Mis-sold O2 SIM with OOOmph upgrade

[MattFord04]

Good evening all.  Does anyone have any experience of rectifying a mis-sold O2 sim card.  My OOmph contract was up in Jan 2022, I rang Virgin and they offered me the same deal again, but called Volt.  I was informed clearly on the phone that the ONLY change was the SIM data was with O2 and no longer unlimited, by 250GB, the price would remain the same at £89.00

To my surprise, I have now been signed up to a £27.00/month O2 sim.

The virgin Whatsapp team are pretty unhelpful, and I am requesting a recording of my phone call with virgin.  There is some dishonest practice at work and reading some of the comments, I dont seem to be the only person to have suffered from this horrid practice. I'm now stuck in the middle with "you need to contact O2 about this" and waiting for 2 hours on hold to the virgin customer services team.  

Does anyone have any guidance or suggestions for this?

Kind regards

Matt

[NinjaMeerkat]

This is still happening. My Ultimate Oomph bundle deal runs out this month so I called VM and got through on WhatsApp. The lady offered me all the services I have now plus SkyMovies UHD for less than my existing bundle price, all good so I accepted the offer. Received an email a few days later informing me that my existing SIM will be deactivated in 30 days as I no longer subscribe to the UO bundle! When I discussed this with VM they couldn't see what the problem was and tried to tell me that the SIM I had was not included in the services and tried to sell me a new SIM! Eventually after many hours of WhatsApp messages I decided to call retentions who understood my complaint, reviewed the original WhatsApp messages and agreed that I should have been given an O2 SIM as part of my new deal at no extra cost to me. Unfortunately the VM rep had to request all this with a manager so I have to wait 7 days for it to be approved, I'm on day 5 today!

[evaporator]

It’s a bloody nightmare. I called vm this week. They offered me an upgrade on my tv package. Fine but I wanted more data. I asked if I upgraded my o2 package, would the upgrade be matched by virgin. They said that my mobile contract has nothing to do with vm. I said but you give me 5gig data and o2 give me 5. Oh no that’s not the case at all. When you take out the volt package you get double data and vm contribute 5 but if you want more then you have to upgrade with o2. Nothing to do with vm. What a complete ripoff. I give up. Tied in for 2 years. At the end of my sentence I’m binning both vm and o2 and going with sky

[evaporator]

Pm message. Purple envelope. ???? Nothing there

[boogiemoog]

Message sent Vikki... regards

[missEW]

Hiya, just wanted to check, did they get it sorted for you? I am in the exact same position now. Made several complaints to both VM and O2 and I was ignored entirely. Time to make a CISAS complaint and I will surely add  request for compensation for my wasted time and added stress...

[unisoft]

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@evaporator wrote:

It’s a bloody nightmare. I called vm this week. They offered me an upgrade on my tv package. Fine but I wanted more data. I asked if I upgraded my o2 package, would the upgrade be matched by virgin. They said that my mobile contract has nothing to do with vm. I said but you give me 5gig data and o2 give me 5. Oh no that’s not the case at all. When you take out the volt package you get double data and vm contribute 5 but if you want more then you have to upgrade with o2. Nothing to do with vm. What a complete ripoff. I give up. Tied in for 2 years. At the end of my sentence I’m binning both vm and o2 and going with sky

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if you are O2 SIM, you can upgrade via uswitch at any time, even if still in contract to usually much better data rates and on some packages free Disney for 3 months+. As uswitch uses the O2 checkout, you just login with your o2 details, and then say NO to the question about SIM delivery. Then up to 14 days after you renew your contract with O2, your data gets doubled. I've done this method several times to get better data rates when they increase them and to reset the yearly price increase back to original amount as new tariffs still exist at the original price point (and usually with better data amount offering).

Heres an example:

1. You have an O2 SIM whether direct or from Virgin Media as part of VOLT package

2. You have, say 10GB data in your current package

3. You browse the O2 SIM Only offers at uswitch dot com and see a £10 tariff with 40GB of data, and 3 months free Disney Plus

4. You follow the link on uswitch to buy the SIM which goes via an O2 checkout system on an o2 web url address

5. At the appropriate point in the checkout, there will be a link to existing customer. Click on it, and login

6. After answering various questions, there is normally one about delivery of a NEW SIM, just select the option that says no delivery or no SIM required.

7. You complete checkout, sit back and emails confirm new tariff and SMS sent through

8. 24 hours later its reflected in myO2 app or O2 web site

9. Within 14 days and usually within 7, the data of the tariff gets doubled, the roaming abroad options get added again. VOLT has applied assuming the address is still the same for Virgin and O2 account holders.

10. You contract end date for O2 is reset to the 12 month term beginning again of the purchase date (assuming 12 month at time of purchase as it generally is at time of writing this)

11. The best SIM Only deals are with uswitch or moneysavingexpert not usually O2 directly.

This is how you can change your SIM, even if in minimum term still, and get potentially better data allowances if you don't mind it resetting your O2 contract end date again (currently for another 12 months from when you change it).

Info correct as of 30/09/2022

[evaporator]

I kept complaining to o2 until they said I could end my contract with out penalty. Phoned virgin and they did me a great deal on a new virgin sim only. All back to virgin now and all works as it did before the o2 horror story. Then two weeks ago got a bill from o2 for £200 for early termination. The horror returns. Do not touch o2 with a barge pole. 

[ZiltoidRacer]

This happened to me too, i was told on the phone when my Ooomph contract finished and my new contract was Volt. The lady told me that the O2 sim was included in my contract price and i told her that i did not need one but she said it was part of the package and at no extra  cost.

Some time later i got a bill from O2 so i queried it and it turned out it was extra £ on top of my contract and O2 sent a letter saying if i did not pay they would terminate it and recover the money. I am so annoyed that the sales lady did this and it's very underhand how it was done!

This needs looking in to but i doubt anything will be done, these sales ppl are a law unto themselves.

[boogiemoog]

That is 'exactly' what happened to me but mine was part of the technical sales team.

Exact same thing with cancelling O2 contract.... wanting £400

[unisoft]

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@ZiltoidRacer wrote:

This happened to me too, i was told on the phone when my Ooomph contract finished and my new contract was Volt. The lady told me that the O2 sim was included in my contract price and i told her that i did not need one but she said it was part of the package and at no extra  cost.

Some time later i got a bill from O2 so i queried it and it turned out it was extra £ on top of my contract and O2 sent a letter saying if i did not pay they would terminate it and recover the money. I am so annoyed that the sales lady did this and it's very underhand how it was done!

This needs looking in to but i doubt anything will be done, these sales ppl are a law unto themselves.

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Pricing is split into two if you take an O2 SIM as part of a VM bundle deal labelled as VOLT. You will be told two prices making up the overall package price when negotiating. Whether your representative did or didn't I can't comment on, but that's how it works. You then have 14 days to cancel penalty free the O2 SIM, but this could affect your package price by cancelling.

People re-contracting to a different tariff can only cancel their SIM if they were out of any previous minimum term else you would just be cancelling and paying the fees in this scenario as you were not out of a minimum term before you changed the tariff.