I'm with Orange at the moment and any time I phone I am transferred to India, I can't make them out and they can't make me out and its just a disaster really. O2 I could never get through to, Have't tried any others.

Can really only give feedback on o2, never had issues with them. They're seemingly based in the UK and they are very good via text based chat on the o2 website. And never waited more than 10/15 mins on the phone I think, but it's usually quicker.

Three are excellent. Both my OH, his mother and his mother's partner had to phone up customer services for one reason or another. My OH phoned up because reception suddenly went terrible in the area we live, he was told that the mast was having problems and was subsequently given 4 free months service on a £30 a month contract which was excellent. They phoned up a month or so after he made the call to see if things were better, which they were, just not much better (hence why he got 4 free months service), the network and service are back to normal now though.

Both times he spoke to a Three representative they were English (or at least spoke English coherently) so he had no problems understanding them at all.


When I phoned up to cancel my Orange Internet dongle, I spoke to an English person (or someone who spoke English coherently) both times. As I said I phoned up to cancel my dongle, they told me I'd cancelled it a day too late so I had to pay for the next months instalment, however when my bill came it was £0. I then had to phone up again because the following month they charged me £3 odd for a paper bill which I didn't ask for, the girl I spoke to again spoke coherent English and I managed to get the bill wavered and any future bill would not cost anything.

However, I would say Three has the superior customer service, they were very, very nice, polite and understanding with my OH.

I've had a mobile for over 15 years, what do you ask them? I've never had to call them, Using giffgaff for my personal phone and don't they even have customer service.

Edit Ok beaten by the above post

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O2 and its been very good.

Possibly 3, although mostly you will speak to someone in india, from my experience they always manage to deal with your call within 5 minutes and have never had to wait more than 2 minutes to be answered, also information given by them correct.

My experience with Vodafone and Orange UK call centres, you sometimes have to wait ages to be answered,they're rude and lie to you and give you misleading information especially if it is a complaint or incorrect billing. And from what I noticed with Orange, they pass you to about 4 different people to deal with simple issues and the wait time to be answered is bad.

It's impossible to say. A company's service is only as good as the last person to answer your call. In my experience Indian callcentres are the worst, if you're saying something which isn't on their script, they simply don't have the common sense to work out what you mean. Most of the time they'll just hang up on you. Ok some UK callcentre workers do that but at least you can try to get their names, with the offshore people when you ask for their names for all we know they might be saying the Indian for "shove a radish up your @rse".

For the amount of times most normal people call CS, and as long as it gets resolved, does it bloody matter? I get a great service coverage-wise with Vodafone, but I have to admit the CS on the phone (both UK and offshore) is shocking. However I've only phoned them a couple of times and got what I needed doing done (eventually), so you really should be looking at quality of coverage and cost more importantly.

Unless of course you're one of these people who phone CS literally every day for a chat about nothing in particular (yes, it happens)...

What, you mean those people who pay your wages? What on earth gives them the right to call you each day hey?

Im with Orange and the customer service has been second to none. However, I am on Orange Premier service so Im very confident that makes a difference.

I can always vouch for T-Mobile's customer service, has always been excellent for me and any issues promptly resolved. Also their online customer services on twitter are very helpful and friendly and go out of their way to help you

Let me get one thing clear. The company I work for pays my wages. Secondly, I've been in my job long enough to know people who actually want help from the people who actually call up doing nothing but just asking for bill credits or pay as you go credit and wasting my time, when people with actual problems have to wait on hold while I deal with time wasters. That is what grips my shit. You've not understood what I meant..

For example, I spent 2 hours yesterday and 3 hours today helping 1 customer with something that would normally take 20 mins to do, I got the issue resolved and I stayed patient throughout. Do I want a medal?? No, it's my job.

The people who come on the line and bark straight away "I KNOW MY RIGHTS blah blah blah" before even starting, then noticing they've been given money each month for every call they've made even when a problem doesn't exist stops me from doing my job, and costs the company money and ultimately puts everyones bills up.

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I can tell you it does make a difference, essentially your one stop shop for all things orange...just press number 4 and you speak to a human....no press 4 for this then 3 for that then 1 for this and so on.

Orange Premier tends to be experienced advisors at least from my perspective people who have been in the business years, even some original Orange staff. fantastic people they are as well on par with business customer services imho.

I used to be with Vodafone many years ago but I switched because of their Customer Services (amongst other reasons) ... went to O2 and their CS was pretty good.

Last year, I swapped back to Vodafone (to get the phone I was after) and I really, really wished I hadn't. Their CS is even worse than I remember.

I've got an ongoing problem - and I've rung their CS 4 - 5 times now. They are so difficult to understand and it's hard to get my point across. They refuse to let me speak to a supervisor and insist each time that I explain what the problem is to them - despite the original CS person telling me they had 'written it all down in my notes'.

You'll also find the majority of UK iPhone agents are ex-Premier staff.

Been with Voda, Orange and Three. It is a problem when using CS with any phone (or broadband IP) as I will almost certainly know more than the person on the end of the line. If it is a UK CS centre then I can quickly get things put right but the overseas ones are very very hard work. But really what are you people doing with your phones that means you need to be on to CS so much it would force you to change operator? DIY.

.... a lot of the time people don't RTFM.....

A lot of the time callcentre workers don't know when to STFU...

Hi jarwyn,

I am sorry to hear that you have not been happy with the service you have received recently.

I will be more than happy to help if you drop me an email here with WRT135 FAO Heidi in the subject. You will need to include a link to this thread too.

For future reference, we also provide customer service via Facebook, Twitter and via our own eForum.

Kind regards,

Heidi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK

Yeah its totally fantastic. One reason why I see myself staying with Orange for the foresable future. Having a reliable, helpful and polite CS you really cant to gwrong.

Orange and T-Mobile.

And you speak to call centre staff like that?

Would you use the term 'RTFM' to a customer?

Seeing as Orange (your employers) and Tmobile have merged, here's a little story you may get to hear about.

Myself and most of my family have been with Tmobile for years, including my younger brother who has several non-apparent learning difficulties. In short he often has trouble following instructions that you and I would usually breeze through.

He had to call them up with an issue regarding his voicemail and got through to an agent (much like yourself) who got impatient with him pretty quickly. My bro put him on speakerphone and my jaw dropped at how rude the agent was. It didn't bother us too much as we eventually got the matter sorted but at the end of the call when the agent clearly thought we'd gone, said to someone else "that f***ing idiot is going on my blog!".

We put in a complaint to Tmobile management who investigated and along the way they inadvertantly let slip what the agent's full name was. If this brain-donor was going to post about my brother on his website then I was going to find out what it was and get him in to a whole world of trouble.

It took a month or so but it wasn't tough to track him down - he was at the Merthyr Tydfil callcentre and lived in the town too. The things he put on his blog about my brother's "lack of intelligence and common sense" was awful.

We took a screenshot and reported him to management again, and from what I could make out he was sacked as a result.

So while I'm sure you take great care to hide your identity (not surprising considering the things you've said about your customers in the past), be very careful what you say. I'd have no issues whatsoever in shopping you to Orange over your attitude if I knew your identity.