7th March 2008
I had an inkling to change my phone from a 35+ quid contract to a Three contract, I talked to the nice chaps at the local 3 store and was all ready to leave o2 and port my number to Three. That was a good idea until I phoned o2 to get my PAC code to transfer the phone number..

I talk to a specialist “retention team member” called Scott who told me his system said I was on an 18 month contract.. grr, all phone companies do this and I know I was out of contract. He did say that he could drop me down a tariff to £30 a month and that still had the same amount of minutes… tick tick BOOM! I exploded! how can I get the same thing for a fiver less, why have I been paying 35 all this time?

lol, I lost it a bit and demanded to speak to customer service so I can get a refund for all the months that I’ve been paying 35 for something that costs 30… A nice lady answered and ‘got to the bottom of it’ and gave me a £10 credit on my next bill (still nowhere near leaving and getting a PAC number).. back I go to the ‘retention team member’ who happens to be Scott again (from t’ north by the sounds of his accent (at least it was a UK accent!)). I tell Scott that the nice girly tells me I’m on a 12 month contract… he looks on his system and says, “nope, yer on an 18 month contract according to this”.

haha, all boom gone, left with quiet seething…

Somehow in my red mist of calm collective, a half an hour of conversation later and suddenly I’m on a new 30 day rolling contract with more minutes that my records show I use and added to that, I’ve got free broadband! all I have to do is leave Bulldog who control my line and go back to BT.. only then can I get the broadband fitted

it turns out that BT don’t have a record of my number after it was changed to Bulldog;

“there is no record of a phone at that address”

“but I’m talking on it now! there must be”

“no sir, there is no phone connected at your address”

“(sigh)”

As with all customer service places, if you’re not getting what you want, phone again and you get to speak to someone new!

“hi, this is jacky how can I help?”

“I need to come back to BT from bulldog”

“ok, what is the number?”

“it’s ……..”

(a few minutes later)

“Yes we can do that, I just did the test on the line and we will connect you on 11 march”

no line at this address indeed…

A few days later Scott called me up to check if everything was ok.. lol, I was obnoxious as hell on the line last time (as only people that call customer service can know) and to be fair, he stayed calm and polite the whole way through last time and this time I was in a better mood! He tells me he’ll phone me back on the 12th to get the broadband sorted.

11th March 2008

Existing broadband goes off! halfway through a download… no matter though, I used my PAYG Three skype phone as a USB modem and had a decent enough connection to doofernow.

12th March 2008
New line is back to BT. I call up o2 to see if I can speak to Scott so I can get the ball rolling as soon as possible. He was busy so I talked to a barry white soundalike who was able to read what had gone on before and within a few minutes told me my order was under way. yey! now the horrid wait for the actual connection to happen. will it be quick? will it take a bleedin age like that time once way back?

Text messages galore from o2.. your username is this, your details are that etc…. your router has been dispatched…

14th March 2008
Router arrives! yey! I check the DSL status on my current router and it doesn’t show anything, boohoo. It was too much to wish for anyway

15th March 2008
I noticed the dsl status lights were doing something when I got up but I was too busy this Saturday and I promptly forgot about it

16th March 2008
Sitting at my PC browsing at not super broadband speeds (but still not horrendously bad like the stone age of dialup) I suddenly remembered to check the line again. Lo and behold, a dsl line exists, it’s trained and it’s clocking in at a supposed 10MB

I didn’t have a BB access username so I phoned customer service (after office hours) and was quickly told that I should use my o2 router first because the access doesn’t need a username.

clunk click – bloody quick!!

sorted with Broadband for free. I did a few small tests and was able to get a stable 1.6mb/s for some things and a 60kb upload speed. did I mention, for free? lol. I drop £20 a month off my mobile phone bill, I go to a 30 day rolling contract so I am not tied in. My previous broadband and phone bill of £37 a month gets replaced by one for 0.00 and a tenner for BT .hahahaha.

All because I wanted to leave my mobile phone company and migrate to another. Thanks to the quick wits of Scott and his Jedi mind trick training from o2, I am saving nearly 600 quid a year and have actually got a faster fatter internet!

My advice is to phone your mobile phone carrier and tell them you want to leave, you see how many hoops they’ll jump through to keep you in!