Response from O2 – who are still *****

Reply from O2:

Thank you for emailing to ask us not to call your mobile phone.

I’ve arranged for any marketing calls or texts to your mobile to be stopped. This will be processed within 40 days.

I’m unable to refund you the 75 pence it cost you to accept the phone call and the money to email home for more credit. The reason for this is that you could have refused to accept the call.

I’m sure that this isn’t what you were hoping to hear, Iain, but at least the phone calls will cease. I’m sorry for any inconvenience which may have been caused to you.

I hope I’ve explained this clearly for you. If there’s anything else we can do for you, please reply to this email.

Not good enough. My response seemed to wander somewhat into the sarcastic and bitter:

Oh dear, oh dear. This is wholly unacceptable.

On 01/09/07, mycarewebform wrote:
> I’ve arranged for any marketing calls or texts to your mobile to be stopped. This will be processed within 40 days.

Fine, but the fact remains that the call should never have been made in the first place and I’m still at a loss as to which dodgy spammer you bought my contact details from in the first place.

> I’m unable to refund you the 75 pence it cost you to accept the phone call and the money to email home for more credit. The reason for this is that you could have refused to accept the call.

And this really is, to use a polite version of the phrase I would prefer to use, taking the Michael. You’re blaming me for answering my phone when it was called from an unrecognised UK number? As I stated in my original mail, the phone is there for family at home to contact me in an emergency. They are the only ones with the number – or so I thought. Therefore if it rings, regardless of the number displayed on the screen, I should be able to answer it in the knowledge that it will be someone I know with a genuine need for calling. Not some muppet in a call centre trying to up his commission for the month.

It seems to me that your solution to my problem is to never answer my phone, or to have every single possible location that my family could call from entered into my phone. Sorry, but it’s an old Nokia 3330 and doesn’t have the same memory capacity as one of Google’s data farms. It simply won’t hold all those numbers.

The problem and the resulting loss of money and huge inconvenience was the fault of your organisation. Completely and utterly. I did have to answer that call as I didn’t know who it was. You, on the other hand did not have to call me – and in fact certainly did not have the right to do so.

I fully understand that as a large corporation you have no morales, scruples or interest in anyone other than your shareholders and – to a lesser extent – your customers. That’s life in the business world. Regardless, you have cost me money and time and are now trying to blame me for it which stretches the bounds of ridiculousness to the extremes and beyond. Maybe you would suggest that when I return home I don’t live in my home or drive my car? And Heaven forbid that I should watch network broadcasts on my television. They’re obviously all just for decoration like my telephone I’m not supposed to answer.

You have my address and the amount of compensation I have requested. I’d have thought that a company like O2 could find a couple of quid down the back of the executive leather sofa they undoubtedly have in reception. Although, of course, you probably don’t expect people to sit on it.