O2/Sky broadband saga resolution

So finally the saga is over - the line is fixed and I have been credited a month's charge, a whole £20, and they have promised to take up the communication/management failure between O2 and BT OpenReach.

Taking up from the last blog, then.  The engineers did arrive on 23rd as promised - a he and a she, where it appeared the she was being supervised.  She knew what she was doing, and he was checking.  Everything was alright in the house (of course), and they went off to the Exchange, leaving the pole to later if all else failed.  They could do this because he was 'frame trained' and therefore allowed into the Exchange.  They were back very promptly, it took 5 minutes to find my connection in the frame and remove a strand of wire that had fallen over it causing a short.

Aaaagh - this could have been done a week before if OpenReach had checked the Exchange then as their engineer (not frame trained) requested.  

The engineers were good enough to hang around while I checked that I had a good internet connection, even though their responsibility ends at the test socket in the wall box.  Good service from them.

So I called 800 230 0202 again, told them it was fixed, reinforced the point that we had lost a week for no good reason, and reminded them that they had promised to give me one month's credit.  The young lady in Derry said she'd do that right away.  Oh then later in the day I got another of those emails and texts telling me they are still working on our fault - this was after the text that said the fault should be fixed now - fills you with confidence, doesn't it.

I decided to wait a few days, not least to ensure the broadband was stable, before chasing the credit and entering my complaint about the whole saga.  Frankly it was a relief to not think about O2 for a few days.

Then blow me on 29 Oct we are notified of the next bill and there is no credit applied at all.  Time to immediately write a lengthy letter of complaint to complaintreviewservice@o2.com laying out the whole dreadful saga.  They have a 7-day response commitment, so I duly noted it in my calendar for chasing.

Much to my surprise today, 01 Nov, I get a call from the complaintreviewservice which is apologetic, appears to genuinely understand my frustrations and the fact that errors must have been made between O2 and OpenReach, and immediately applies a £20 credit to my account (which I can see online, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this).

So will I still carry out my threat to remove broadband, home phone, mobile broadband and two mobiles from O2?  We'll all just have to wait and see ...

Broken O2/Sky broadband and poor change management

This is a personal outpouring which nevertheless plays into my professional position as a change strategist.

Over the last 5 years my wife and I have moved to O2 for all our comms: 2 mobile phones, home phone+broadband, and mobile broadband for when we're sailing. You might say that's risky – eggs & basket – however we thought the risk was outweighed by convenience (and discounts) of one supplier, given our perception of the high quality of the O2 brand.

Until 10 days ago the service was great … well, in the sense that we rarely needed service. The occasional call on 202 or visit to an O2 shop went pretty smoothly. One problem using the mobile broadband dongle was resolved through an online chat with a Guru. The broadband in particular just worked – never needed to touch the router, wi-fi the same.

12 days ago on 9 Oct the phone and broadband just went dead. Called 800 230 0202 late in the day and they initiated a 2-hour line test straight away. Next morning it was all working again, so I called and told them this, and off we went. That seemed like good service.

The next day broadband was very slow and got worse until on 13 Oct the broadband and phone were dead again. This is where we entered the madness, and I'll spare you the blow-by-blow. Suffice to say that O2 kept saying they would call back with test results or next action and they almost never did – it was usually me calling them. The only thing in their favour is that they always answer the phone on the first ring, and the calls are free. Other factors in the frustration:

• their telephone equipment is awful because you get huge background noise and distortion, which combined with strong Derry accents makes it hard to understand them
• the number they had in the database to call us on was the home phone which is broken - duh
• an engineer wasn't booked because of some problem on their system
• I have never managed to speak to 'second level' who I believe interface with BT OpenReach, I can only get the call centre who have limited information and influence

An Openreach engineer finally came on 16 Oct, checked everything ok at the house, definitely a line problem somewhere, put in a call for someone to check the Exchange, promised he'd call me with an update … and that was the last I heard of any of that.

On 18 Oct a manager at the call centre said he'd get Level 2 to call me that day to discuss status (after putting my mobile into their database) – never happened.

On 20 Oct I spoke to another manager at the call centre, having been notified of an engineer booking for 23^rd – I expressed my frustration and anger at some length, he sympathised and agreed I was not being unreasonable, I said if it is not fixed by 21^st then I will be going onto social media with this, he said there's nothing he could do to get an engineer earlier. The only offer I got was that he said he'd cancel November's charges as compensation.

Now it's the 22^nd and I'm expecting an engineer tomorrow morning. No pressure, but by golly he or she had better deliver.

The wider background to this, of O2 selling their broadband service to Sky, is where the change strategy comes in.** The irony is that I have just written a general blog about KIS n Tell change management, which means Keeping It Simple and communicating it well. Unfortunately O2 and Sky have failed on this, quite dramatically in my view. In the past few months I have received letters and emails advising me of the sale and reassuring me that the deals will be at least as good under Sky (so I'll still get the discount with Sky for having an O2 mobile, will I? Fantastic), and that the transition will happen by April 2014, with 2 months notice.  The main thing I want is no interruption to service, as well as no cost increase of course.

Not far into the madness summarised above it occurred to me that the transition may have started, and my breakage is a result of that. This is reinforced by the fact that we receive up to 3 emails a day branded Sky but sent from customer.service@o2broadband.co.uk, which simply say “sorry, still working on it” with no contact details other than the head office postal address, and with links to Help and Terms which fail because o2-mail.co.uk is not found! We receive the same number of texts a day, saying the same thing, from 'Mybroadband” and it's not clear who that is. They both give the number of the call centre who when I asked said they ”are still O2”. My only channel of communication is with the call centre who just follow the process and cannot talk to me about the fault. Oh and they suggested I contact the complaint review service.

So in summary it's very confusing, I don't know who I'm really dealing with, and I don't have a decent channel of communication to talk to someone who knows what's really going on with my fault.

** If you are interested in change management and change strategy, you could do worse than to look at my professional site at www.nicvine.com