Complain for change: should O2 compensate me for its outage?

While I was effected by both O2 outages, I’ll forgive them. In the grand scheme of things I’ve only been to one place in the UK where my signal has dropped out and when my phone says it has coverage it actually does.

With a previous contact at Orange, I suffered no end of troubles and constantly had calls dropping out, web pages not loading and delayed text messages…all despite an apparent strong signal. I was paying much more for that contract and not once received an apology or any form of compensation. It’s in these circumstances that I think people are due them.

wavechange, I think I’d have agreed with you 10-15 years ago when mobile phones weren’t so common, but now they are we really rely on them for some quite crucial things: calling people to let them know we’re coming home, calling people to get picked up, etc. Anyone with children would, I suspect, be pretty distressed if they couldn’t call to get hold of them. They’re no longer a ‘nice to have’ – once you get one it becomes a lifeline, and sometimes the only way you can contact someone in an emergency.

Your solution of a spare mobile is a good one, though, and I’m tempted to get a cheap sim card to save this problem happening in the future.

But regarding resourcefulness – I’m pretty sure we were resourceful before mobile phones, because we had to be. I remember when I was a teenager my parents (and all of my friends’ parents) had the number for the phone box on the corner of the park where we used to meet. When the phone rang one of us would run over, answer the phone box, and relay messages about who had to go home for tea. How’s that for resourceful? =)

I firmly believe that mobile phone companies should offer compensation if the service you’ve actually paid for isn’t delivered. For other utilities there are service level agreements which mean that customers have the right to claim compensation if that utility fails to work for a given length of time – and rightly so. If you’ve paid for something you should get it (including a mobile phone service) and if the company fails to deliver this, then you should have the right to get compensation.

Hi wavechange, I completely agree with your point about the Sale of Goods Act and this is something Which? is looking at. Unfortunately change doesn’t happen overnight so we just have to keep plugging away behind the scenes which is what we do 🙂

On your point about complaining about tasteless sandwiches (and the like) my belief is that people should express when they’re dissatisfied with something (no matter how seemingly insignificant) because how are companies expected to improve if they don’t know how dissatisfied you are? I must add though that my conversation about my EAT sandwich was written with tongue firmly in cheek but I still maintain that the point remains the same – companies will never improve if we don’t express our dissatisfaction 🙂

“Now, I should be clear in saying that O2 are not legally obliged to provide text updates or any form of compensation for network failure and this is stated in customer contracts” – I think you’re quite wrong about this. If, as is the case here, O2 fails to carry out the service with reasonable care and skill, it is in breach of Section 13 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982. If O2’s T&Cs attempt to excuse O2 from this statutory obligation or any other reasonable expectation, they would be enforceable according to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.