O2 and credit check issue

fedup76

I need some advice as I seem to have got myself stuck.

I have an existing O2 contract for me and my son. My wife also has an O2 contract.  All 3 phones are ready for upgrades. We waiting until the Black Friday deals were available to upgrade our 3 phones and also to sign up for a new contract and phone for my daughter.

I spent 4 hours on the phone with O2 on Sunday, moving my wifes account under mine, upgrading the 3 phones and also purchasing the new phone.  I agreed to pay £100 upfront for each phone and O2 put a hold on my CC for £400, they said they would soft credit check me for the 4 phones. This was done 1 phone at a time.  All passed and the order was moved forward.  The final contract emails that I needed to agree didn't come through straight away but later that evening they arrived.  The links all said that I had waited longer than 72 hours so they had timed out.  I called again on Monday morning, they tried resending them but they were still saying 'timed out'.  The 'only option' was to cancel those orders and redo the order.

I proceeded with that which took another 3 hours on the phone.  They proceeded to credit check me again 1 phone at a time, the first 3 went through ok but on the last phone I failed the credit check.  I can only assume that it is because they had credit checked me 8 times in 2 days.

Was not happy so cancelled the upgrades and new phone and decided to take my business elsewhere.  I now have £700 on my CC locked for 7-10 days, but to top it all off I went to Vodafone to order 4 x sim cards and have failed the credit check there.

My wife and I can wait to upgrade but was hoping to sort out the phones for my kids as Christmas presents but I seem to now have a credit issue which I have not had before and have missed any Black Friday deals if I want to pay cash for anything.

Has anybody got any advice on how I can proceed here. O2 have really shafted me here.

flaneurs_lobster

Black Friday deals are a myth.

Buy the kid's phones for cash.

Get them monthly contracts that don't have credit checks.

Get your wife to buy the kid's phones on PAYM deals.

Any upgrade deals have gone, the new customer deals elsewhere will be just as attractive.

Any company that has you on the phone for more than an hour when you are trying to give them business? Put the phone down.

What phones are you looking to acquire?

fedup76

Thank you for your response.  
Was looking at iPhone 16's.   Any companies you know of that don't do credit checks on monthly contracts?  O2 assured me that the credit checks were only soft checks as I was an existing customer.  This was obviously not the case.  I assume making complaints with O2 will do nothing to repair the damage of all these searches, I just have to wait for them to disappear from my credit history?

PHK

The best advice is to wait for everything to settle down. It’s probably the pattern of activity that has caused this. Generally speaking with credit related transactions the advice is to wait 30days. 

I understand how that would be annoying as the delayed emails were probably not your fault. 

Personally, I would never advise anyone to make so many transactions in one go  whoever their supplier is. And do it online, by adding members to a family group - a quicker process. I don’t mean that as a criticism but as advice for the future.

fedup76

Thank you, I do appreciate the advice, it was my intention when I called them to have a family plan setup with a single bill, did ask why I was having to do a credit check on each phone but I was told this was the process.  Should have done my research before calling them.

I was afraid the solution to the credit related actions was just to wait it out. 

Frozen_up_north

fedup76 said:

All 3 phones are ready for upgrades

Has anybody got any advice on how I can proceed here. O2 have really shafted me here.

Sorry to say this to a newcomer to the forum, but the "ready for upgrades" is really nonsense. Also why do you think you "need" an iPhone 16?

The money saving way is to forget the phone + SIM contracts that typically run for a couple of years, keep your existing phone(s) and go SIM only. You do not need to deal with O2, if you need their coverage consider switching to  GiffGaff without a contract. It is easy and you can ditch them in 30 days or less, and with no credit check.

If your phones really are worn out, buy replacements outright.

We have one SIM with GiffGaff (O2 network) and another with 1p Mobile (EE network). These are non contract SIMs, just pay with auto topup from the bank account. We have iPhones that were "last years models" and purchased outright (not on a 2 year finance deal from a network).

fedup76

Thank you for your response.  I appreciate your point on 'ready for upgrades' and needs vs wants.  The truth is I dropped the ball on the upgrades, the phones are around 4 years old and worn out.  The sim contracts had expired and we were paying over the odds and so I needed to do something.

As it now appears that I am unable to get credit for a time, i've purchased the phones outright and checked which network best covers our area which happens to be Vodafone so have gone with Talk Mobile sims which are very cheap indeed so will be saving myself a fair chunk of money vs being locked into a phone and sim deal over the next 2-3 years.

O2 have still not refunded my money, after 2 weeks and several calls, have not been able to cancel the orders and 1 of the phones has even turned up at my house 11 days after attempting to cancel the order. On my last call to them I ended up speaking with a supervisor who when asked to send me an email to confirm the status of my orders as I was approaching the 14 day cool off period, hung up on me.