O2 UK Hit Customer with £1,000 Bill After Losing their Mobile Number
Most people who call up their mobile operator’s retentions team to negotiate a better deal don’t expect to walk away from that with an unexpected £1,000 bill and to later be told that “sorry … we’ve lost your [mobile] number [and] … there isn’t anything we can do about it“. Nevertheless, that’s what recently happened to one of O2’s (Virgin Media) customers.
Like many of O2’s customers, Sam was recently notified that he was going to be hit by an unexpected cost increase due to a change in their mid-contract pricing policy (here). His response was to do what any savvy consumer would do in such a situation and contact the operator in an attempt to agree a new (cheaper) price plan. Sam had both an airtime plan and associated device plan, the latter of which still had 26 months left to run out of 3 years.
The call went well and Sam agreed to a new price plan of £18 per month, which marked a big improvement on what he was paying before (£36 + the 20% reduction that O2 give you for multiple lines / family members). Sam was also informed that this process would entail disconnecting his old number and moving it to the new plan. So far, so good. But it wasn’t to last.
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Sam explained:
“[The support agent] proceeded to disconnect my number, but I kind of made it clear I wasn’t happy that it had to be processed that way and let her do her thing. She then decided to setup the new number, but at no point in advance did she tell me it was a 24 month SIMO replacement. I only found out while I was on the MyO2 [account page] and was looking at the account, as it now showed my line had been “Cancelled”.
She then ran up against the 1st part which was the balance of the airtime on the other agreement which had just become overdue in the last day. I grumbled and told O2 that I do not pay until I get a final bill. She put me on hold and told me no exceptions shortly after. I begrudgingly paid via a Credit Card I’d just paid off.
I told her this and she then proceeded. I had to go through an “Eligibility check” which then failed, but she didn’t tell me. She had me on hold again and then came back telling me some “flags” were preventing the “Activation” of the new ESIM.”
Somehow, during this back-and-forth process, O2 also managed to lose the customer’s mobile number, with their support team initially informing Sam that they wouldn’t be able to either restore his service nor move him to the new plan. Hardly ideal since Sam, like most of us, is heavily dependent upon his mobile number for one-time banking passwords / other security measures, WhatsApp and family contacts etc.
Sam ended up having to spend several more hours on the phone to O2 in an attempt to get his number recovered, which resulted in an Emergency Restore Request (ERR) being placed. Another day passed with no progress, except this time Sam noticed that his device plan had now also disappeared from the MyO2 account pages.
A quick call to customer support confirmed that, due to an “agent error“, his device plan had indeed been cancelled and O2 said he’d shortly be billed £1,000 for the remaining balance. Ouch! At this point, ISPreview became involved and attempted to help Sam get the problem resolved. Another day and more calls passed, but progress was then made.
An O2 spokesperson told ISPreview:
“We’ve spoken with [Sam] directly to apologise for the experience he’s had, which was due to agent error. We have now restored his phone number, agreed a new SIM only plan, and provided a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience caused. [Sam] is happy the matter is resolved.”
Except at the time O2’s response was received, the full matter had not been resolved and Sam – who had accepted a £50 goodwill gesture for the airtime side of his plan – remained far from happy. “The issue is the device plan cannot be reinstated to its original state, and now I have to setup an arrangement with them to pay them in full due to ‘Agent Error’ and have AP markers on my credit file,” said Sam.
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The goal was to try and agree a longer repayment plan than just 12 months and to find a solution that doesn’t involve Sam being left with damage done to his credit file, which might have otherwise prevented him from upgrading or taking out any new services in the future, all through no fault of his own. Thankfully, O2 has since agreed to waive the outstanding amount owed, so there’ll be no negative impact to Sam’s credit file.
The above now serves as a cautionary tale, albeit one with a happy ending after several long days of stressful turmoil and many hours spent on the phone. We would always recommend, when attempting to renegotiate a new plan, that consumers list down the key points of what they expect that plan to include and run through them on the call once an agreement is proposed, just to confirm that everything is satisfactory, before giving consent.
Many of us often make the mistake of assuming that customer support teams will automatically be competent and know to retain key features of existing bundles/plans in such a situation, but that isn’t always the case. Ofcom is separately understood to have recently warned O2 not to tell customers – those in a similar situation to Sam’s – that they have to pay off the handset in full and should instead allow them to “keep paying off your handset in instalments“.
