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O2 customers to get compensation after outage

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Helen Knapman
Helen Knapman
News & Investigations Editor
18 July 2012

O2 is offering compensation to all its customers after last week's network failure, even if they were not directly hit, the mobile giant announced today.

Over eight million people who were blocked from using their phones at all during last Wednesday and Thursday's outage will be given the equivalent of three days back for the disruption.

Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile also use the O2 network, and all their affected customers will also be compensated.

All O2 customers will also get a £10 voucher to spend in its store, but this won't be available to Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile users.

In total, O2 has 26 million customers on its network, a third of which couldn't use their phones during the downtime.

O2 refunds

O2 says it has identified those who were unable to use their phones. They will be given the following:

  • Pay monthly customers will receive 10% off their July contract price, which will be applied on their September bill.

  • Pay-as-you-go customers will receive 10% extra on their first top-up in September.

  • Pay monthly mobile broadband customers will receive 10% credit back on their bill in September.

  • Pay-as-you-go mobile broadband and iPad data customers will get 10% off when they buy data access in September.

In addition, everyone on O2, including mobile broadband and iPad data customers, will receive a £10 O2 voucher to spend in its stores.

This will be available to download between 1 and 30 September via O2's Priority Moments app or online.

O2 customers will receive a text between now and the end of 27 July with information about what compensation they'll get.

However, O2 won't offer anything else:

  • It won't cover additional expenses. While the network was down some may have bought wi-fi or pay-as-you-go minutes. If you're unhappy you can still ask for your expenses back so make a claim showing proof of what you paid. If you get nowhere you can take your complaint to the Ombudsman Services.

  • It won't allow customers to leave their contract penalty-free. O2 says customers can only cancel early if they are without service for a minimum of seven days.

Tesco Mobile compensation

Like O2, Tesco has identified those hit. Pay monthly customers will receive 10% off their July package which will be applied on their September bill.

Pay as you go customers will receive 10% extra on their first September top-up.

Giffgaff compensation

Giffgaff is offering 10% extra on top-up credits for all its customers between 19 July to 25 July, whether they were affected or not.

An O2 statement says: "On Wednesday last week we experienced a fault with one of our network systems which meant that one third of our customers' devices could not register correctly on our network at some point over a one-day period.

"As a result, those customers could have experienced difficulty when making and receiving calls, sending texts and using data.

"The issue we had was unprecedented and we recognise that this caused inconvenience and frustration for those who had a disruption in service."

MSE Forum

O2 compensation

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