O2 Don’t have a clue

I received my mobile phone bill today and got a nasty shock when looking at how much I was charged — £72! (around $150.) Seeing as I am on a £15 per month contract and rarely exceed my allocated minutes I was really confused. Had I been browsing using 3G and not wireless for the past month? After all the data charge is around £2.70 every megabyte after your first megabyte. Had I left my phone connected when calling an expensive number such as an 0845?

Nope none of the above, instead O2 had messed up with my canceled upgrade. As you may see on Tech Rant, I bought a N82 sim free. Now at first this was not the case, I upgraded with O2 to a £40 per month contract then canceled it and returned the phone, as I worked out it was cheaper to simply buy the phone if I rarely use the minutes. The contract gave me around 1000 minutes a month, I barely use a fifth of that. It seems O2 decided to receive my phone and not cancel the contract, I had to ring up customer service and the lady on the end of the phone had to ring up the returns department. At this point I was really worried that the phone had got stolen in the post or something.

Anyhow, I was assured that when my bill came in the post that this would all be sorted out and that I would be back on the £15 per month contract. Plus, I would get an extra £5 out of courtesy, needless to say I was pleased. Yet the thought of joining another network was creeping in, I could easily save money by going pay as you go. Maybe even get some cheap cinema tickets with Orange as their rates are reasonable.

Sadly things haven’t worked out. I was charged the full £72, so back to O2 customer service I went. It seems they now cannot make a refund until my next billing date, effectively locking me to my contract for another month. Even more annoying is the fact that I cannot request my PAC code (to move my number,) as I do not want to stay with O2 after all this mess. This because O2 have treated my cancellation and return to my old tariff as an ‘upgrade’, how that works I have no idea, but because of this I cannot move networks until I have served 30 days of my contract. Eh? I thought 30 day grace periods worked the other way around?

Needless to say, I will not be staying with O2 after all this is sorted out; unless they bribe me with a lot of free credit on their Pay As You Go service, if they cannot handle such a routine task as canceling an upgrade then I have no faith them.

Don’t I just enjoy posting late?