OxCreative

O2 Fail – Does O2 have any happy customers?

I’ve been with O2 for a very long time, in fact, since I have owned a mobile phone (it was BT cellnet back then, then Genie ( a subsidiary of BT Cellnet) and then it merged/got bought out and became O2 across Europe.

Now, I try to avoid blogging my rants but I read something today that really ‘took the biscuit’. It was an article on ITProPortal about Ronan Dunne and how he apologises for the poor o2 network coverage in London where people have been ‘unable to make calls’. Mr Dunne claims it is mainly due to that fact that smartphones (i.e. iPhone etc) using alot of data and jamming up the network.

You may think this is noble, someone actually stepping forward and apologising for something that has gone wrong… especially a big company like O2 (Telefonica). However, there are a few things about this that annoyed me:

Firstly, O2 are acting like the issue is only in London – I live in the county Hampshire (UK) – my home is about 60 miles from London and I can get a signal when I visit my parents, at my friends house or in the supermarket car park… apart from that I have GSM only coverage or Zero coverage (yep… alot of the time it just says searching!).

I own an iPhone 3G, which lets face it, is mainly for data, yet I cannot use it for data as there is no signal. My brother who also has an iPhone has the same issues (he works in demolition and travels the south of England and he said it is equally bad wherever he goes). I have tried googling this and found many people have had problems across the country, O2 even made it onto WatchDog (a UK tv show which names and shames companies and tradesmen who are providing a shoddy service).

I found a ’service status’ checker from O2 which apparently says that the signal in my area is good and has full data coverage. My phone still says searching… In all fairness, it does state that this is coverage to the street (outdoors) and so I can only assume that walls/houses affect the signal so I am going to go outside. Ok… so I just got back from popping into the middle of the street at night and apart from getting wet in the rain and attracting some strange glances from the ‘curtain twitching’ neighbours, I got one bar of GSM signal… which quickly went back to searching!

The second thing that annoyed me about the apology is that it was blamed on the use of smartphones data usage. Now, I’m not a telecommunications expert nor am I the head of a multinational corporation, but it doesn’t take mild-boggling intellect or business pizazz to know that if you buy the exclusive service rights to probably the most hyped gadgets to hit the planet (the iPhone) there will be a significant increase in data usage.

Let’s be straight, O2 must have improved their network vastly to take on such a contract, but clearly it is not enough.

It is no surprise that O2 is ripping it’s customers of by charging an additional £9.50 a month (minimum) to use tethering, as the fact of the matter is that their network couldn’t handle everyone using the service that they are already paying for. Tethering for data is no different to using 3G or Edge directly on the phone. The only difference would be that people would use more of their ‘unlimited data’ and the network could not cope.

A final point I would like to raise is that I have heard alot of people, in fact everyone I know or have met, who owns an iPhone, say at least once “my crappy iPhone” or “this shitty thing” or something to that effect. I have had a few minor problems with the iPhone that have actually been due to the hardware or the software but 99.9% of the issues are because I cannot get signal and I think the Apple, and the iPhone, get alot of criticism for what is O2’s failure to provide the service they have promised to deliver.

There are a few things that as a disgruntled O2 customer I would love to see:

- Apple suing O2 for damages to both the Apple and iPhone brand.

- O2 losing the majority of iPhone customers now that it is open to other networks

- O2 fined by OfCom for mis-selling its iPhone contracts. Unlimited data is unlimited data and tethering should be allowed within this allowance.

- O2 actually providing a better service

For now, I guess this means riding out my 18 month contract at £35 per month to use the iPhone 3G’s Wifi feature whilst I am at home or occasionally being able to make a call or even get an Edge data connection if I am especially lucky! I will definitely be switching network as soon as it expires.

Should you wish to make a formal complaint about the service you have received from O2, please contact OFCOM.

You can also let others know about this post by using the URL http://bit.ly/O2Fail in your twitter, facebook, myspace, digg and other social networks.

Let’s spread the #O2Fail message for 2010!