O2 used iPhone bug to steal my money!
Posted: 4th June, 2010
Today, O2 stole £4.50 of my call credit using an obscure iPhone bug that uses the 3G data connection even if you turn off the 3G connection in the settings menu. Then, just to make sure I got the message that (officially) unlocking my iPhone is frowned upon, they spent the past 6 hours spamming my iPhone with a message saying I need to add £0.17 call credit to stop them (temporarily) spamming me - something that may continue for the next 2 weeks. Here's how it went down:
Back in March, I purchased a Pay-As-You-Go iPhone 3GS from the O2 web store. I purchased the handset outright and paid the full purchase price with the intention of getting it officially unlocked by Apple through O2 before I go to France next week. My plan is simple: I want to use the iPhone with a UK network when I'm in the UK and switch to a French network when I'm over there at my maison secondaire. For the past 4 years I've been a very happy BlackBerry user on T-Mobile and primarily use my phone for email, but the iPhone now has a number of Apps that would be invaluable to my work. The iPhone came with 12 months of free data / web access on the O2 network.
Yesterday, I requested to have the iPhone officially unlocked using the form on the O2 website. There's a £15 charge and because their badly designed unlock request form insists on you telling them at least two frequently called numbers (I hadn't used my iPhone for calls), I was forced to make two calls just to oblige. Fortunately, I'd had the foresight to top up my iPhone with £20 of call credit to cover these costs. As part of the unlocking process, O2 informed me that because I was unlocking my iPhone, the 12 months of free data / web access on their 3G network will be terminated unless I hand over £10 / month. I didn't think that loosing the free access would be a problem, because I mostly use my iPhone when I have WiFi connectivity and so I declined their generous *sarcasm* offer to give them £10 / month. After submitting my unlock request O2 informed me I'd have to wait up to 14 days for the unlock to be processed.
So far so good, until this afternoon when my iPhone was inundated with messages from O2 saying I needed to add £0.17 of calltime credit to access my mobile internet service. When I say "inundated", I literally mean this message has popped up 100's of times on my iPhone. I assumed that some part of the unlocking process had taken place, but it hadn't - all that's happened so far is they've cancelled the free web access even though they haven't yet unlocked the iPhone. When I called O2 to find out how to stop this message appearing I was told I had no choice but to give them £10 / month, top-up with call credit or put up with these messages for the next two weeks until my iPhone was unlocked and I could change networks. It turns out the iPhone used up my remaining £4.50 in call credit by requesting data over their 3G network - which O2 were now charging me for. The smug b***ard at O2 laughed as he told me it was my own fault for requesting the unlock and not choosing to pay £10 a month. But here's the rub - I'd turned off the 3G connection on my iPhone - my iPhone should NOT have requested ANY data from their 3G network - my iPhone was set to use my office WiFi connection.
How O2 stole my money
It turns out that despite turning off the 3G connection on my iPhone, the iPhone continues to use the 3G connection to check for email when it goes in to lock mode - ie. when I put the phone down for a few minutes and the screen goes off - even if I set the iPhone to ONLY use my local WiFi connection. It also means that even if I top up my iPhone with additional call credit, O2 will start taking credit off my account the moment I put my iPhone down on my desk and there's no way to stop it happening - within no time at all I'll be in the same situation again! Therefore, for the next two weeks I'm destined to receive their message demanding £0.17 literally 1000's of times!!!
Looking around online - this appears to be a bug on the iPhone and one that O2 are profiting from. Their unwillingness to help would suggest they are taking advantage of this bug to punish anybody who dares to request an unlock without agreeing to give them £10 / month. I can only assume they do this because they assume anybody unlocking their iPhone wishes to switch networks and it's an attempt to get as much cash out of you whilst they still have you. It's another classic case of "we don't give a sh*t about you or your custom". As it happens, as I mentioned above, I still need a UK network to use my iPhone with (I'm only unlocking to use my iPhone abroad), and had they not pulled this despicable stunt and showed such ineptness and contempt when mocking me on the phone I would probably have stayed with O2 on a pay-monthly deal to keep things simple. I'm not a person who worries about £4.50 of call credit or paying for a monthly contract - but when these people treat you so badly it's worth making a fuss about.
In a funny twist of fate, my colleague had visited Hong Kong last month and come back to a large bill for roaming data - despite switching off 3G on his iPhone and disabling data roaming. He'd only been using his iPhone in his hotel on their WiFi connection and couldn't understand why he got such a large bill. Clearly, the same bug that affected me today also affected him. When he called O2 they refunded the charges - the only difference between my colleage and myself is that I requested an unlock - in other words I was told to get lost because they thought they'd lost me as a customer and my colleague got a refund because he was still a customer of O2.
Earlier Blog Posts:
| 19th May, 2010: | Corporate Email Spammers: Barclays, 02, CareerBuilder, MySpace et al. |
| 21st April, 2010: | The Mouse's Petition |
| 30th March, 2010: | Why do I have this blog? |
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© Copyright 2010 Richard Newbold