back to article Outage outrage: O2 dishes out 3 free days, £10 voucher

Following last week's O2 mobile network outage, the telco is giving contract customers three days of free connectivity in compensation. Pre-paid users will get an additional topup, and everyone gets £10 to spend in the O2 store. Of the operator's three million customers, only those who suffered connection difficulties will get …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    10% eh...

    So what to spend that £1.75 on!

    1. leexgx

      Re: 10% eh...

      that should be good for users who get the 1p Glitch (giffgaff should just add 1% for every topup always so they get less angry users when the internet takes 20p before they can buy an goodybag)

  2. Pabs
    Thumb Up

    Good stuffs

    Given that ther eis no obligation, and no company guarentees 100% up time, I think what O2 are doing is beyond the call of duty.

    It affected me, no big deal. I get £10 to spend, and 10% off my bill....fairy nuff!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good stuffs

      Yep. They have not been perfect but have always gone over and beyond to fix any problems on my account or bill or with the service.

      The internet part (O2 ISP) of the company though did the opposite. :/

  3. Valerion
    Thumb Up

    I'm happy

    3 days free for 1 day of outage, and a tenner to spend.

    Should be good enough to keep me on the network and not ditch them. Many other companies might have done nothing.

  4. ranger

    Can't really complain at that :-)

    ...but how are you going to prove that you suffered connection difficulties? What if your phone registered with a cell and then lost it again - can O2 tell from their logs if problems were outage related vs. something else? I work in an area where the O2 tower seems completely random, so used to reduced or no connectivity (some days I get HSPDA, other times lucky to get one bar and 3G; the joys of the countryside). Reserving judgement until the specifics of this are known...

    1. Annihilator
      Go

      I suspect it's worth a punt and the easiest/cheapest solution for O2 is to compensate anyone who says they were affected. For ~£10 (less when you consider not everyone will bother with the voucher rigmarole) it's not worth the investigation.

    2. Jon 37
      Go

      > ...but how are you going to prove that you suffered connection difficulties?

      O2 have figured it out already. To quote them:

      "We have now identified all those customers directly affected (those whose devices could not connect on our system)"

      Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18884472

  5. Poyol

    Not bad!

    Like Pabs said it's not a guaranteed service so they weren't obliged to do this!

    Well done, O2!

  6. JakeyC

    So Contracts are better off?

    "An extra 10%" for PAYG and "10% back" for contract customers may sound equivalent but the better compensation is actually the latter.

    Based on a £20/month contract or top-up:

    Contract: £20 for the cost of £18 = extra 11.1%

    PAYG: £22 for the cost of £20 = extra 10%

    1. Elmer Phud
      IT Angle

      yeah but no but

      If yer spending £20 a month on PAYG shouldn't ye be on a contract as ye'd get more services bunged in as sweeteners?

    2. Jon 37
      Boffin

      So if you're on PAYG, top up £50 to get an extra £5, then don't top up for the next 2 and a half months. Abracadabra, you got an extra 25% of a normal month's bill.

      The contract person can't do that, they just get the 11.1%.

      1. auburnman
        Meh

        but that's less convenient as it's bringing your payments forward. Much better to have that extra £30 in my bank account than O2's, until you need the topup. Most networks would love it if you bought your topup sooner -I don't know if it's still on the go but there used to be extra sweeteners available for topping up £50 or more in one go.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good for O2

    As a Natwest customer, fat chance of anything similar in recognition of about a week's chaos - we did get three copies of an apology printed on nice heavy paper with our statements this month, though. Not sure why 3 copies in one envelope...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good for O2

      'we did get three copies of an apology printed on nice heavy paper with our statements this month, though. Not sure why 3 copies in one envelope...'

      Three copies means they're *really* sorry. If you were one of their premium banking customers you'd have got five.

    2. jonathanb Silver badge

      Re: Good for O2

      They probably put mine in your envelope by mistake. Prince Philip might ask if their mailroom is staffed by Indians. I won't comment though.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good for O2

      Probably one for each account. It's all an automated system. When you train the new recruits to blindly press the buttons, then sack the actual programmers/workers with the knowledge of the system, no one knows these things happen till way into the gaff.

    4. Shagbag

      Re: Good for O2

      Quit your complaining. If you actually suffered a loss that you can prove was caused by their negligence, then give them the opportunity to compensate you for the FULL AMOUNT of your loss. They've admitted fault so, as long as you can prove your loss to your local County Court, they really don't have a legal defence.

