Update of sorts.
From what I have learnt porting from Tesco Mobile may not be the source of the problem here.
It seemed likely from looking at many conversations on this forum that O2 were not going to resolve the issue of adding an Apple Watch to my plan without a disproportionate amount of calls to their CS over a long period of time.
So Airtime Plan cancelled 9 October within the cooling off period with intention of temporarily porting to a PAYG. I did not want to lose my number of 20 years plus and wasn’t’ sure at that stage which provider I was moving to. I won’t go into details but just getting the right SIM card and finding out what to do next was not easy. O2 shops seem to have a reluctance to speak to their CS on your behalf and generally speaking tell you to make the call yourself.
That porting did not happen. Many calls over many days taking many hours. Probably the worst customer service I have ever experienced: calls of around one hour in some cases, failure to understand the problem, frequently cut off, broken promises, weak explanations, criticism of colleagues.
The problem seems to be the way O2 have set up their CS structure. In particular an apparent lack of written procedures. Every call revealed another possible reason for the delay in a simple request being actioned.
So I made a formal complaint in October requesting that my relationship with O2 be terminated without further delay. It took a time for that to happen and it meant losing my original number of 20 plus years but so worth it.
Once I was fairly confident the contract with O2 had been terminated I set up a new plan with another provider. It took a couple of calls to get the watch added but it was done in a few days without the need for hour long calls to people who did not know what to do. And the other provider is much cheaper.
