Most atrocious customer service ever - EE botched everything.

[synthman]

I have had the most appalling, insensitive and chaotic experience ever when trying to move my phone to EE.

I have lost most of a month on calls and texts trying to get a working phone and even when I have given up and gone back to 02 the problems are continuing.

Let's start the story at the beginning. We were being upgraded to BT fibre broadband at home when the person dealing with us suggested a move to EE from our long standing 02 contracts.

The offer sounded OK - 20Gb plus unlimited everything else. All agreed and fixed up.

2 new SIMS arrive. One goes seamlessly into my wife's phone.

The other goes into my Samsung A14. Nothing works. After about three hours or so I can get calls. They drop out randomly at intervals after the 4 minute mark. SMS works when it feels like. And NO internet connectivity at all.

I contact the support number and am talked through what seems to be a standard checklist. Nothing remedies the issues.

I am passed on. Many times. By 2 weeks in I have talked fruitlessly to 3 separate people who have taken me through the same checklist with no effective results. The call is escalated to something like the complex communications problems team. A technician takes my details. Again. He promises further investigations and a call on the Saturday morning. In each case I have had to reconnect multiple times due to call dropouts. I have been told that the SIM originally supplied was not activated. Another has been despatched. It too is unactivated. A remote activation attempt produces no change. The call on Saturday morning never comes.

At this point, the Samsung A14 has a SIM manager menu that is completely greyed out and is showing 2 SIMS to be inserted, one of which is unknown. This is a direct consequence of having inserted the new EE SIM.

It is suggested that I try the SIM in another phone. I dig out my wife's old Samsung S20. Cracked screen but otherwise functional. Guess what? Exactly the same issues, with a ghost SIM showing up and no ability to get data and calls that are intermittent and SMS problems.

Around late afternoon I call back to try to get progress. I speak to my fifth staff member, who is instructed immediately to ensure that she knows my number and can call me back. The call drops. As, it seems. has her attention span. She declines to contact me further.

Having called back again, I get to speak to staff member number 6. He suggests that a factory reset of the A14 might be the solution. I protest that the rogue SIM has affected two phones and we may reasonably therefore conclude that the problem is with the SIM.

He suggests that I try the SIM in a third phone. I absolutely refuse to have my wife's phone damaged in this way.

Technician number 6 insists that a reset of the A14 will solve the problem. 

He instructs me to back up everything to Google drive and then reset the phone. I ask him to confirm that this backup will carry safely all my apps and data. He asserts that I am not to use the Samsung backup as the Google option is more reliable.

Against my own better judgement I follow these instructions. The backup proceeds completely normally and I then factory reset the A14.

I insert the SIM. Because the factory reset has NOT cleared the ghost SIM. this phone will not now allow me to log in to Google to get back my files by restoring during the new factory setup. The phone can't issue the 2 factor authentication code to another logged on device. And when I complete the procedure nothing has changed.

I have reset the phone and it has exactly the same problem with the ghost SIM and no improved functionality or ability to connect.

Upon contacting technician number 6 again to deliver this information, he finally arranged that I can go to an EE store 13 miles away to see a real live technician. He makes an appointment and I make the trip on the following Monday morning.. It's a long bus ride - I'm visually impaired and cannot drive. So it doesn't help that I get a reminder for the appointment when I have already left home and it tells me that I need a from of identification. Either a driving Licence or a Passport. I have neither - I'm VI, remember.

The in store technician is told the sad, sorry and pointless tale. He immediately says that I need a new SIM and speaks to the instore manager who immediately asks for identification. I explain that I can't provide either of the options as I'm VI.

I am told that they cannot help me.

So, I'm stranded with two non working phones, as I've done factory resets on both and they are stuck with a ghost SIM even after factory resets. 

I've gone back to O2 at a greater cost than my original tariff and the transfer of my number back to them isn't going smoothly. I've bought a new phone and using the brand new O2 SIM I'm not able to get any data.

What has happened?

I've had the best part of a month wasted by EE technicians and support staff, I have 2 dead phones and a a new phone that has never been near the EE network and STILL hasn't transferred my credentials to my new supplier.

What now EE?

I have exhausted all support routes from you and you have signally failed to diagnose or amend the problems your SIM has caused.

Your staff have given me support advice that has caused the loss of all data including 6 years of information stored in the Samsung Notes app (that technician number 6 assured me would restore correctly) 

I have had no reliable phone for about a month.

The new phone and SIM form O2 are showing the same problems.

What are you going to do to put this right?

[Peter_W · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Community, @synthman.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience here, too.

The issue you've described here isn't one I'm familiar with - whilst we do send blank SIMs with upgrades in case a customer requires a new size, SIMs for brand new contracts should always be sent out pre-activated. 

This will initially have a temporary number, then the port of your existing number should take effect on tor just after the next working day from when your SIM connects to our network.

I appreciate this is far from the experience we'd want for someone joining though, and am especially concerned about the fears you have around restoring your data.

If your number has now left our network we're limited in the tech support options we can provide for the loss of service, but I completely appreciate you'll want to speak with someone about the overall experience you've had. 

If you check out our complaints code of practice, this gives you all the details you need on how to flag this with our dedicated complaints team via email, or our dedicated webform.

They're our highest point of escalation, and will be able to look over all the details of your case.

Peter