      Should you accept their current offer, however, then you may find it very difficult to make a further claim. So you really need to weigh up what they're offering with the size of your loss and the hassle of going through the Civil Justice system.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good for O2

      "Not sure why 3 copies in one envelope..."

      Because they mean the apology soooo much, that they orginally wanted to supply the apologies on a roll in perforated sheets. However, in a separate customer unfriendly fuckup, the Post Orifice's current charging plan means they now charge an arm and a leg for anything that isn't flat, and so Gnatwest have taken the path of least resistance and given you three sheets (or plies, perhaps).

  8. Martin 47

    hmmmm giffgaff are offering an extra 10% on any top up you make in the week beginning 19 July,

    Better than nothing I suppose, although as I will not be topping up in that week that's exactly what it is

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      and of course

      if you are on automatic top up goody bags there will likely be no difference

      what can they give me extra I already get unlimited texts and internet, and 300 calls, of which I use less than 100, giving me £1 back may be useful

      but hopefully they will give this all to charity like they did last time they had issues

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not "best efforts"...

    Contracts tend to use the phrase "reasonable endeavours" and avoid superlatives such as "best".

    If they used "best efforts" it could be argued legally that they should use every available employee to fix a problem, which isn't going to happen.

  10. Annihilator
    Thumb Up

    "Compensation is a tough thing to do – it won't be enough to satisfy customers who had come to rely on their mobile connectivity, but O2 had no legal obligation to offer anything at all (all operators run on "best effort")"

    Good efforts for actually saying that instead of some reports that just ran story after story of how much revenue people claimed to have lost..

    I'd have been even more surprised if they'd blamed a 3rd party - part of using 3rd parties is that you retain the entire accountability for service. I contract with O2, not their partners. Though having said that, they will tend to blame BT OR for broadband issues...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Untrue El Reg Opinion

    "but O2 had no legal obligation to offer anything at all"

    02 charge me X per month for a service. Last billing period, the provided me with (31-3)/31 days service and I therefore should be charged only that proportion of X. There is a legal obligation to charge only for what is provided and no more. El Reg make it sound as if O2 could have billed for the entire month...

    1. Richard 81

      Re: Untrue El Reg Opinion

      Check the wording of your contract. El Reg is no doubt correct that O2 had no _legal_ obligation.

      I'm not saying the wording is fair.

  12. Wendyw

    Still having problems

    Hi, is anyone still having problems.

    Both me & my son are. His connection keeps cutting out & my voicemails are still taking over 2 days to get to me. Have reported to 02 but they just say everything is ok.

  13. AfternoonTea
    Happy

    Given that I am PAYG and uneffected by the downage, will I get a free ben?

  14. zakariamohammed
    Unhappy

    Sorry folks this is just a PR exercise O2 will not pay out to ALL Affected customers

    Just phoned O2 to pay my monthly bill for my company of £463.62. Asked them about compensation as mentioned in the above article. The customer service agent said he will check through the ten phones that we have O2 to see if service was affected. Surprised to discover none of my phone was affected according to their system.

    I am an O2 reseller, I sell O2 contracts. My clients could nto get hold of me. The only signal I had was SOS. I opened a brand new phone thinking it was the phone. Every sharer and many of my clients whom I sold O2 contracts were affected.

    I told O2 that either I am lying or you have a rubbish system in place.

    So folks good luck with your compensation. Seems like O2 are just doing a PR exercise.

    The Register please feel free to contact me ... I think O2 need to be investigated. A simple call usage pattern will reveal that my phone and that of the sharers and clients were affected. I sent emails to my clients to let them know.

    "We have now identified all those customers directly affected (those whose devices could not connect on our system) and we are giving them the equivalent of three days back for the disruption as a gesture of goodwill and to say sorry," the operator added.

    How do they identify? Can they explain to journalists what tool they use. Then perhaps they can shed light how my phone that was AFFECTED shows up as NOT AFFECTED.

    I don't care for their miserable compensation but it is the PRINICIPAL! O2 execs act now before your PR exercise hits you in the face.

  15. takuhii

    How will they identify those customers that were affected? BOTH my O2 handsets went offline with this outage and so far i've heard nothing from them

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