A spokesperson for Ofcom said: “We’re concerned about people being confused by the information O2 has given about device plans. We’ve told O2 to change this so it’s clearer.“
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Well done for intervening Mark. This situation is happening more and more. It’s a disgrace.
Wishful thinking, but the government really needs to legislate against markers being put on credit files so easily. It’d be good if after a successful dispute, the entity (O2 in this case) receives a black mark on their record instead.
Unfortunately you can’t legislate for company culture and I would say most companies these days seem to have a bad culture both towards their staff & Their customers.
It really shouldn’t be that easy for someone to create such a monumental screw-up, and yet with it being O2, im really not surprised. He also shouldn’t have had to go through ISPreview to get this finally sorted, which is further reason to avoid O2 like the plague!!
Glad Sam is sorted now, he shouldn’t have to deal with this BS. No one should.
Avoid anything To do with Virgin Media
Still double check later, had issues in the past with VM messing up a contract renewal for family even though we did it through chat to prevent this in the first place, but still got an email the next day with many mistakes that took several chats to fix.
Sounds like working for O2 retentions team is fun. You need to be good at both talking and computers, because whatever deal you talk your customer into, you have to then activate on the computer yourself. And if you press a button wrong, your customer gets a £1000 bill. Do they not have a dedicated activations department?
I suspect it’s more to do with a “retentions” agent having crazy targets to hit, and seeing an opportunity to get a new connection, which would likely rate higher in their bonus scheme than retaining an existing customer.
They probably didn’t have any deals available, so decided a cease and reprovide would at least help towards their target, rather than just the cease it would have been otherwise!
Been less hassle if he just texted PAC to 65075 and went with a MVNO and just made the remaining payments on his device contract.
VERY TRUE DAVE!
Another good reason to avoid O2, especially after their greedy mid contract rises
sam has done well to stay with o2
The bit that is concerning in all of this is that it looks like the advisor did a credit check on the customer without their consent, then tried to cover it up.
Totally unacceptable in my eyes.
I hot a iPhone16 re furbished delivered wot I hadn’t ordered..I sent it back and there sayin they haven’t received it..so expecting me pay nearly 2000 pound for it..no chance..iv had to change fone networks as I was ill in hospital and kept gettin bombarded with messages on whatsapp
O2 are the WORST. Poor speed, poor signal, terrible customer service.
ok many people claim these things for other networks, but O2 are especially good at being bad.
Then there’s the whole debacle of them leaking customer location data via VoLTE calling.
Timely reminder to never do business with O2 and VM. This is borderline criminal what the agent put Sam through here. How can someone be this bad at their job.
We have less choice these days thanks to our government not having the guts to say no to take overs over the years.
It is either Vodarubbish, BT owned awful EE or O2, that is it for the main networks. The only way of not dealing with these companies is to use MVN and then that is not perfect as my brother found out with trying to get a new sim from Smarty.
Customer service seems to have been thrown out of the window these days, but I surprised that Sam even got through to them in the first place.
I am glad he has got it sorted, but it certainly should not have happened and to be honest, I am so glad I use a sim only service, so much less hassle, normally. Just buy a phone and stick the sim in. If the price is not what I like, change to another provider, while I am sure things can go wrong there while changing number to other service, so far touch wood, things have been fine for me.
Well done Mark for helping him out.,
I will never forget Virgin Media charging a £5 late fee for payment. I explained to the customer service representative on the phone, the reason the payment was slightly late was because the bill payer, my father, had passed away. The representative still refused to waive the £5 late fee. I will never forget that, even 16 years later.
Am I the only person who thinks the regulator needs to be directly looking into this catastrophic mess up and the way it could even be allowed to happen?
Something similar has just happened to me this week. Contacted O2 because of the price hike they managed to disconnect and reconnect the numbers but in the process they accidently cancelled the device plan. They are stating it was a glitch in the system and same as above either have to pay in full or take a hit on my credit file. Ive sent an official complaint so now just a wauting game.
I recently had similar pointing fun with a home connection from Now to BT. First it took 2+ months and 4 visits + 2 missed visits (with no contact). Then once finally activated no outbound calls could be made and inbound went to the Now Voicemail that could no longer be accessed. Called BT, told to wait a day, called the next day, told to wait again, called the third day and was told the port failed, would take 24 hours to provision another number and then they could request the port again. It then took 8 more days after that. 2.5 months total and if I’d not got in touch with the CEO office I imagine it would have been even longer.