Since moving in to our new house in London, I have been trying to get homephone and broadband set up with O2. It has been a disaster. Here is the letter that I have had to send on (next stop, the CEO of Telefonica). I share it as a warning and so that you can derive some pleasure in my nightmare. (I have removed some personal details.)
O2 Complaint Review Service
PO Box 116
Leeds LS11 5DS
To Whom It May Concern:
I have been a loyal customer of O2 Mobile since moving to the UK 5 years ago. I have been quite happy with the service and, more importantly, the customer service. Because of my experience with O2 Mobile, when I recently moved into a new house, I thought I would go ahead and order O2 Broadband and Home Phone as well. Unfortunately, this has become a massive mistake and it now appears that I will not be able to use O2 Broadband. On top of that, I am considering leaving O2 for my mobile service as well because the problems that I experienced have made me go from being a net promoter of the O2 brand to a net detractor.
When I moved into my new house, I found that there was dial-tone on the line and was able to figure out the phone number to my home. At first, I tried using the O2 website to place a broadband order, but there were two problems: (1) I could not amend the address that I wanted the equipment shipped to (I needed it sent to my office but the post code finder would not allow me to add the business name into the shipping address, which is necessary for delivery) (2) after filling everything in, the form would then reject the order with very little reason.
As I had previous experience with O2 phone support/sales, I knew that it would be a easy experience and involved Scottish sales people who were always very helpful. So it was without hesitation that I called the call centre to complete my order.
The person who took my order was very friendly and helpful. We went through the whole process, INCLUDING A CREDIT CHECK THAT I PASSED (please remember this point later) and my order was processed.
The next day I got a few text messages asking me for a MAC code. As I had just moved into the new house, I didn’t have a MAC code, as the previous service was not mine. I called the O2 call centre to explain this. I was told that I needed a MAC code. I kept explaining that I had just moved in, but to no avail. I was finally told that I would need to speak to “Bulldog”, an ISP that evidentially had a “tag on the line.”
I spent some time getting the estate agent who sold me the house to get the previous owner to confirm cancellation of all of his services. I then also spent a lot of time trying to track down the company who had the tag on the line to get them to remove it, as I had been told by O2. As Bulldog no longer exists, I had to spend a lot of time calling Tiscali, TalkTalk and finally Virgin Media to find out who had the tag on the line. All of these companies explained that, if I was a new owner of the house, it was up to the company taking over the broadband (O2) to work with BT Wholesale / OpenReach to remove the tag from the line. I confirmed that this is was the correct advice by looking at the Ofcom site (http://ask.ofcom.org.uk/help/internet-service/tagremoval).
By this time, the previous service had been cancelled and all that was left was for O2 to deal with BT to clear the tag from the line and provide me service. By this point, I estimate that I had spent 6 hours of my time trying to get this cleared.
When I contacted the O2 Call Centre at this point, I was still being given advice that I needed to contact the previous ISP. I repeatedly explained that this was not correct and that O2 had the responsibility of working with BT Wholesale to do this. At one point, I did have someone open an inquiry / ticket internally to do this. The rest of the time, I received a lot of confusing/conflicting information. At one point, I was told that the problem was that it was a “Virgin line” and not a BT line. After doing some research, I realized that this was not the case. It was not that Virgin Media cable was connected to the line. Instead Virgin National ADSL was on the existing BT line. This tech support rep had gotten very confused.
I had to travel for work for a few days, but when I got home, I found that my phone line was no longer working. I again called O2 and was told that the line was inactive and “pending” cancellation. The tech support person sent me back to speak to sales to get them to update the order. The sales person told me that I had to speak to tech support because the line wasn’t in the right state to progress the order. I was bounced back to tech support and spoke to a nice person who went to speak to sales and get everything sorted out.
At this point, the tech support person explained that it would be necessary to cancel the order entirely, and create a new order because this would be for a new install with a new phone number. There would also be the chance that I would have to pay an installation fee, which I was not happy about. Nevertheless, I agreed to the plan, because I want to get my broadband and home phone from O2.
