That said, one customer was put through hell by mobile operators O2 and Three. Their ordeal has revealed deep flaws in the state of account security and customer service. Previously, KH was issued a notice of default. The single notice is for a £1,461.57 debt associated with a phone she never ordered and doesn’t have in her possession. This outcome occurred even though KH had been trying to fix the issue for several weeks.
KH had ordered a new phone from O2, her mobile service provider since 2003. The order raised a red flag as potentially fraudulent, so O2 stopped the transaction. It took three weeks before O2 provided any service to KH, during which she spent approximately six hours trying to resolve the issue.
In the midst of her efforts to get to the bottom of things, KH received a letter from Three, requesting payment for the alleged debt. This was confusing, too, because really KH hadn’t contracted with Three for any new phone. After months of back and forth information with Three, they eventually disclosed that it was them 18 months earlier who told her—through a new phone contract she supposedly signed— She vehemently disagrees with this assertion.
To atone for their error, Three also tried to compensate KH £100 on good will. In addition, they not only replaced the phone but did so with a brand new replacement phone with a two-year warranty. KH encountered additional ripples in the system when it took Three 11 days to restore her access to her previous phone number. They accomplished this introduction with the use of a new SIM card.
After months of run-around, Three eventually accepted that KH had been a victim of identity theft. In response, they pledged to close this new account opened in her name. Further, they promised her that the fraudulent transaction would be flagged as such in their system.
“It took four months for Three to apologize and assure me that the matter was closed,” KH stated, reflecting on the protracted timeline of events.
In spite of these promises, KH still had a hell of a time with O2. A week after arranging delivery of her new phone was cancelled, O2 sent her a text saying she had changed her phone number. While she underwent this change, it rendered her existing phone line inoperable. Then it took O2 an additional four days to agree that KH’s account would be reinstated after the return of the handset.
O2 acknowledged the situation in a statement: “While the order was correctly stopped after our systems detected potentially fraudulent activity, we accept that there were failings in our handling of this case after the customer confirmed to us that her order was legitimate.”
As part of their resolution efforts under the TCF, Three ended up rewarding KH an extra £200 in goodwill for her troubles. Still, the cumulative experience has her feeling frustrated and doubting the trustworthiness of either provider.