I bought a new phone two weeks ago and decided to choose O2 as my network provider as I thought they were good and I'd give them a go. Well, do I regret my decision now..

First of all, the O2 website.. where to start. Nothing works? The majority of things are "unavailable at the moment". I can't send webtexts, I couldn't update my price plan and I couldn't claim my free call credit.

So, I rang customer care. Which is, by the way, 14c for every step you progress through. You know the "press one for ___", well, when you press it gives you another menu for you to choose an option, another 14 cent..

Anyway, once I get through I'm signed up for free texts, or so I thought. I signed up to the top up by 20 euro plan and get free texts to all networks.. I top up by 20 euro today, send a text.. I'm charged 13c.
Anyway, another thing I did was claimed for my free call credit, which I was told could take up to 72 hours - it's now been nearly two weeks and nothing..

Finally, I ran out of credit and I saw on the website that I could avail of a 2 euro loan when I was out of credit and I had to text this number to get it. I texted it and I didn't get a reply until two days later at 4am telling me I could now use my 2 euro loan..

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with O2. How do they have such a good reputation?! Anyone else having similar problems with them?

/rant over.

As you're pay and go just swap to another provider?

o2 used to be good, but agreed - they are awful now.

giffgaff are o2's future.

giffgaff don't operate in Ireland.

o2 are top draw in London but anywhere else and they are probably crap.

Joining Giffgaff just makes it HARDER to get problems like this sorted out, it's still O2 running it anyway, just with LESS support. The OP wouldn't even be able to ring anybody when things aren't working.

You really have to think twice about joining Giffgaff because you do not have phone support if you want to get an issue quickly resolved or confirmation of a fault on the network or with a service.

Giffgaff is O2's honeypot trap to corral all the "naughty" users.

It's nothing of the sort, most of O2's naughty users are on contract not PAYG and contract is more profitable, there's no way they'd want their iphone customers paying £35-£40 a month to take up a cheap tenner a month unlimited data goodybag which gives data away like sweets.

O2 has to pay transit data charges on the browsing those customers do, and termination charges on the calls. They are clearly losing money on the £10 at the moment to buy in customers and then later will put a cap on the data.

People here are just talking out of their arse IMHO.

A very persuasive counter-argument, eloquently put.

I switched to O2 several months ago from Vodafone (Virgin before that) and they have been nothing other than brilliant . Website is quick and easy and every single time I called them they were quick to answer and I couldn't fault them.

Well said! O2 are first class!

In fact they're so good they've got my mobile, landline and broadband business!

Same here Giff gaff would not work out any cheaper for me as I would lose my £5 BB discount you get for being on O2.

You lot aren't listening. The OP is talking about O2 Ireland, a completely seperate company from O2 UK.

Before switching I was with O2 and always found their CS to be first class...I presume that the set up in Ireland must be different...That would include the website...

Exactly, its a different company. Different tariffs, different website, different network. About the only thing the same is part of the name as they are also owned by Telefonica.

Yes, I am talking about O2 Ireland. I probably should have made that clearer in the original post in hindsight.

It wouldn't make have made a difference. People rarely bother reading posts and bang on about all sorts of half-formed ideas, after thinking about it for 5 minutes and doing a quick google!

I have heard elsewhere that O2-IE are quite expensive, but offer lots of free web-texts. I haven't got any personal experience of them though.

Everything is expensive in Ireland.

Does anyone have any relevant advice for the OP? I've heard that the mobile section of forums.ie is a good place for info.

I suppose the OP could try another provider assuming that there is a cooling off period to take advantage off.

He could wait for another Irish O2 customer to appear on these boards or maybe there is a similar forum in Eire.

In our household we have O2, Orange and Vod and O2 is the clear winner. I suppose it depends on where you live.

Hi, I'm Sheena from www.o2.ie/help. Damien, if you want to discuss your number in detail feel free to pop over and we'd be glad to go through it with you.

Just to clarify, calling 1747 from an O2 IRL phone is 14c for the whole call and when you top up by €20 to activate your plan it can take up to 48 hours for the free texts.

Come over to www.o2.ie/help and we can have a look at the other issues you're having

Sheena

Well done for O2 IRELAND . O2 UK could do with posting occasionally.

O2 UK aint that great either IMO

cant wait for my contract to be up in June