[bottleofbest]

I worked for a mobile phone broker, I'm not willing to say which one but it wasn't a major one.
It was quite a small outfit that dealt with Orange upgrades at first. I was brought in as a Customer service Manager dealing with complaints regarding midterm upgrades.
They basically rang businesses, pretending to be Orange, duping customers into upgrades and porting numbers etc to make them look like new customers for higher commissions.
They offered these poor customers ridiculously cheap packages by sending them cheap phones and giving them significant discounts on high tariffs for 12 months. Then in 12 months time, those who weren't 'band 5 customers' were stuck with massive £50+ monthly tariffs.

After the 12 months we had nearly a thousand customers due their midterm reviews and they were ringing up to complain that their tariffs had gone up.

I must have dealt with about 30 complaints a day, being abused, called a cowboy a conman everything. I had no idea what I had let myself in for. I tried my best to turn these customers around, visiting them and going through other options trying to help them out of the mess the company had put them under. After 18 months of dealing with it, I could do it no longer.

Customers who did cotton on, used to send their phones back within the 7 days cooling off period, but they would be sent back out to them and the company I worked for denied ever receiving them.

I made some major changes in my time there which made a real difference in the customer service and productivity was much better, so when we started selling O2 plans, we were awarded an O2 partnership, but my moral compass couldn't handle it working for the company anymore. The sales department were dirty fraudsters. So I left and they tried offering me pay rises etc to keep me there.


These networks should keep their sales in house!

[japaul]

EE has pulled out too which has put p4u into administration according to the Telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...o-hang-up.html

[The Lord Lucan]

Uh huh. It will be interesting to see what BT do next..

[david16]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Lord Lucan

Uh huh. It will be interesting to see what BT do next..

BT do offer a mobile phone service direct through themselves. But only for business consumers.

I do recall a BT mobile service for general consumers a few years back.

[darkjedimaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by david16

BT do offer a mobile phone service direct through themselves. But only for business consumers.

I do recall a BT mobile service for general consumers a few years back.

Didn't they take over join / takeover Cellnet to become BT Cellnet, which then eventually became O2 ?

[enapace]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Lord Lucan

Uh huh. It will be interesting to see what BT do next..

Quote:

Originally Posted by david16

BT do offer a mobile phone service direct through themselves. But only for business consumers.

I do recall a BT mobile service for general consumers a few years back.

What Lucan is saying is will this push BT to launch there Network to Consumers sooner than planned or not. I would say that is unlikely Lucan but I can see why you might think that.

[Pencil]

Quote:

Originally Posted by david16

I do recall a BT mobile service for general consumers a few years back.

I remember that. They used the Vodafone network and were ridiculously expensive.

[japaul]

The BT angle is whether they need or want to return to the high street with their own branded stores as I suggested earlier in this thread. This gives them a great opportunity to pick up at least some of the p4u stores which would be in all the right locations.

Depends a bit on how serious BT want to be with mobile. Is it central in which case a high street presence is likely or do they just see it as a retention tool to support broadband in which case it's less likely. Of course any stores of their own would also be able to push all of their quad play offering.