I am pretty tense at the moment as you might expect, with all that I have to do and the limitations of time - more hours in a day God, is that too much to ask? You fucking idiot.
I'd had a busy day, getting another podcast done
with that bloody fool Andrew Collings and doing all sorts of bits of admin. Suddenly it was the evening time and I needed to dash out to do another preview, but I was perusing my online account and noticed that O2 who I have my mobile phone with and with whom I used to have mobile broadband had taken £92 out of my account. I knew what this was about and my heart sank immediately. I had cancelled my mobile dongle a couple of months ago because it wouldn't work with my new laptop and I was planning on getting a 3G iPad which would do the job for me. I had signed up for an 18 month contract back in January 2009, which meant I had to pay out the last couple of months (I hadn't used the thing since January so they'd already had some extra money off me for nothing). According to their computer I had a 24 month contract, but I pointed out that this wasn't the case and they checked and saw that I was right and cancelled the order.
A little later I got an email explaining I had been billed for £92, presumably for the 6 months that I hadn't ordered and certainly wouldn't be using. A couple more calls and some more explanations and they again realised their mistake and the bill became 1p for a while and then correctly back to nothing.
So far, so boring.
So clearly in spite of all this, some gremlin in the machinery still believed I had had a 24 month contract and so I had been charged anyway. I hoped a quick call would sort this out. I was, of course incorrect.
I rang up, but hit my first hurdle when I was asked for the mobile broadband phone number. Naturally I didn't know this and on checking my online account, once the thing has been shut down they had wiped all the records from there. So I couldn't enter it when requested to by the computerised voice. I didn't think that would matter too much as surely they could find my account by other means. But when I finally got through to a human being, aware of time passing and the fact I would have to leave soon, she asked for the number and I explained I didn't have it and she told me that there was no way she could access my account without the phone number. I heavily suspected that this wasn't the case. Mainly because I am pretty sure I have done this before without problems. I explained that I couldn't get the number as my account had been shut down and that she'd have to find some other way to access the account otherwise O2 would be stealing money from me. My blood was boiling a little bit already - it was annoying that this thing that I had spoken to them 3 times about already was still rumbling on- but I remained reasonably polite, if a little agitated. I think the woman was having a bad day too, but she wasn't good at her job and kept talking over me as I tried to explain what had happened and repeating that there was absolutely nothing that she could do without a mobile number. I told her that I didn't think that was true. She clearly didn't like me much and I had to tell her to treat me a little bit more respectfully at one point, even though I had accused her of lying to me.
This went round in circles for a while and I told her that I had my mobile and my iPad with O2 and that if she couldn't sort out this issue then I would have no other choice but to move my accounts to another provider.
This seemed to make her a little more concerned than she had been and she told me she would speak to her supervisor and I got played some Elbow for a couple of minutes. Then this now very surly woman returned to inform me that she "might" be able to access my account if I gave her my postcode. So I was right. She had been lying. I resisted the temptation to say, "So when you just said that there was no way you could do that and I told you that that was a lie, I was right then?"
She took my postcode and there was a beat and she said, "We have no account with that postcode." Which I knew had to be a lie. Because even if my mobile broadband account had been entirely erased then my mobile and my 3G account had that postcode. I started to get a little crosser as I told her this, but she was insistent that I did not even have a mobile phone account with O2 even though I was talking to her from an O2 mobile. I told her I had the original email with the order number for the dongle and suggested that that might be on the system. She insisted that it wouldn't be. She seemed to want to end the conversation until I could provide her with a number that I didn't have, meaning O2 would just keep the money that they had taken despite strong efforts on my part to point out their mistake. I could feel my blood pressure rising and on top of everything else I thought that it would be fitting if this unnecessary agitation and incredibly poor customer service ended up with my heart popping and me checking out. It was incredibly frustrating. In a way it wasn't worth me spending time and energy in the pursuit of £92 that it seemed at this juncture that it would take me several phone calls to reclaim, but there was a principle at stake. It's wrong for companies to take money that doesn't belong to them. I reminded her how long I had been an O2 customer and repeated my request to be transferred to someone who could cancel my mobile phone account, or at least sort this issue out. After 30 minutes of being on my phone she finally agreed to take my order number and hey presto the account came straight up. Again I resisted the temptation to tell her that I had known this all along, but it was infuriating that this could have been handled so much better. My girlfriend later told me that she used to work in customer service and sometimes when things were difficult to do the staff would claim thing were impossible, because otherwise they had to get a supervisor and it would take up lots of time and they get into trouble if they don't take a certain number of calls an hour. Evenso, it would have seemed sensible to admit that it was possible to access my account a lot earlier.
She was in there and told me that the account was all paid up. I said that yes it was, because they had taken the money that I didn't owe them. Even now she didn't grasp the issue.
"This is a broadband account is it?" she said, despite the fact I had repeatedly told her what my problem was.
"Yes," I said.
"Then I need to transfer you to someone else," she again, I suspect, lied. Only as the transfer was going through did I realise she hadn't given me the mobile number, which she presumably now knew. Was I going to have to go through all this again?
As it happened I wasn't, as she had transferred me to home broadband rather than mobile broadband (and surely she knew it wasn't home broadband that I had been talking about) and the new lady told me that there was nothing she could do to help and nor could she transfer me to the right person (surely not true either) and that I would have to start the whole process again. My blood was fizzing. I didn't have time and I went downstairs in quite a state of suppressed fury which didn't leave me for at least an hour. The drive to my gig was a tense and unpleasant one. I understood why businessmen peg it in their mid-forties sometimes. I hadn't needed this hassle.
The more I thought of it, the crosser I became and the more determined to find a new phone provider. I have been having quite a lot of issues with BT over my home broadband connection and it was annoying that this had come up now. Especially given I have so little time before I go to Edinburgh and so much to do. Could I face another 45 minute conversation leading nowhere?
As it happens, I just rang O2 before I wrote this on Thursday lunchtime and the lady I talked to this time completely grasped the issue, made no claim that I had to give her the mobile broadband number, was happy to take the order number, got my account, saw what had happened immediately and said that sometimes the direct debits don't get closed down in time and she would reimburse the money straight away. The call took three minutes from start to finish. So I had clearly just got an obstructive member of staff last night. That is, if the money does end up being reimbursed. Do I get any compensation for my time and emotional damage though O2? I can't believe how much this incident affected me. Nor the difference between being treated with efficiency and respect, even if you yourself might be a little perturbed.
I suspect that last night's lady might do better on another day and that we caught each other at exactly the wrong times. But her blatant lies are quite breathtaking, especially with the hindsight of how easy it was today.
Meanwhile I think I'd better go with the plan of dying before I am 45 rather than living to 90. I am never going to be able to hold on if life aggravates me this much on a day to day basis.
