O2 changes upgrade policy - people very unhappy
A listener to the Ray Darcy show got in touch with me after being offered an upgrade by O2 in May which was subsequently withdrawn. After the first offer he was told that seeing as how there were no phones he particularly fancied he could hold off. But when he called them last week he was told his entitlement had disappeared. Turns out he is not alone in being very, very unhappy with O2 right now. Not long after I got his mail I started to get others from other equally annoyed customers.
Another person who was entitled to a Gold upgrade – O2 offer silver, gold and platinum upgrades depending on what class of customer you are – but wen he went online last week to choose a new phone he found his upgrade had disappeared.
And online discussion forums are hopping with people who have effectively lost their upgrades. What 02 have done is just a little sneaky. They have changed their policy significantly and it has become much more difficult to qualify for an upgrade.
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.
Now that doesn’t tell us a whole lot. I wanted to know the numbers behind the policy change. Specifically I wanted to know how much a user had to spend every year to qualify for an upgrade today and how much they would have had to spend to qualify for that upgrade two months ago. O2 told me that the information was commercially sensitive and were unable to give me the before and after figures.
I have to say I think this response is ridiculous I am sure they have their reasons for refusing to give me the numbers but I don’t think keeping it secret helps O2’s cause. I don’t see how it can be commercially sensitive to withhold details of what a customer needs to do to qualify for an upgrade when that information would have been available to all of o2’s customers from their call centre. If you as an o2 customer ring the company and ask for information about an upgrade they will presumably not say ‘sorry this information is commercially sensitive’ so I can’t for the life of me see why they’d tell me that.
And the confusion is not doing them any favours. Looking at the discussion boards on the web the rumours are flying and the figures are truly shocking. Some people are saying that if an annual spend of €1500 was enough to qualify for a particular upgrade a year ago that sum has increased to €5000 today. Now that figure was flatly denied by an O2 spokeswoman so clearly that is wrong. More posters – and these are o2 customers - were saying that the spend needed to qualify for an upgrade has increased from €700 to €1700 well over 100 per cent.
One of the problems here might be the iPhone. In July a new 3G version of the iPhone was launched so a lot of people who may have been entitled to upgrades to the new version were waiting as stock was limited. Now their opportunity to upgrade to the new phone has been taken away. And while this is only speculation, one of the reasons for the big change in its upgrade policy may have to do with the iPhone. Stocks are low and it can’t supply all its existing customers who want the phone. More importantly, it probably wants to keep the iPhone stock it has to entice new customers and doesn’t wanting to be handing them out to existing customers. Which is all well and good unless those existing customers get so annoyed that they take their business elsewhere.
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Switching networks is almost easier than trying to get an upgrade.
Just check the callcosts site to find the cheapest network/plan for your usage.
Comment by DaveGhttp://www.callcosts.ie/mobile_phones/Mobile_Calculator.123.LE.asp