Picking a mobile phone carrier in London has been difficult. None of them have good reviews, and apparently, all of them provide the same service. I finally decided last week that I was going to make the move to O2. I had seen their simplicity package advertised, where you could simply buy a SIM for free, and pay GBP 30 per month for 1200 anytime minutes, 500 or 1000 texts (if ordered instore or online), and a free additonal bolt on, which in my case, is the Unlimited Web Bolt On. I decided to go for this because I do not want a new phone. I’m happy with Sony Ericsson p990; the firmware upgrade has made the phone much more stable, and it almost every feature you’ll need: Web, GPRS, 3G, WiFi, Browser, Email Client, Media, etc. etc.
O2s mobile phone service has been good. I don’t get any unusual signal outage, and the internet speed on the phone is also pretty good. But their Customer Service is nothing short of horrid!
Since the day I got my SIM from O2, I cannot view my bill or allowance online. Over the last week, I’ve had luck with viewing my billing/allowance only once on the web site. I have exchanged about 5 emails with customer service, and oh my, they are as incompetent as they come. I thought HP (hewlett packard) had everyone beat when it came to bad customer service, but O2 is quickly surpassing HP to new, unknown levels of incompetence and customer dissatisfaction.
When I try to view my bill, I get an EBPP_1102 error. When I try to view my allowance, I get the same EBPP error code with a different number. Now I’m not sure what kind of a programming glitch their web development team has made, but their customer service has absolutely no idea about what’s going on. They’ve come up with the wildest suggestions, like deleting my temporary internet files, having a corrupt cookie, having an old browser that doesn’t support 128-bit SSL encryption, or having an ISP that needs to be contacted because the problem is at their end. They should really try telling that to Virgin & BT, and I’d want to see how either of them reacted to that. I’d want to see the size of the hole in O2s tushi when BT is done responding to that (not that BT is a blessing in any way either).
First rule of thumb, train your god damn customer service representatives, and please, train them to be honest. If they don’t know what’s going on or have NO idea about what the problem is, they DO NOT need to make incorrect suggestions or accusations about our PCs, cookies, or ISPs. They should say that they don’t know what’s wrong, and that they will try to find out.
Second, why the fuck does every person who responds to my email an Indian, who has no fucking idea about how O2 works, secure socket layers or web browsers work, or how ISPs work? I’m going to assume that O2 is being cheap over here, and they’re outsourcing customer service to India. I’m sorry, is there any shortages of Indians in the UK? There are lots of competent ones here, please hire them. They’re educated (in real, for the most part, not by University of Kerala which prints PHDs only), and they’re less prone to lying and giving ludacris suggestions.
And your web development team? Are you outsourcing this to Pakistan or India too? And exactly how much money is O2 saving on it is unfathomable. The website is pathetic. They’ve tried to use AJAX without getting the basic functionality right. Does O2 really think I’m impressed with AJAX when I get an error every time I try to access my billing or allowance? Here’s a hot tip for O2: NO! I want it work, and I DO NOT want to speak to low IQ, incompetent, customer service who doesn’t the difference between a client side and server side error and tries to talk IT.
Here’s a little tip for O2 Tech Support: The error is server side. You’re running a script that’s trying to access my bill & related details from a database (I hope & not a text file), but it fails to do so, either because it cannot connect to your server or because their’s a coding error. Either way, I CANNOT fix it at my end. You need to do it. Browse the internet and see how many other people have the same problem. What are you, stupid?
If you can’t get the service right, don’t offer it.
To top it all off, I get a call from O2 Customer Service today saying they don’t have the right billing address? Well now, who in the hell changed it. Not only was the woman who called UNABLE to communicate properly in English, but she told ME to call customer service and get my address updated because she could NOT take down the address. I mean what the fuck is this, a fish market? And how in the hell did my address get changed on the web site? Why does customer service fidget with our account information when they don’t need to? And, WHY the hell does the update my details feature NOT work on the web site?!
I’m this close to writing to the head office and asking them if they need help with their web site and customer service training, because clearly, a monkey could do a better job than O2 is doing right now!
