getting out of O2 broadband contract

*eadaoin

just wondering if anyone here has gotten out of their o2 3g broadband contract?

it worked for me for the first week and then went downhill. they're apparently looking into it for me but they're making no progress or at least not giving me any information and it's been ages since my original complaint.

as far as i'm concerned o2 are breaking their end of the contract by not providing the service i'm paying for. i'm considering writing to the bank to stop my direct debit and informing o2 of the same, has anyone had success doing this?

Senna

I think you have 14 days (or 28 days, cant remember) were you can get a full refund and cancel the contract. If that time has pasted but if you made a complaint during that time, i would say you could have a good arguement for canceling it.

Was it working ok in the same location when you bought it, or have you moved?

Our man in Havana

Write to them by registered post. Give them 10 days to fix the issue or you will cancel the contract.

*eadaoin

Senna wrote: »

I think you have 14 days (or 28 days, cant remember) were you can get a full refund and cancel the contract. If that time has pasted but if you made a complaint during that time, i would say you could have a good arguement for canceling it.

Was it working ok in the same location when you bought it, or have you moved?

there was an initial 7 day trial period for which it worked absolutely fine and then it went downhill.

i haven't moved at all, so the problem is not there unfortunately.

Our man in Havana

I suggest a registered letter, directed to their complaints department setting out your complaint and giving them a final chance to fix the issues. Tell them that if they don't fix it you consider the contract cancelled.

Registered letters work wonders.

*eadaoin

Bond-007 wrote: »

I suggest a registered letter, directed to their complaints department setting out your complaint and giving them a final chance to fix the issues. Tell them that if they don't fix it you consider the contract cancelled.

Registered letters work wonders.

i may just try that. i'm working with their online forum at the moment and have been emailing them. if it's not sorted i'll probably do this, but i just wanted to know if anyone had had any success doing this before.

Our man in Havana

I find their online and phone support to be lacking. Anytime you call their tech support they seem do disinterested, one word answers and general "ya ya" type expressions. One day I called the agent was eating her lunch whilst talking to me.

I think that a letter would focus their minds to the problem as online and phone can be ignored.

*eadaoin

i think i'll give that try so if it comes down to it.

in my old apartment i had NTL broadband and it was great, never had a problem with them, even cancelling my account went grand. but i moved house about 2 months ago and they're not in my area yet, i did try to get eircom but they messed the order up so unbelievably that i just cancelled it.

so basically the week we moved into the new gaff we got a card in the letterbox saying that NTL were working in our area to have us hooked up to broadband so when they're up and running i'll just sign up with them again. in the meantime o2 are driving me nuts so i'd rather not be giving them my money!

i can't believe someone ate lunch while on the phone to you, that kind of stuff makes me really mad purely because of how unprofessional it is, i would never act like that towards a customer in my own job. how come we have so many companies in ireland who just don't seem to give a crap and we still give them our money??

foggy_lad

*eadaoin wrote: »

i think i'll give that try so if it comes down to it.

in my old apartment i had NTL broadband and it was great, never had a problem with them, even cancelling my account went grand. but i moved house about 2 months ago and they're not in my area yet, i did try to get eircom but they messed the order up so unbelievably that i just cancelled it.

so basically the week we moved into the new gaff we got a card in the letterbox saying that NTL were working in our area to have us hooked up to broadband so when they're up and running i'll just sign up with them again. in the meantime o2 are driving me nuts so i'd rather not be giving them my money!

i can't believe someone ate lunch while on the phone to you, that kind of stuff makes me really mad purely because of how unprofessional it is, i would never act like that towards a customer in my own job. how come we have so many companies in ireland who just don't seem to give a crap and we still give them our money??

sounds like you want out of your contract because ntl are coming soon? you will need lots of low speed test results and agreement from o2 that there is a problem with cell shrinkage/contention before they will let you out of the contract or you can probably contact ComReg who will look into it.

Our man in Havana

It will need to be bad alright. O2 do have EDGE with is fairly stable albeit a 256 kbps connection. It would be likely if you can get a decent EDGE connection you will have trouble getting out of the contract.

*eadaoin

foggy_lad wrote: »

sounds like you want out of your contract because ntl are coming soon? you will need lots of low speed test results and agreement from o2 that there is a problem with cell shrinkage/contention before they will let you out of the contract or you can probably contact ComReg who will look into it.

this isn't the case at all, if o2 worked properly i'd be much happier to keep it, ntl costs me about 3 times more than o2. i just don't like giving my money to a service that doesn't work, i don't have money to waste that way.

also, i already have plenty of low speed tests and have sent them to o2, they're apparently doing an investigation.

*eadaoin

Bond-007 wrote: »

It will need to be bad alright. O2 do have EDGE with is fairly stable albeit a 256 kbps connection. It would be likely if you can get a decent EDGE connection you will have trouble getting out of the contract.

i often get an EDGE connection and yet the service is still either non existant or so slow it's too painful to use. rarely it works really well but more often it's just so unreliable and slow.

Our man in Havana

they're apparently doing an investigation.

Code for "we are doing nothing".

If you want the problem fixed put pen to paper. Phone calls are deniable. Forum posts can be deleted.

drunkmonkey

Forget about the registered letter for a little while...

best course of action is to call customer care (not tech support) they will have a record of all calls to tech support. Explain the situation that it is unusable and you have no other choice to but to request they cancel the contract and not charge you an early termintation fee. If you have no luck with the customer care agent ask to speak to someone senior. Be calm and don't get abusive. If it's a genuine problem and there's calls logged over the space of a few weeks they should release you.
If it was me I wouldn't put down the phone until they agree to cancel the contract without termintaion fee, dig in your heels and don't hang up the phone until you get what you want.

Our man in Havana

Thats why these places love phone calls as everything can be denied.

kremie

I'm not sure about cancelling contracts, cell phone companies tend to be anal on this. I know for sure that in the USA and other countries if you just stop paying your monthly bill and cancel your auto bank billing it affects your credit rating. This might probably affect your chances to get loans, mortgages, etc. I'm not exactly sure but I could be wrong though, you might want to check with the bank first?

Sponge Bob

The 'credit rating' thing does not apply here. Only financial intitutes maintain/have access to the 'credit rating' system in Ireland ( known as the ICB) . 2 bit telcos are not let near it.

o2 have a complaints escalation procedure, this you do in writing of course. I have had occasion to use it and they resolved my complaint to my satisfaction unlike their customer care had ...nowt to do with broadband but with services being re-enabled that I had disabled.

Read it and follow it

jor el

kremie wrote: »

I'm not sure about cancelling contracts,

Don't bump year old threads with irrelevant information, and don't spam the same message across multiple forums.