Z
zag
Guest
Back in March I accidentally paid money to O2 instead of Meteor while at an ATM. It was an easy mistake to make due to the power of branding - all our office accounts are O2 and I just automatically hit the O2 button on the ATM. My mistake, no problem admitting that.
I keyed in my phone number and money disappeared from my bank account as expected. I eventually realised a few days later when no credit had been applied to my phone, checked the receipt and noticed it was to O2.
Got on the phone to O2 "customer service" and had one of those bizarre conversations which started off along the lines of "What is your O2 phone number ?" "I don't have one, that's the problem" "Well, if you don't have an O2 phone number why are you ringing O2 ?"
Anyway, eventually managed to get the point across that I simply made an error and gave O2 money that they couldn't apply to a phone account. I reckoned since they could credit accounts in the blink of an eye and send SMSs even faster that getting the money back wasn't going to be a problem. It would have bounced out of their payments system immediately since they had no subscriber account with the number I keyed in. The logical thing for their payments system to do would be to return the transaction to the bank and it would eventually find its way back to my account.
Of course, this didn't happen. I rang again last week to be told that this type of transaction is only processed once a month (never mind that I had given them details 2 months ago) and that it happens at the end of the month. "Good" I thought - the money will be back in my account in a few days. "But don't expect to see the money for a few weeks" said the person on the other end. I asked for a call reference since I had already given these details the first time I called and nothing had happened, but there was no detail the person could give me that I could use as a reference, so if the money doesn't appear it will be back to square one again.
It's not the amount of money that is important to me (but I would like it back), it is the fact that there seems to be *no* system in place to handle what must be a reasonably common event, and whatever system is in place patently doesn't work since the issue was reported and detailed back in March and the transaction still hasn't been reversed.
z
I keyed in my phone number and money disappeared from my bank account as expected. I eventually realised a few days later when no credit had been applied to my phone, checked the receipt and noticed it was to O2.
Got on the phone to O2 "customer service" and had one of those bizarre conversations which started off along the lines of "What is your O2 phone number ?" "I don't have one, that's the problem" "Well, if you don't have an O2 phone number why are you ringing O2 ?"
Anyway, eventually managed to get the point across that I simply made an error and gave O2 money that they couldn't apply to a phone account. I reckoned since they could credit accounts in the blink of an eye and send SMSs even faster that getting the money back wasn't going to be a problem. It would have bounced out of their payments system immediately since they had no subscriber account with the number I keyed in. The logical thing for their payments system to do would be to return the transaction to the bank and it would eventually find its way back to my account.
Of course, this didn't happen. I rang again last week to be told that this type of transaction is only processed once a month (never mind that I had given them details 2 months ago) and that it happens at the end of the month. "Good" I thought - the money will be back in my account in a few days. "But don't expect to see the money for a few weeks" said the person on the other end. I asked for a call reference since I had already given these details the first time I called and nothing had happened, but there was no detail the person could give me that I could use as a reference, so if the money doesn't appear it will be back to square one again.
It's not the amount of money that is important to me (but I would like it back), it is the fact that there seems to be *no* system in place to handle what must be a reasonably common event, and whatever system is in place patently doesn't work since the issue was reported and detailed back in March and the transaction still hasn't been reversed.
z