Dave Thorp's Blog

It’s that time of the year again where the networks demonstrate complete ineptitude in handling the launch of arguably the most important handset launch of the year, the recently announced iPhone 4S. Now this year I’ll forgive the 3 day delay in getting pricing information out to us which was a major improvement on last year but instead I’ll be talking about O2′s inexplicable policy of not allowing pre-orders and cancelling their fast track upgrade program for all but the very highest spenders.

On Friday 7th October every major network announced their pricing for the iPhone 4S and opened up pre ordering for new and existing customers to order the phone for either store pickup or delivery on launch day. Every network except O2 that is. Not only were they last to announce pricing but they have also made it only available to existing customers (which in itself isn’t a bad thing) but they are also treating those existing customers like second class citizens by making them queue up in the cold and rain at stupid O’Clock to be able to guarantee getting the handset on launch day and even then it isn’t guaranteed when every single other UK network will happily post one out to you. O2′s twitter feed have been bombarded with complaints about this with their response basically being that doing it this way ensure the maximum number of people can get it on launch day which frankly is complete and utter bollocks!

We then move on to the fast track upgrade issue. Over the course of this weekend a number of O2 customers who have obtained quotes to upgrade early have suddenly found themselves no longer eligible to upgrade. After doing some digging it seems that these customers are no longer eligible due to a change in the terms of upgrading early now requiring customers to be on a £40 or higher tariff. This is another example of O2 altering terms and conditions to suit themselves on a whim such as when they removed unlimited data from tariffs and tried to retroactively alter the terms of existing customers to prevent them from changing tariff. It’s also an example of O2′s short sightedness as to who counts as a high spender as my monthly spend with them is over £40 but is spread over 4 accounts.

Thankfully this is one O2 customer who won’t be queuing in the rain for my iPhone 4S. Three have already confirmed my pre-order with them will be arriving on Friday on launch day. As for O2, despite having bought every iPhone from them since iPhone 3G, they will not be getting a sale from me for 4S. Plus over the course of the next 8 months I’ll be terminating all but one of my accounts with them. Which is a pity as if they hadn’t started to lose their way over the last year or so they would still have many happy customers and not the horde of customers ready to jump ship they currently have.