Tried to get O2 to sort out our complete lack of mobile coverage at home and as usual O2 went firmly into denial.

I’ve tried several times over the last couple of years to get them to at least admit there is a coverage problem and that’s included some typically terribly confused telephone conversations with call centres in Asia. This time I thought I’d try at the top so I emailed the CEO but he didn’t really want to know. I did get a couple of calls from the Chairman’s Office and the first call was quite helpfull in that the guy said they’d send round a couple of engineers to our post code and check reception.

The second call from the Chairman’s Office was to inform me of the engineers findings and they were that I had good 2G and 3G coverage. Of course the engineers didn’t actually call on me at home to report their findings or even to prove to me the good 2G and 3G service. It was pretty obvious that they never came round to check coverage at our post code at all but instead just referred to their coverage maps. Shame on them.

I emailed the CEO and Chairman’s Office again with screen dumps showing ‘No Service’ and pictures of where I was when I got ‘No Service’. Yes I know I could have heaved good service screen dumps into Photoshop and cheated but there was blessed little reason to do that when I get no service anyway. O2 didn’t like those screen dumps as it was proof that what I was saying was valid. I got another call from the Chairman’s Office and chopped logic with some guy to no avail as it was obvious he had been told to just get rid of me by offering me £5 off of my monthly bill. Why would they do that if they think I have a good service? They wouldn’t, they would only offer the cost reduction if they knew I had no service. I said to this guy ‘what about a femtocell which uses a wireless router’ but he’d never heard of them. Just writing ‘no O2 coverage in a popular area of West London’ is insane, it’s like we’re stuck on the 1990′s. I reckon the engineers at O2 will only fix problems if they accept them as problems and they just aren’t going to do that. Talk about bloody minded.

I mentioned my lack of O2 coverage on a very sarcastic news website and the darn thing was read by some telecoms engineers who got very frothy at the mouth, chopping logic like billy-o, and moralized away trying to convince all and sundry that it was my fault. What is it with these people, have they got an over inflated sense of importance or something, jeez, it’s only telephones ferchrissakes, not rocket science.

Think we need a sea-change in attitude before this lot fix these issues and that’s not going to happen for a few years but now Orange and Vodaphone are getting the iPhone I may have to do some investigation with them.

Thought I’d try and get the new iPhone 3GS when it came out today, well at least see how far I could get.

Confidence wasn’t high as I expected there to be a queue at the O2 shop and I only had a small time window to purchase the iPhone. When I got to the shop there was a queue of only 8 people so that was a good start. An O2 person asked me whether it was a new or upgrade purchase and as it was the latter when my contract was up. Apparently I needed to contact O2 myself and sort out the completion of that contract before the shop staff could sell me the upgrade. I asked couldn’t that be done by the sales staff. Apparently not. Fair enough ‘spose and she told me to call 202 on the iPhone. Did that and threaded myself through to the required person or rather a call queue. Forty minutes later I’m still waiting but it is my turn to purchase my upgrade with a sales assistant. I told her what I was trying to do and asked whether she couldn’t do the processing for me to buy myself out of the rest of the contract, a period of 7 months. Again there was no way could she do that and nor could she reserve me the iPhone, so that I could get it later, that had been allocated to me when I had initially got in the shop queue.

She did tell me that the number I had rung – 202 – was incorrect and to phone another number that she gave me. OK, but my time window was just about up and there was no way all the processing could be done so I left the shop empty handed and phoned the number she gave me to complete my contract as I figured that as soon as that was accomplished I could then return to the shop and effectively I would be a new purchaser. After 15 minutes someone answered that call and told me that it was not the correct number for what I wanted to do and that the whole paying up of the rest of the contract could be done by the sales staff in the O2 shop. Huh. I asked whether he was sure about that and he said ‘definitely’. So why didn’t the staff want to do that? Dunno.

I gave up and later today did the whole thing with O2 over the phone and that worked. iPhone 3GS due Monday or Tuesday.

Just had a look on eBay and several 32gig iPhone 3GS’s are being sold with a Buy It Now price of £1500.