I am in a nightmare scenario right now and it is not helped by the fact that the only support I’m allowed to contact is the chat bot that “knows the answers to loads of questions” but unfortunately has not been programmed to recognise that the term “operator” means put me through to a human.
you have a contact number with LOOOONG wait times where ultimately the advisors either tell you they can’t help you; or put you through to a department that hangs up without answering. Since I don’t have an O2 phone and don’t have a landline then these calls are costing me a fortune.
essentially Virgin Media sold my pay monthly sim to o2 in whatever deal they made; at a time when I was unhappy and planning on leaving.
I got a new phone and called O2 for my PAC code and asked to cancel the sim. They informed me it would be cancelled when I used the PAC code. This is when I noticed on my account; under ‘bolt ons’ that you’d very helpfully bolted on a second sim without my knowledge, so I asked about this and was assured it all gets cancelled together.
sure enough I then checked my bank account and saw a fresh direct debit had been set up for £6 a month in order to charge me for the bolted on Sim.
i contacted O2 through the my O2 app and realised I was talking to a bot. This bot eventually put me through to an agent after looping back to the feedback form too many times to count.
the agent couldn’t help me as I needed to contact the cancellation team, so she transferred me to them. Alas the cancellation team’ was just returning me to the bot who kept repeating that I had to actually phone O2 to get it resolved.
so I did; and an agent answered quickly but told me she couldn’t help as again needed the cancellation team. She advised me to hang up; ring again, and select a different option. So I did this, and low and behold the cancellation line had ‘very long que.’
I was in this que for a long time and then someone picked up and hung up the phone.
i tried again a few days later (too livid to try again straight away) and this time the agent I called spent a little longer with me, I explained that I’d had another bill so she reassured me that this bill was being credited but that I had to still speak with the cancellation department. She then promised to manually put me through to someone, but after 15 minutes of failing she told me she’d transfered me to the que. This time I tomes in. 1 hour 15 minutes on hold, and then once again someone finally picked up the phone and immediately hung up again.
i now realised O2 were doing this on purpose to avoid cancelling accounts, so I contacted you through resolver. You immediately sent me an automated reply promising me that things would be investigated and You’d get back to me in 7 days. Of course nobody does reply, and every message sent is responded to word for word with the same automated reply making it clear that customers will actually be ignored. I’m continuing to send messages, but mainly so that I have a record of all my contact attempts for when I escalate the matter to the Ombudsman.
now this has been going on for months with you charging me for a bolted on SIM that I didn’t approve of and you never even sent me. At this point I cancelled direct debit to stop O2 from taking further money,
I continued trying to contact through my O2 and then their story changed. Suddenly the only security question that could be asked was a security pin texted to the sim card that you’d never sent. When pointing out that I can’t received texts on a number I’ve never had, I was accused of fraudulently trying to cancel an account.
asked to speak to a supervisor; so they transferred me, and 24 hours later be sent me a message to say that I couldn’t have help unless I gave him the texted code. He informed me that customer service wouldn’t help; cancellation team wouldn’t help, and directed me to the store.
i went in to the Birmingham New Street store and asked to speak to a manager. I was in the store 90 minutes (I know because I was late for work after) while the manager tried to get customer service to give him access to account. I’d shown my passport as proof of I.D but then customer service wanted more than that and I hadn’t brought any utility bills.
Eventually he got in to my account; and advised me to pay the money owing to cancel the account. I reminded him that I’d never authorised the SIM a d had already paid for 3 months while trying to get it resolved, so was not prepared to pay any further when O2s own records showed the SIM card had never once been used. He acknowledged this frustration but said it’d be easier to just pay again.
Eventually he informed me that the contract had been cancelled in spite of this and that I would receive a final bill. Again he advised me that it’d be easier to just pay the final bill, but that customer service in the app would help me if I wanted to take things further. Said in store could not help with crediting bills.
Now my sign in on the app is no longer working (because he cancelled the account)BUT I’m still receiving the bills through email. Turns out O2 have added ANOTHER month to the bill even though they said it would be frozen if I didn’t pay the last one and that the account had been cancelled in store.
the email does direct you to a customer service links if you have questions; but the link is actually to your sales website in case I want a new contract. The actual customer service link is yo a chat bot that has no facility to transfer you to an operator; and tells me to log in to the myO2 app; which I can’t do.
i can also phone for
free from my O2 mobile; which I don’t have, and that number doesn’t work on Tesco mobile phone. Or I can phone from a landline, but since I only have a mobile then this call will continue to be expensive and as established by prior contacts will be a long call very likely to end in someone apologising that they’re not able
to assist me.
I can only assume that in the transfer from Virgin Media O2 received thousands and thousands of new customers which will mean thousands of £ in free revenue the longer they can drag out these issues?🤷
