Not receiving text messages

[Happyduck]

It’s 2023 but welcome to the club, I’m the latest victim of the ‘no-OTP-gate’.

Mu number was switched from Virgin Mobile to O2 in July, everything went smoothly until this Tuesday, I have since stopped receiving any texts. I asked my friend to send me a text, it wasn’t sending out but was shown as ‘not delivered’ error on his phone, so all the texts from banks, NHS and companies don’t come through either for obvious reason.

I have gone through the posts and have noticed this has been an ongoing issue to many customers since 2020.

I gave a ring to the call centre and the help I received seemed to be quite useless - I was advised that the agent ‘reset the network settings’ on my number (and nothing changed) so she went on and suggested a replacement SIM card.

These are proven to be unsuccessful methods according to the fellow users here. I’m surprised that 3 years have passed but the call centre still isn’t properly trained to resolve this known issue.

I have seen success stories with the help of the Community Managers here

(https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Tech-Support/Santander-OTP-not-received/m-p/1581309#M26437)

Would anyone here (and people here from O2) be so kind to help a me out? 😢

[MI5]

@Happyduck 

Unfortunately all our advisors were removed from here so your only option is to keep trying O2, sorry.

Guide: Text Message Tips (not sent or received) 

[Enlli]

No comfort but Virgin has had no OTP text problems for over 5 years! They gave up on a solution when the move to O2 came about.

There are no people here from O2. Our advisors were removed in July leaving just us Customers.

[madasaf1sh]

I was going to say, I don't think I ever got one OTP on my Virgin Sim, until I ported away... 

It wouldn't surprise me if this problems continues as the problems VM had probably came from the routing, and all that has happened is their is now a forwarder on a server somewhere which has the same issues... 

[Happyduck]

Funny thing is that I had this issue after being ported to Vodafone and Smarty, they both seemed to be extremely helpless so the only option was leaving them, I switched to Virgin and happy days, the issue never came back up again.

I was really worried when they announced the switch to O2 for Virgin Mobile customers (technology nowadays, blargh). I’m hoping the issue isn’t caused by porting as it was good for two months

[Happyduck]

This is really frustrating, as clever as many fellow users here, the O2 personnel are the people who have access to my settings ultimately. 

I’m giving my luck to the social media team then as they seem to be more proactive in resolving the issue, rather than bashing off with a ‘network reset’ or a ‘replacement SIM’.

[Oxonian]

@Happyduck 

Once that you feel that you have given O2 adequate opportunity to resolve your problem, you could consider a complaint :-

How to Complain | Help | O2

https://www.o2.co.uk/how-to-complain

Customer+Complaints+code+250523.pdf (o2.co.uk)

https://www.o2.co.uk/documents/456036/4246828/Customer+Complaints+code+250523.pdf

You will probably need to ask that your issue is escalated to someone with adequate technical knowledge in the area. 

[Happyduck · Accepted solution]

After more than 30 days of of back and forth pushbacks, the network team did not make the callback as promised. The call centre is utterly useless, they failed to follow up with the callback but instead keeps pushing back the timeline from 48 hours to 5 working days and to 10 working days, and now fobbing me off with ‘waiting a couple of more days’ even though the ‘10th working day’ has long passed and nothing happened.

By failing to have full access to the service, I am switching out to a new provider now. It turns out to be a good opportunity, as I am not a fan of O2’s coverage anyway (Virgin’s coverage through EE network was a lot better).

I am just appalled by how incompetent they are to resolve such a known problem, a quick search on the forum would show that my issue is not an one-off event, and there are many others who face the same issue dated back in 3/4 years ago.

[Oxonian]

@Happyduck 

Good luck with your new provider, hopefully the move will work well for you. 😎

[Happyduck]

Thank you - have just had my switch to another provider completed today. Text messages have come back like miracle😅 iMessage can pick up my number too! I somehow hope that O2 could have known what they were doing and would have fixed it by re-provisioning my number…saves the hassle of switching out