It’s not just with O2. I’ve found at least another six affiliate links that you can use to jump the queue. I posted one here, when I first joined, but it was removed. Not sure why those links have been permitted when mine was removed?
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A lot of companies try and use the longer contracts and usually offer a reduced price in exchange for taking one out. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily an automatic “you’re an unethical company”. Obviously it’s not great if customers aren’t happy with the service and are unable to leave, I must admit.
They do offer 30 day rolling contracts though, so it would seemingly be sensible to test the network for a month first.
Seems they cap out at 50GB. Pretty low IMO.
Yeah, this doesn’t sound great.
This is surprising, I’d have thought they’d be losing out on revenue from upgrades by doing this.
The Three in town near me has been great in terms of customer service and the site is easy to navigate. Doesn’t accept Monzo prepaid cards though. I was with giffgaff for a little over two years (they piggyback on the O2 network) and I like how everything is strictly online.
The 30-day rolling plans were never mentioned in-store as they don’t contribute to the store’s sales target, so we had to steer people away from them as much as possible.
My story dates back to 2015 when 20GB (I believe) was the max and most people didn’t need more than 5GB (based on their previous usage which we could see) but often we had to sell bigger plans just to reach the store’s target for this month.
Yes it surprised me as well, you’ve literally got people with their wallet open asking to pay more for more data and they’re like no thanks.
Oh and about the innovation part, you know Wi-Fi calling which allows to make texts/calls over Wi-FI instead of cellular and that pretty much every carrier supports now? Well O2 still doesn’t support texts over it… which is even more disappointing as texts are a lot easier to implement (well relative to calls… IMS is still an extremely over engineered spec).
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Really? You haven’t mentioned before that you were posting links that cost Monzo money and kind of mucked up a marketing scheme by skewing referral data.
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Why am I not surprised… I don’t think I’ve ever had a good experience with a salesperson 
Well in this case it’s less about the salesperson’s fault and more about the products sold being total shit. Take Monzo as an example, you don’t have to sell it, it sells itself. If they made mobile plans that sold themselves we wouldn’t be having this conversation, but for that to happen they’d need to get rid of a lot of useless people within the company and those will be pushing back so this will never happen.
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Talking of potential tie-ups that Monzo could do with mobile companies, how about automated cashback claims for mobile contracts?
Right now, I’m in a contract which includes around £350 of cashback which can be claimed over 5 different points in the contract. In each case, I have to:
- Login to my mobile company on the website.
- Download the relevant bill.
- Login to the mobile shop’s website.
- Login to my email to dig out the order reference also needed for the cashback website.
- Submit the downloaded bill and order details to the mobile shop website.
- Wait for cashback to be approved and then paid.
Something that could offer me automated cashback (even if it was slightly less for the same tariff) would be a great development. I failed to make one of the claims in time and lost out on around £70 a few months ago.
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Isn’t the point of these cashback offers that they’re difficult to claim, and only a small % of the customers will bother following all the steps to do it?
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A service where Monzo will call/send letters on your behalf when you’re owed money by a company and split the profits would be very useful. Let’s say I’ve got a refund due from some scammers like the company described above but no time to talk to their idiots on the phone, I just agree to let Monzo do it and Monzo keeps 50% of the money if they manage to recover it.
I read about a service that offers this for plane ticket refunds like Refund.me so it would be nice if Monzo would offer this as well.
You sound like a disgruntled former employee tbh…
Most consumers don’t give two hoots about WiFi Calling, or VoLTE as they just want to use data and send texts or use what’sapp and iMessage.
I deal with o2 on an enterprise level and work with ps team who are excellent and trust me o2 like BT and Vodafone are very switched and innovate with enterprise customers, where as I want in the enterprise space m2m, m2c, private APN, etc…
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Not disgruntled, just feeling bad for all the customers I conned when I was on the job. In fact the people I was working with were lovely but the overall business practices were disgusting IMO.
Most consumers don’t give two hoots about WiFi Calling, or VoLTE
That’s equivalent to the legacy banks saying nobody would care about instant notifications or an actually good mobile app, and yet here we are. I actually know someone who would benefit from Wi-Fi calling as they’re in a no signal area and yet are still on contract with them. Every time a website wants to send a text with an auth code it becomes a nightmare of holding up the phone to the window and praying that it manages to successfully negotiate with the tower and receive the text.
Good for them if they innovate for the enterprise but as a consumer I don’t see that and couldn’t care less if the products they sell in-store are sub-par.
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That’s because I wasn’t. I unknowingly posted one “offending” link that was immediately removed.
I have not attempted to subvert any affiliate marketing activities of Monzo.
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Because it was inappropriate. Stop going on about it.
Anyway let’s not waste our time ranting about a company that deserves none of it, but there you’ve got my personal experience working for them as well as a link to some more reviews, now it’s up to you to use your judgement whether you want to do business with O2. 
Just highlighting double standards, old chap.
…that escalated quickly, I should probably turn off email notifications
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Did you post the MSE one that goes to their page or the direct sign up link from MSE?
It does feel a little bit slimey 
partnering with O2 to trick kids into ‘telco ownership’ when Monzo founders criticise banks for tricking kids into ‘banking ownership’. It would be nice if they brought their morals with them into partnerships, but then that would be to ignore about 90% of all major companies out there who practise ‘lock in’ pricing and other questionable tactics. Maybe Monzo is less Innocent than I thought and a bit more Coca Cola 
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