I was then transferred back to a saleswoman who began the process of re-creating my order. As we went through the process, something interesting happened: I was told that I failed the credit check. This meant that I could not have service from O2. I explained that this was insane because (a) I had already passed the same credit check a week ago and was only going through this again because O2 couldn’t figure out how to progress my order and (b) we are talking about a £20-£30 per month bill. I don’t want to go into details of my finances, but this is really NOTHING. I can even hand you 12 months worth of this cash upfront right now!
The saleswoman agreed that this was odd and said that she would look into it and call me back on my mobile number. I then continued with my day. However, a few hours later, I realized that I had not heard anything back. I called the O2 call centre again and spoke to a person named Duncan in the Glasgow call centre.
Duncan, like most O2 call centre staff, was very pleasant and helpful. However, I wish the call could have gone better. Duncan saw that there was no record of my attempted second order that I had placed earlier in the day (which had taken about 2 hours of my time to complete), and could not find any record of which woman I had spoken to earlier. I explained the whole problem to him and he said that he would investigate and call me back.
I did not hear back from Duncan. Ten hours later, I called the call centre again and was told that Duncan had gone home, and the new person answering the phone did not have any record of my case. I explained everything to her and she mentioned that for credit check problems, I would have to discuss with Equifax. I explained that this was insane because I had already passed the credit check and that it was O2 that had caused the order to be cancelled and now go through another credit check (and I understand that multiple credit checks can cause them to fail). She told me that there was nothing that could be done.
At this point, I gave up. I am infuriated with the situation. I have spent about 20 hours of my time and energy trying to become an O2 Broadband and Home Phone customer. I have probably worked harder at trying to become your customer than anyone at your company has worked to try and MAKE me your customer. I WANT to be a loyal O2 customer, but your company is fighting me at every step of the way. I will now be looking, begrudgingly, at becoming a customer of one of your competitors. Furthermore, this has really tarnished my understanding of the O2 brand. I will be looking at moving my mobile phone service to another provider soon.
In summary, I have included the following notes so that maybe, at some time in the future, you will be able to improve your company.
What O2 did well in this situation:
- The O2 Call Centre staff are always very helpful and pleasant, even when dealing with a frustrated customer. I think it is a great thing to have your call centre in Glasgow rather than having your customers deal with some offshore call centre in India. The people answering your phones are great and I hope you treat them well and work to retain them.
What O2 didn’t do well and needs to fix:
- Your website still has some serious problems. You need to do some usability testing or at least monitor what people are doing with the site. I suggest a tool like ClickTale.
- Your staff and procedures do not correctly deal with a situation where a potential customer has moved into a house where the old customer has not completely deactivated the old service. You might want to think about how to work with these customers.
- Your staff and procedures do not correctly understand how to deal with removing an existing tag on the line. If the customer does not have a MAC code (i.e. they just moved in and it is an old tag on the line) then O2 needs to work with BT Wholesale. It is not the responsibility of the previous ISP to work on removing that tag. O2 should NOT tell customers to contact other ISPs to sort out these problems. That is just lazy.
- Having to cancel and order and recreate a new one because of some difference in the state of the line is just silly.
- Use your own credit signals before dealing with a company like Equifax and their broken credit scoring system. O2 should know from my history that I am a good customer that pays his mobile bill, no matter how large. Also, you should know that you had my credit checked a week ago (on an order that you made me cancel!) and were fine with it, so shouldn’t worry about some glitch in this order. If something like this happens, there must be some way for SOMEONE at O2 to override this nonsense.
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: When speaking to O2 about this last problem, I got a lot of answers about how “the systems” and Equifax and all sorts of other “procedures” were causing the problem. It is all too easy for companies to point to other companies and complex IT systems that no-one understands when something goes wrong. It doesn’t matter how nice the call centre staff are; if the company has lost its soul and its humanity, then customer service becomes non-existent. In situations like this, someone needs to be able to escalate out of the automated systems and procedures and be able to say “You know what, this is really crazy nonsense. We need to help this customer BY HAND if need be.”
I have spent some time on this letter because I really hope that it helps future customers of O2. I have been a fan of your company in the past and have always told others to use O2. However, this experience I have outlined above means that I will no longer be promoting O2 to others. I wish your company the best and I hope that you continue to improve your service. If there is any other information I can provide, please contact me at the details below. As for me, I now have to go find a new company to provide me with broadband, home phone and mobile because my first choice for a provider doesn’t want me as a customer.
