Last week, before the network “Omni-shambles” that seemed to impact almost everyone on O2 in the past few days, I moved some of my mobile accounts from O2 to geek poster boy network GiffGaff. When I say move of course I am well aware that GiffGaff is still actually O2, it’s an internal MVNO – Mobile Virtual Network Operator, but it is significantly different in a number of ways…
- There is no real customer support other than that provided by other users via forums
- There is little direct marketing of the service instead relying on word of mouth and social network based sharing.
- As a result of 1 & 2 the network is amazing value, I pay £10 a month without contract for unlimited internet, texts and 250mins talk time.
If you are interested you can get more details and a free SIM here ( Disclosure – As part of the social network marketing plan I get a £5 kickback if you join !!)
But the real point of this post is not about joining a new network it’s about leaving the old one. This should be easy, I never sign up to long duration contracts so am usually on a payg plan or at worse a 30 day rolling contract.. So all I need is my PAC code to port my telephone number from one network to the other.
Not wanting to listen to the pleadings of O2 retentions department, I tried to do this online and so the story starts..
This is no simple form to fill in and O2 won’t do this by email, instead you must take part in a online chat session.
After waiting 5 minutes or so, my online helper Henry comes onto the chat at 8:28 pm
Here is the dialogue..
This is a great way of meeting people is it not, it’s now about 9:10pm and I have a new online friend at O2 called Barry.
I think I might have upset Barry, I guess I will never know such are these brief online friendships I have another new friend, how exciting Timothy..
Timothy what a star.. all done and dusted despite having to give him the same characters from my password three times !!
My conversation with Henry, Barry and Timothy finished at 10:50pm, that’s one hour and twenty two minutes to leave o2.
Now until this week I though that perhaps they are just making things difficult to prevent people from leaving, but actually you know I just think their systems are up to the job.
So ask yourself this… Do you want your mobile network to invest in it’s network and it’s back office systems recognising that’s it really just a utility for moving bits wirelessly or do you want a operator that spends instead huge amounts of money subsidising handsets, sponsoring music venues or buying people cinema tickets.
Trouble is you don’t really have that choice..
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)