Making Simple things Difficult

Over the last few days I have wanted to do something that really should be quite simple but has proved difficult. I have wanted to upgrade my old IPhone 4 to a new IPhone 6. This is not because I am a Apple junkie, but for a more curious reason. I am trying out some new hearing aids whose selling point is that they are linked with the IPhone, both for control purposes and for streaming phone calls, music etc… It is a great piece of technology; unfortunately it only works seamlessly with the latest IPhone.

So as I have a SIM only contract I thought I would buy a new IPhone and transfer my SIM card. Now this is something that I would thought should be facilitated and be very easy. Wrong……

This is absolutely impossible for my provider O2. After much procrastination in Scarborough they could not do anything. So as we were visiting Leeds today I decided to visit the Apple shop on the recommendation of my son, yes Thomas this is your fault. So Monday afternoon is a good time to visit the Apple shop, as there is actually someone to help you. Well we went through the formalities, and then he asked for photo id, I had none, as my driving licence is very ancient. So no deal, he sent me to the O2 shop.

There we logged onto the system, the assistant correctly identified I was SIM only and the best way would be to transfer it. Could they do that? - No because they could not sell me an IPhone! Who could do that, you guessed it the Apple shop.

So back to the Apple shop where I at last found somebody who knew something. You have a SIM card, you want to buy an IPhone, and we can do that right here, as indeed they did. I even taught the set-up people something, as they had never set-up a pair of hearing aids before, which I achieved very quickly.

What I cannot understand is why this whole process took me hours, many visits to different shops. I am not sure whether it is the ubiquitous nature of the product that causes this, what I do know is that companies that generally give this level of customer service implode. So you heard it here first, O2 are rubbish at customer service, and Apple needs to up their game.