Some customers have been offered only 87p in compensation
On Thursday, mobile network O2’s data services went down, leaving millions of customers unable to access their 4G.
On Saturday, the network contacted its customers who had been affected. They offered “two days of monthly airtime subscription charges by the end of January” for pay monthly customers, and 10% on a top-up for those on pay as you go.
The offer was not kindly received however, when some people quickly worked out that for those of the cheapest tariff of £13 a month, this would work out as just 87p compensation.
When put in those terms, it did not go down well particularly well with those who were unable to use their phones for nearly 24 hours.
There could be a silver lining, however. A campaign has sprung up online, encouraging the 87p to be donated to the homeless.
Hi @O2 I’m a customer and I’d prefer to donate my outtage refund to charity. I reckon if even just 1 million of the 32 million customers you are having to refund were up for that something really good could come out of what happened. So how do we make that happen please? Ta
— Angela Barnes (@AngelaBarnes) December 9, 2018
It has been estimated that 32 million customers were affected by the data outage. 87p isn’t much to most people, but if all of those offered the compensation were to donate, it would raise nearly £28 million for good causes.
Here’s a great idea @O2 #Homeless #vulnerable pic.twitter.com/xVT6qujP9O
— Feed Manchester (@feed_manchester) December 9, 2018
Don’t compensate anyone. Instead make a nice donation to a homeless charity in time for Christmas. Thanks for working 16+ hours straight in order to solve our first world problems x
— Rebecca Taylor (@TaylorlawSGL) December 6, 2018
O2 have been contacted for comment.
The problems caused by a software issue, and Lyca Mobile, Sky Mobile and Tesco Mobile customers also found themselves without 4G data, as those networks also use O2’s services.
Normal service was resumed on Friday.
Our 4G network was restored earlier this morning. Our technical teams will continue to monitor service performance closely and we're starting the full review to understand what happened. We are really sorry for the issues yesterday.
— O2 (@O2) December 7, 2018
Telefonica UK CEO Mark Evans apologised to customers in a tweet.
“Yesterday’s issue was restored in the early hours of this morning. I apologise again to our customers and from this afternoon we’ll be letting them know what we’ll be doing to say sorry.”
Yesterday's issue was restored in the early hours of this morning. I apologise again to our customers and from this afternoon we’ll be letting them know what we'll be doing to say sorry.
— Mark Evans (@MarkEvansO2) December 7, 2018
