Have O2 withdrawn all upgrades?
Well its one of those weeks, another one where an Irish mobile company again leaves its customers hanging.
Conor has the skinny
“When I contacted the company I was given a statement which confirmed it had reviewed eligibility criteria for mobile phone upgrades. I was told this was standard practice within the industry to review and update this criteria on an ongoing basis. Such reviews result in both increased and decreased entitlements to upgrading customers depending on the time of review. This will be subject to further review in the future where the criteria may change again”
My information from inside the company suggests that “all upgrades are on hold, numbers haven’t been hit and marketing budget has been decimated”
Alexia Golez put a question to the O2 representative at Mobile Monday Dublin last night and was smacked down with what was a basic “private company matter blah blah” quote.
So, what’s really happening at O2 ?, the company should be flying with the iPhone franchise and I would have expected them singing their own praises not leaving the customers who made them successful hanging.
O2 told me a couple of weeks ago that upgrades were on hold until October. Today someone said until after Christmas. I’m already an O2 customer, but would like to get an iPhone. As far as I can see, the only way to do so and keep my number (aside from getting an unlocked one on eBay or something) would be to switch to Vodafone pay as you go, taking my number with me, and switch back again to O2 billpay as a new customer. But then I would have to jump through more hoops like being unable to make international calls. Don’t even know if that would work.
This shortly after they paid (at least) €10m for the naming rights of The Point?
After weeks of complaints on their forum, the issue was mentioned in the Sunday papers last week and on the radio on Monday. They backed down and reinstated updates yesterday. Unfortunately most people will not be able to use those upgrades until January.
It sounds like there was a touch of chaos in the upgrades dept with 4 changes in 4 weeks and tonnes of customer complaints.
BTW, as for the iPhone I suspect it has been more of a problem for O2 than a benefit. They cant get stock. Since the 3G version launched I’ve only been in one shop that had any and they were only 8GB versions. The shop assistants keep saying “We got no iPhones this week, maybe we will get some next week”.
I suspect people who were thinking of switching to O2 were waiting until they could buy one. That could explain why they scrapped upgrades since they might have wanted to keep new iPhones for new customers and hoped existing customers would be willing to wait longer.