Dreadful service in Lancaster, Lancashire

[Anonymous]

Hi all 

i am so mad, I am a lonof time customer of O2' over 5 years , I live in Lancaster Lancashire and for over 10 days now the service has been appalling, signal dropping out, no service , searching for signal, phone disconnecting as and when i manage to get signal, sometimes no signal for hours, no texts being delivered, incoming calls going straight to voicemail. I have called O2 so many times, been on live chat 4 times, only to be told itching can be done and its my handset ( iPhone 4S) . And then I check the live coverage and find out a mast is down. And it's still down and has been now for well over a week. And no sign of it getting better, no information about when a fix is thought to be due. One advisor told me two days ago that signal in my area was great, I had to ask her to check the mast site, only for told say oh yes you are write that was a typo your mast is down !!!

Not only is my personal O2 phone down but it is also affecting my business mobile. No offer of help, no offer of compensation, no idea when service will be restored. I pay over £50 a month for my personal tariff, can't not believe how shabby the O2 service has become. 

[Liquid]

Unfortunatly some masts are on private land and O2 need permission before they can begin work.

Any idea where your mast is located?

Unfortunatly no service is perfect, they cannot guarentee signal all the time. Why don't you set up call forwarding to a landline for buisness use?

Every buisness should have back ups.

[Anonymous]

There are so many things that can affect how long mast outages take to fix.

Access - we don't always own the land our masts are on (same with most networks). We have to arrange access with landowners. sometimes disputes arise and we have to totally decommision a mast because we're not allowed access to the land one is situated on. If that happens a new one needs to be built which can't happen overnight (land purchase, planning access, building etc).

2) Health and Safety. We can only work on masts during daylight hours and weather conditions safe enough to work in.

3) Is it an easy fix (cabling) or do parts have to be replaced. If parts replacements are required then it can delay repairs as some parts are so bespoke they have to be ordered as an when they are needed and then transported to the mast site.

With that in mind its always hard to say how long a repair will take. If you feel you're not being told how long it will be because we don't know either.

We outsource this kind of thing to engineering companies so we're not always in control of how long things take. Same with most of the other networks.

[Anonymous]

I've had exactly the same runaround from O2 today. Im in LA2 0PN South Lancaster and three O2 phones are unusable despite being excellent for years.

O2 advisors repeatedly insist that the network is fine and it must be the phone, sim etc.  They're not able to explain why all three phones are fine out of this immediate area just persistently saying that the network is fine when it clearly isn't.

I'm going to have to cancel three O2 accounts if this isn't sorted and since I work as an IT consultant I'll be cancelling a few more O2 accounts as well because I'll be damned if I going to accept this level of service.

it isn't that the call quality is compromised - it is absolutely impossible for anybody to hear anything that I say on any of the three phones.

The advisors clearly don't have any information about the state of the masts. Who do I speak to to find out what's going on?

[adamtemp64]

my advise is to work through this list as you say it looks like cell issue. http://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Pay-Monthly-and-Pay-Go/Self-help-guide-Is-the-network-down-for-me-or-ev...

Depending on handset in use, you can try the my network app and use that to report the fault  apart from that only customer services can deal with the issue

[Bambino]

A temporary loss of signal is not reason enough to cancel an account. No network will guarantee 100% uptime. If you don't go through the process as adam has laid out in his link, and cancel, it will affect your credit rating and you won't be able to get an account with any network. 

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I've had exactly the same runaround from O2 today. Im in LA2 0PN South Lancaster and three O2 phones are unusable despite being excellent for years.

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Have you tried switching the phones to 2G only as the 3G signal isn't good in your area?

http://status.o2.co.uk/

[adamtemp64]

Looks like there was planned maintenance

Live results for LA2 0PN, Lancaster, Lancs

• 

  Our network is currently working fine

  We've been working on phone masts in this area in the past 24 hours. Sorry if you couldn't use your phone.

[Anonymous]

I don't consider 10 days to be 'temporary' and it's not just the loss of service but also the lack of information and transparency about the status of the network.

If I were to tell my customers that I didn't know how long it would take to fix their server, that it could be hours, days or weeks then I wouldn't have customers for very long.

For many of us the telecoms services are nearly as essential as the other services.  How long would you be prepared to go without water, sewage or power?

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I'll try that but the service here has been excellent for years.