O2 announces significant compensation for recent outage

O2 announced significant compensation for recent outage
O2 attempting to claw back some good will

Anyone still seething about losing a day's mobile use from O2 last week will be receiving a reduction in their bill.

O2 suffered a big blow last week when part of its core network failed, resulting in up to a third of users being without signal for nearly 24 hours.

While voice and text services were restored relatively quickly, O2 has moved to placate its customers to thwart any potential abandonment to other networks:

"The issue we had was unprecedented and we recognise that this caused inconvenience and frustration for those who had a disruption in service," a spokesperson told TechRadar.

Sorted

"We have now identified all those customers directly affected (those whose devices could not connect on our system) and are giving them the equivalent of three days back for the disruption as a gesture of goodwill and to say sorry:

  • Pay Monthly customers will receive 10% off their July subscription which will be applied on their September bill, which is equivalent to 3 days back
  • Pay & Go customers will receive 10% extra on their first top-up in September

In addition to this, all O2 customers will be receiving £10 to spend with O2's Priority scheme, which can be used at places like WHSmith or Odeon.

Is it enough? Many O2 customers will be thinking not, as the outage caused widespread consternation throughout the UK. However, it's worth noting this large fault was rectified pretty quickly – at least it's not in the same league as the BlackBerry failure of last year…

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.