The Shit Companies Blog

On the 4/10/2006 whilst in the UK, I went to do what I had been doing for years which was to place an international call to the girlfriend’s cell phone via a discounted international provider (call18866). Instead of getting a connection to the international provider who would then provide me with the usual “which number do you want to dial?” type prompt, the phone piped and went dead. It was quite clear it was not even attempting to set the call up.

So I tried to call a completely separate company which provides a similar service (superline) on a different number prefix and the handset said “network blocked”.

Now there are two reasons why I pay a UK cellular subscription:

1) keep a static contact identity (a static UK telephone number)

2) security and knowledge that I can call just about from anywhere to ANY telephone number (leaving premium number barring etc. aside).

With complete rage I called O2 customer service. The agent denied that there was any number blocking going on and said maybe I had not paid my bills with these other companies Etc. or maybe I should clean the SIM card and all this type of nonsense. I very harshly and very clearly put it to him that logic dictates the numbers are being blocked (reminder, O2 customer service have not had the required training in logic even to the level that comes natural to the rest of us). Why should two freephone numbers to two separate companies suddenly stop working that just happen to provide discounted international calling services? (A note for readers outside of the UK, “tollfree” numbers are not free from a UK cell phone).

The agent kept arguing that “the calls were indefinitely [sic] not blocked”. Four times I said to the agent I think that you are meaning the word “definitely”. On each occasion he said that he did mean “indefinitely”. The poor chap could not comprehend that he was using the wrong word and I quickly had to give up on him going further in understanding the logic that the calls were being blocked. The following day I left the UK.

When I returned back to the UK on the 20^th October I again tried to use third party discounted international calling services to call the girlfriend’s cell phone. Again one service number pipped out and the other said “network blocked” as before. Again I called O2 in rage mode. Even though it was the middle of the day the O2 customer services number connected but then played the ringing tone for so long I gave up. I repeated this another three times. Since I was dialing their 0870 I was being charged premium to hear ringing!

On the fifth attempt I got an agent who had a shit attitude but was straight with the score at least. He said the numbers represented discounted calling services and that when O2 find such numbers they add them to a dynamic block list. I argued that I found this a breach of contract and found it totally unacceptable. He said that according to the contract I had signed with O2 they had the right to block every single outbound call I ever placed and could still force me to pay the monthly rental charge until the end of contract! I asked him to at least refund all the failed calls to O2 customer service and he refused! He finished by exclaiming the companies I was trying to dial were “fraudulent” because they used O2 airtime (crazy I know).

You can guess who I will not be renewing the contract with? (I’ve got more than one O2 post pay phone and was in their top 5% spenders list and had been a customer since the late 90s). The problem is I am not currently sure who I would switch to instead, I had considered T-Mobile but this put me off. I would love to get rid of the cell phone operator completely but there is not enough coverage of alternatives (like WiFi) yet. But I can say one thing for sure, cell phone operators on the whole continue to increase feelings of brand resentment and as soon as a new technology player offers a means to evade them I will as I imagine many others will do. What I would like to see is a flat rate plan that covers international calling and data but I don’t think I will ever see the day from a telecoms operator. It's not only their customer services who are fu$%ed but their time plus distance business model going forwards.