He shoots, he scores! O2 are still *****, though.

Oh, and I noticed I am now top TWO on Google if you search for “O2 *****”. Anyway. Victory is mine!!!! Bwahahahaha!!!

Hello Iain,

Many thanks for your reply and bringing this matter to my attention. I have passed your comments onto my manager Nasrin Anwar who will look into this further.

We’re very sorry about the service you’ve received since your original communication on 30 August 2007. This is not our usual standard of service and I can assure we’ll do our very best to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

As a way of an apology, please can you let me know your address and I’ll be very happy to send you a cheque for £15 in respect of the difficulties and upset this has caused.

I’ve also passed your mobile number details again to our specialist team for it to be deleted from our records.

Again, please accept my sincere apologies and I do hope this hasn’t spoiled your holiday. If there’s anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

Kind regards,

Tracey

More important things

While O2 are still ***** (I need to check how high up Google I am when you search for “O2 *****”), I was sad to see the news on BBC that Jane Tomlinson has died. For those who don’t know, Jane’s one of the bravest women I’ve heard of. Diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago, she battled against it and devoted as long as she was able to raising money to help fight this disease.

Not content with sitting in a wheelchair and plotting schemes, she went out and did some amazing things. The Great North Run, London Marathon, Ironman UK Triathlon and cycling 4200 miles across America. Things that someone who had been told they had 6 months left to live had no right to be doing. But she defied pretty much everything and everyone and did them.

My hat is off to this woman. The world will surely be worse off for her departure and I can only hope that she acts as an example to many of us. Wherever you are, Jane – it’s time for a rest 🙂

O2 – *****, *****, *****, *****

New response:

Hello Iain,

Thank you for contacting us about the costs of the call we made to you and further costs for your cybercafe use.

I’m sorry you’re not happy with the previous responses you’ve received from us.

I’m unable to refund you for these costs as Louise and Catherine have previously said. You’re aware of your charges when you’re abroad and so understood that there would be a charge, for answering your phone when you were away.

I understand you only answered this call thinking it was one of your friends or family, however if it was another business calling you i.e. a gas company’s sales team, you would have still been charged and wouldn’t be able to claim the costs back from them.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience you had trying to Top-Up your phone and having to go to several internet cafes to write to us and get a Top-Up. As previously said we won’t be able to refund you, as you were aware of your charges before answering your phone. Although you may not have realised it wasn’t your friends or family, if the call was from another person you would still have been charged and had to Top-Up your phone.

I’m afraid we won’t be able to help you this any further, as we’ve explained to you the reasons why we can’t refund you for the cost of the call or internet use.

And my new one to them:

And another fob-off reply. The matter is not that you “cannot” refund me, it is that you “will not”. There is a world of difference between the two. Let me put it into small points that perhaps you can grasp:

1) You should not have called me. You had no permission. You should not even have had my number. This is, as far as I’m aware, illegal.

2) Yes, I am aware of the call charges. As a result only friends and family have my number. Or so I thought. I did everything *I* could not to be bothered by ignorant sales staff from faceless companies.

3) How do you know I would not be able to recover money from, as per your example, a gas company? For them to call me they would have had to ring me – against my wishes – from a database of phone numbers which they should not have had. That is, they would be in the same position as yourselves, acting immorally and illegally. Maybe their staff would realise that they had done something wrong and would act to make reparation.

I will not give up on asking for my money back. Your company acted illegally, you cost me money and now you’re refusing to cough up what – to O2 – is a trifling small sum. As is typical of large companies you don’t give a **** about anyone smaller than yourselves, and the inconvenience you put them through as long as your shareholders earn enough each year to fuel their Ferraris.

Not. Good. Enough.

Let us get the semantics correct here. There is no truth that you “cannot” refund my money. The fact of the matter is that you *refuse* to do so. There is a huge difference between the two. Perhaps you may like to forward this message further up your internal food chain to someone who is allowed to make decisions rather than passing it around a load of people who’ve been trained to give the same answer all the time.

This is what is called a “matter of principle”. While I appreciate that O2 obviously *has* no principles, now may be a good time to discover them.

O2 – still ***** (I’ll get this to the top of Google yet)

Another ridiculous reply:

Good afternoon Iain,

Thank you for your email.

I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with our earlier email about the call you received while you were in France.

I can understand that you wanted your phone with you so you could keep in contact with your friends and family. I appreciate that you would answer all calls when your phone rang, it wasn’t our intention to say that you shouldn’t have answered this particular call.

I’m afraid that as you’re not an O2 customer it’s not possible for us to refund you the cost of this call. Unfortunately, I’m also unable to refund you for the use of cyber cafes in France as this charge is out of our control.

I am sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you Iain. I hope I’ve explained everything clearly.

And another reply to them:

Re: O2 – Sales call (KMM241462142V17790L0KM)
On 03/09/07, mycarewebform wrote:
> I’m sorry that you’re unhappy with our earlier email about the call you received while you were in France.

It seems not sorry enough.

> when your phone rang, it wasn’t our intention to say that you shouldn’t have
> answered this particular call.

So why did you say that I had the opportunity to refuse the call, then? Your two emails have just contradicted one another. Of course, this is the usual experience when dealing with a large organisation where one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. Or you’re just trying to clear up a mess made by a colleague who should have known better than to insinuate the the problem was of my own making.

> I’m afraid that as you’re not an O2 customer it’s not possible for us to refund you

This is, if I may say so, utter cobblers. What you’re saying is that you *refuse* to refund the money as I am not an O2 customer. I appreciate that if I had an account with you, you would credit it to that. This would be easy for you. What I’m asking you to do is dust the cobwebs off the corporate cheque book and make good an error which inconvenienced someone who in no way fills up your coffers. As such, I understand that I rank incredibly far down in your list of importance. After all, it’s not like you need to keep me happy is it? I’m not going to change to another provider as I’m already with one.

> the cost of this call. Unfortunately, I’m also unable to refund you for the use of
> cyber cafes in France as this charge is out of our control.

And again I put it to you that you aren’t unable, but are refusing. The charge was certainly not out of your control. If your staff had not called me – which they should not have done as they do not have permission – I would not have had to detour via somewhere I could email at short notice to get credit on my phone. And let’s not even mention the inconvenience of being unable to receive any calls for two days. After all, there’s no point in mentioning it when you obviously don’t care.

> I am sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you Iain. I hope I’ve explained everything clearly.

You have explained in pretty clear tones that you don’t care about inconveniencing people, costing them money, backtracking over stupid remarks, and being a completely awful company to deal with. Frankly I’m glad I stuck with Vodafone when I considered changing a couple of years ago. They’re awful, but at least they don’t try and wheedle out of refunding money when they screw up.

As I said, repeatedly, your company cost me money and caused me great inconvenience through actions which are actually potentially illegal. Calling me on a telephone number which I have not given you permission to call – and which is in fact listed on the Telephone Preference List – is against the law, as far as I’m aware. To then say that it’s my problem and you’re “unable” to refund me is complete and utter rubbish.

You admit that you should not have called, claim to appreciate the cost and inconvenience, and yet refuse to make reasonable recompense. I find it impossible to believe that in a company the size of O2 you have no means of refunding money to non-clients. This means that as well as making unsolicited phone calls, having awful support, hiring rude staff who hang up on you, providing an unusable comments form on your web page and simply not caring about the problems you cause people… you are also liars.

Nice advert for your company. Have you thought of entering the building trade?

Mosh

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.