That some O2 customers may have wanted for Christmas It was a telephone number, long appreciated some I have had the habit of getting lost. Whether they were lucky is another matter, as O2’s customer service can be as difficult to pin down as Lord Lucan.
J.D.Her O2 number was taken away when scammers, posing as her, tricked O2 into transferring it to a SIM card they had purchased from another provider.
This allowed them to receive text messages, including two-factor authentication codes sent by banks to verify that a customer is who they say they are. As a result, more than £4,500 was quickly stolen from his credit card. O2 explained that it had been a victim of “SIM swap fraud”, where criminals transfer your phone number to your SIM card to receive your calls and text messages, including those from banks.
He promised to block her stolen number and send a new card. This came and JD’s phone came back to life, but only for a few hours. Incredibly, the scammers managed to, once again, divert the number to their own sim. O2 admitted that it had not flagged the first SIM swap as fraud, which meant the second was approved without being challenged.
JD says she was repeatedly told the fraud team would contact her, but they didn’t. When, five days later, he managed to locate them, they had closed the case.
He was told that he was not owed any compensation because O2 had done nothing wrong. By then, I had been without a working phone for almost two weeks. His bank refunded him the stolen £4,500, but he was unable to access any of his bank accounts because he could not receive the security codes needed to log in.
O2 claim it was a coincidence that the number was restored on the day I made contact, but acknowledged their communications had been poor and offered £350 as goodwill.
When A.W.‘s A 91-year-old mother lost the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) number she relies on, O2 told her her SIM did not match the number in question. AW called again. “I was told to wait 48 business hours because a form needed to be filled out,” he writes. “Six days later, I was told there was a possibility of account takeover and that it would take me 10 business days to complete two more forms.
“Ten working days after that, I was transferred to the retention department but, again, they told me that since the number and sim didn’t match, there was nothing they could do. “They put me in touch with the fraud department and I received a recorded message before they cut me off.”
O2 decided that the only way to restore the number would be to change the PAYG account to a monthly contract. This was done, a new number was provided and AW canceled the contract within the cooling off period.
Then O2 sprang into action. Not to resolve the complaint, but to demand and pursue an unexplained fee of £9.35. Of the £24 credit stranded in the old distribution account, there was no news. O2 told me that he had made several attempts to contact AW’s mother to resolve the issue. I asked her when and how the company realized I had been calling her on the long-lost number.
He then attributed the delay to the fact that the distribution account had not been fully created. How is it possible? I asked, if it had been working perfectly for years. What O2 apparently meant is that customers setting up a monthly contract must provide full details, which, since the account in question was not a monthly contract, is irrelevant.
He belatedly decided that AW’s mother might have been a victim of SIM swapping fraud, but he couldn’t be sure, as he didn’t have enough information on delivery customers.
He has now repaid the credit, paid £110 out of goodwill for the poor service and offered, five months late, to restore the lost number, but now, unsurprisingly, AW’s mother has changed providers .
AF alerted O2 after receiving an unsolicited PAC (transfer authorization code). This allows you to keep your old number when you change service providers. O2 told him it needed 10 working days to investigate. Then his phone number stopped working and he was told it had been transferred. More than two weeks later, he called O2 three times and visited a branch; On the third attempt they told him that he had not answered any calls, so the case had been closed.
O2 tells me that he was at fault, as he tried to contact him three times just before closing the case. He was also the victim of SIM swapping fraud, he confirmed, and his number has since been returned, but he will not be compensated because, as O2 predictably states, it was all his fault.
Telecoms regulator Ofcom requires verification of a customer’s identity before porting a number. It says it has been monitoring complaints about SIM swapping fraud involving O2, which is last on its list. latest performance table due to poor handling of complaints.
It says: “We have discussed the steps they are taking to protect customers,” adding: “It is vital that all communications providers protect their customers, and if we see evidence of widespread harm, we have shown that we will not hesitate to act.” . when appropriate.”
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