a bad experience with O2 customer services last week, and as a consequence, she will port her number away as soon as the 12-month minimum contract term finishes in early October, despite having been an O2 customer for almost 10 years.
She pays £5 per month for 500 minutes and 500MB on a 12-month contract. She hardly makes any calls. She resets her iPhone's data counter at the beginning of each billing month and keeps a close eye on her usage. O2 frequently alleges that she has used her entire 500MB data allowance when her iPhone says that she has not, and then they cut off her mobile data with an invitation to pay 3 times her usual price per megabyte for a 100MB bundle of data. For example, in the last billing month, her iPhone said her usage was for "Current Period" 455MB and for "Current Period Roaming" 70.7MB, at which point O2 cut off her mobile data.
When she complained to O2, she spoke to someone at Capita in South Africa, whose name I shall abbreviate to Farouk D, which should be enough for O2, but not the general public, to identify him. She sent him a screenshot of the data counter by e-mail.
- First he claimed incorrectly that the iPhone data counter's "Current Period" figure is domestic usage only which does not include the "Current Period Roaming" figure and that the two figures need to be added together. My girlfriend explained that this was untrue because if the data counter is reset while roaming, both figures increase together and show the same value.
- Then he claimed incorrectly that the iPhone data counter, and all other smartphones' data counters, count the data used in a calendar month, as opposed to since the date that the counter was last reset. I took over the call at this point and explained how iPhone data counters work.
- Then he pointed out correctly that iPhones constantly use data in the background, but incorrectly claimed that background data is not counted by the data counter. I also corrected him on this point.
- Then he suggested that my girlfriend had reset the data counter after she started had using data in her current billing cycle. Although this is a plausible suggestion, it was irrelevant. She was using a Lithuanian SIM card (€1.49 for 1.5GB at 100Mbps) at the beginning of the billing month and later inserted her O2 SIM card when entering Latvia, and reset the data counter before her iPhone connected to a network.
- Then he suggested that the screenshot of the data counter was taken from another device. My girlfriend had taken the call back at this point, and couldn't believe the absurdity of his allegation.
His approach seemed to be that the customer is always wrong, no matter what evidence they have to support their complaint. He was argumentative, kept interrupting and eventually hung up when my girlfriend asked to speak to his manager. Why should O2 customers have to put up with customer services fabricating such false information? Why can't customer services instead behave truthfully, knowledgeably and professionally?
Why doesn't O2 charge a simple per-megabyte price after a monthly allowance is consumed at a pro-rated amount of the allowance price? For example, if it's £5 for 500MB, then charge the same price of 1p/MB after the first 500MB. Charging £3 for an extra 10MB or 20MB (because the minimum bundle is 100MB) is absurdly expensive. Why does it have to be so complicated?
