Two Degrees, now just as bad as others – maybe worse

Two Degree’s mobile started off with a hiss and a roar – yes they brought us lower prices, yes they created competition for the then two big telcos, yes they originally had great customer service, but now.  Sigh.

Like many companies, as they get bigger and bigger, their customer service often gets worse and worse.  Where once if you had an issue with two degrees mobile services (and there are usually quite a few issues), to their credit, they would get it sorted very quickly.  But now, you often wait one to two days for a reply to an (ironically) instant message, or email, or wait lengthy periods of time on their customer help lines.  Not only do these delays make dealing with them near on impossible, when you do get hold of someone there, some are unhelpful and border on rude with their replies.

In my recent experience, after using them for a long period of time as my mobile phone provider, I had an arguably serious issue in that whatever credit I put on my account for my prepay phone, would simply not be applied to the phone – yet my card would be charged.  After paying two lots of $20 to two degrees, with neither showing up on my phone account yet both showing on my credit card as being paid to Two Degrees, I sent them an email asking them to fix the issue and credit my account so the plan didn’t expire.  After a day, I get a reply telling me I need to verify I am who I say I am.  My first thought was – why?  I have given you my account details, and told you the problem – surely you just need to look at the account, see two payments were made and apply them to it.  But no, I need to prove I am who I say I am.  So, I answer several identification questions – most proving 100% beyond doubt I am the account owner, as they wanted details of texts and calls sent and received from my phone, and only I would be able to do that.  I also answered the usual DOB, full name, etc questions, to then be told ‘No they don’t match our records’.

Umm, well if my name, DOB and other details don’t match yours, even though they always have done until now – do you think maybe you are doing something wrong Two Degrees, rather than me somehow getting my name, DOB, and phone records.  So, as many will understand, I became a little annoyed at this stage.  My plan had now expired, I was unable to make calls or send text from that phone.  Though I had a work phone I could use for anything urgent, it was just one giant pain in the ass!  Despite several requests to Two Degrees to fix the issue, even giving them details of my credit card and dates the credits were made, they still insisted they needed to “verify” my account before they would check or do anything.  They even pulled out the ultimate excuse the big companies have for not dealing with customer issues – privacy policies.  Oh yes, it’s all about your privacy, apparently they can not check whether two $20 payments were applied – because that would breach my privacy.  I did ask how exactly does that work, of course they couldn’t explain.  To really annoy me at one stage they even said they hadn’t done anything yet because I had refused to verify my account and needed to do that.  When I told them I had already done that, they simply stopped communicating with me altogether.  So, here is a communications company now refusing to communicate.

My solution, and advice?  I am changing to another provider.  Two Degree’s still owe me $40, and I 2will keep reminding them of that.  My advice, steer clear of Two Degrees mobile they are just a wannabe who became big, and now can’t cope and so their customers are paying in the price, in my case – literally!