About this time yesterday I tried to send a text message via my phone, subscribed to O2 Ireland’s Speakeasy service and it failed. I retried and it failed again. I didn’t think too much of it but I did think it was odd as this was my first ever failed SMS attempt, ever. Anyhow later that day I still couldn’t send SMS; I got a call from my brother asking if I was experiencing problems sending text messages as he wasn’t able to send any since Monday night – I told him that the problem appeared to be widespread. Last night I received two voicemails on my phone after I had been out for a run and tried to check them on the 171 mailbox number. I was greeted with a message stating that this number was restricted from my phone. My voicemail, restricted, why so? I called the 1909 help number on my landline and immediately heard a recorded message stating that “some” Speakeasy customers are having trouble making calls (no mention of SMS) and that engineers are working on the problem. I would like to know exactly how many “some” refers to; are we talking broken cells, a messed up HLR or what exactly? Well, it’s 24 hours later since I first noticed the problem and about 36 since my brother did and I still can’t send SMS or access my voicemail. I opted for Speakeasy many years ago and resigned my monthly bill as I objected to paying stupid “line rental” charges when I infrequently make outgoing calls.
Dear O2, I didn’t opt to pay a massive premium per minute for my calls in comparison to bill pay, just so that your service could disappear off the face of the network. Please fix this – 24 hours or 36 hours or whatever has been the actual downtime is no less than an embarrassment to any company never mind one of the leading operators. I can only imagine that you are inundated with angry calls from customers but not me, I’ve better things to do than hang around in your call queues waiting to be told there’s no solution. A global SMS would be a nice touch to let everyone know that normal service has resumed and not leave people dangling wondering if it’s still just them or if it’s their phone that is the problem.
UPDATE: I can no longer make any calls, to any number, not just my voicemail. Way to go O2! In addition I note that there is no mention of this problem on their website, or at least there doesn’t appear to be in any easy to access location.
FURTHER UPDATE: Problem fixed but no thanks to O2. A contact told me that I had to contact tech support and get them to sort out the problem for me rather than it just returning by itself. Surely whatever took the customer agent 10 seconds to do could have been done as a batch update to all Speakeasy accounts without upsetting the unaffected ones?
Looks like the same has happened to 02 business customers – my phone went the same way today.
Unbelievable! This is madness. They had another complete network outage a few months back, one morning the whole thing just went wallop. These guys are supposed to have massive redundancy for their systems. What are we paying for?
I’m so glad to hear other people are having problems with it. I went into an O2 shop yesterday and the girl said that they were hoping to have the problem fixed by 1pm. Guess what? Nearly 24hours later, I’m still sitting here with the same problem, seriously considering a transfer to vodafone.
Just wondering AJ, what part of the country are you in? I know that my brother, myself and junior (who left a comment also) are in the Waterford area. I’m trying to see if this is localised or affecting more of the country as I can’t believe the lack of coverage about this – I’ve been offline now for 48 hours and my brother is pushing 60 hours. Hardly an acceptable downtime by any standard.
It happened to me yesterday afternoon around 3 O’Clock on the way back from Rosegreen in Tipperary. I’ve been in around Waterford, and I’m out home in Kilmactthomas area now, so I can’t see it being an isolated cell gone tits up. I can still get/make calls from the 02 phone, so that’s not so bad – must check with the office am I the only one suffering this fate.