O2 New Retention Tariff Discount 500 / Discount 750

mzqa395

Skol wrote:

I am currently on O2 600 tariff through carphone warehouse. The monthly rental is £55, but my bills usually come in at approx £80/month (due to international calls when abroad).
Carphone warehouse were very savvy and very unhelpful. I spoke to "sales" the first time and because I'm only 6 months into the contract, they would not offer me anything better than my current deal and when I threatened to move they put me through to "diconnections" dept. After a massive wait, I got through and asked if they could do anything to improve my tariff before I cancelled by contract. They said they couldn't and would have to put me through to sales (:mad:). By this point they'd called my bluff and I'd tied myself up in knots, so I ended the call before I went too far. After spending a couple of hours trawling through onecompare.com (recommended by Martin), I managed to find a deal offering Vodafone Anytime 1000 for approx £33/month, so I called "disconnections" again asking for my pac reference (I want to retain my number). Again after spending forever on hold (it is an 0870 number, so I think they deliberately send you through as many automated messages as possible!), I spoke to a very aggressive woman, who would not help me, other than to say that I had to write a letter to head office, asking for the number and explaining why I wanted it and that it would take 28 days for it to come through. :mad: At this point I asked to be put on the minimum tariff (£20 she told me), as I wanted to pay as little as possible to finish the contract.
Annoyed that I would probably not bother if I had to wait 30 days for the pac ref., I then rang sales again (it took me approx 10 attempts - "operators busy, please try later" - and about an hour) and asked for my pac ref. This time I got a really helpful girl who, after trying her best to disuade me from leaving, (but obviously had no authority to offer me a better deal) filled out the request form over the phone and took the settlement payment there and then (only £110, because my request to reduce my tariff had already been processed!:D ). She explained that she had to clear this payment before issuing the pac ref., but that I would receive it within the next 48hrs.

To cut a long story short; either I am crap at negotiating, or carphone warehouse are very adept at making it very difficult to improve tariffs, or leave. Either way, just by following Martin's tips and reading everyone else's experiences on this forum, I reckon I will get an extra 400 minutes and save approx £37/month, even allowing for the paying off of my existing contract!

Thanks everyone!:T :j :beer:

Try to ring CPW/o2 0800 free number 08000490049 option 2 2 2 and 1 for o2 service from landline for free. This can sve you some money instead of dialing 0870 customer service number

niceshoes_2

matrix999 wrote:

This is a message to all MSE who are having problems with the deal they have been given by Retentions and also those who are waiting on phones to arrive.

Send an e-mail to peter.erskine@o2.com he is the managing director of O2. When he receives your complaint it will be passed to one of his colleagues in Customer Relations who will resolve the complaint.

Please don't get Customer Relations mixed up with Customer Services, his team in Leeds have far more authority than Customer Services and usually can resolve complaint/problems straight away.

I've had dealings with them and I have to say they are super efficent!!

Thanks for this - I will email him on monday and fingers crossed it will get resolved some time this year!

massa121

Hi just rang O2 retentions to see what they have in offer. My twelve months are up today and the best they can offer to me is half price line rental. He didn't even want to offer me a free phone:mad: I have spent over £1200! this year on £30-200xnet mins contract. Phone was used by my son carelessly. The retention even refused to take my one month's notice to terminate contract from today and said they only take it in writing. They won't even give me fax number to send so I know they have received it. So I have to post my notice by recorded delivery.

Mobile_Mole

massa121 wrote:

My twelve months are up today and the best they can offer to me is half price line rental. He didn't even want to offer me a free phone. The retention even refused to take my one month's notice to terminate contract from today and said they only take it in writing.

Is this CPW retentions you are dealing with by any chance? You wouldn't have this hassle if you were dealing direct with O2.

Cheers
Mark

matrix999

Mobile_Mole wrote:

Is this CPW retentions you are dealing with by any chance? You wouldn't have this hassle if you were dealing direct with O2.

Cheers
Mark

I agree with Mark, this does sound like CPW Customer Retentions!

O2 Direct Customers are certainly offered better deals than this, if you are with O2 via the CPW, then my advice to you is cancel your contract and get yourself down to an O2 Shop or O2 Online http://www.o2.co.uk and get one of the direct contracts. After 12 months you will be able to re negotiate your tariff with O2 Direct.

jnm21

Or perhaps an o2 Online sim only deal for a few months?

So can anyone confirm that CPW are a service provider (that term sounds wrong - which is annoying as I know the right term, just can't dig it out) in the same way as singlepoint were? If so, who are the middle men (service providers?) & which shops connect direct to o2?

massa121

M8s sorry for delay in replying my post but just to confirm I actually rang O2 retentions on one of the freephone numbers given on previous threads and not CPW.

matrix999

massa121 wrote:

M8s sorry for delay in replying my post but just to confirm I actually rang O2 retentions on one of the freephone numbers given on previous threads and not CPW.

If your spending the money you mentioned in a previous post then O2 will want to keep you as a customer - my advice is to ring retentions again and speak to anothger advisor.

Where did you get your O2 contract?

Mobile_Mole

jnm21 wrote:

So can anyone confirm that CPW are a service provider (that term sounds wrong - which is annoying as I know the right term, just can't dig it out) in the same way as singlepoint were? If so, who are the middle men (service providers?) & which shops connect direct to o2?

You are correct. The service provider is responsible for billing and customer service. Orange, T-Mobile and 3 do not use third party service providers but in the case of O2 and Vodafone there are multiple providers.

CPW is just one such provider as was Singlepoint, the service provider from hell, which was bought by Vodafone in 2003.

If you connect to an O2 or Vodafone contract via the CPW website or in a CPW store, or via one of its online subsidiaries such as e2save or onestopphoneshop, then your service provider will be CPW. Last time I checked, the other two big high street retailers, Phones4U and The Link, were not using third party service providers. Customer service and billing would be handled by the network operator.

In my opinion, the best online retailer providing direct connections to O2 and Vodafone is mobileshop.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
Mark

jnm21

Don't remind me about Vodafone buying singlepoint - they now bill me for an o2 connection & have never billed me right for inclusive calls on my OP contract when I use it between 7am & 8am weekays.