My abusive and aggressive partner left me but O2 insists I meet him in person

My partner packed up and disappeared with his children while I was out with friends. I was left having to foot all our bills, including rent, which has made me financially stressed.

We had a family plan with O2 which meant family phones were all registered to my account. When my partner left, he stopped paying his share of the monthly phone bill, so I set about trying to remove his, and his children’s, phones from the account. O2 explained he would need to join a conference call with me and O2 to agree the transfer of the numbers in question.

Getting my ex to engage with this involved support from a mutual friend; then he claimed he could not join the conference calls. O2 had only one suggestion: that he and I meet in person for the call.

My ex is an emotionally aggressive and manipulative man. He does not know where I now live, and I want to keep it that way, so I met him in a busy park, and we spent an hour on the phone together with O2. His children’s numbers successfully transferred. His number did not. O2 said it would keep working on it and ended the call.

Two weeks on, nothing has happened. O2 insists I either make another joint call with my ex, or pay his outstanding bills and cancel his phone plan.

I’ve explained about my financial situation and concerns about meeting up with him.

I discovered an O2 form allowing customers to flag up difficult family situations and filled it out but was told I did not qualify. I have now been sent a £164 early termination fee for the children’s numbers that were removed from the plan.

My ex is deliberately manipulating this situation. I am baffled that O2 does not have a better process for women during relationship breakdown as forced meet ups could be really risky in some cases.

Name and address withheld

I felt rage when I read of your plight. You had, by then, spent four weeks trying to get O2 to understand the potential risks of meeting your ex and the financial hardship his departure caused. Its response that you meet up, or pay up, was almost certainly in breach of the regulatory duty of care to vulnerable customers telecoms companies are obliged to fulfil.

When I pointed this out, O2 managed, within hours, what it had failed to do in weeks, and called you. It admitted you had been led on a debilitating wild goose chase.

Instead of subjecting you to a painful encounter in a public park, it should have served a disconnection notice giving him seven days to transfer the numbers to a new account. It duly did after a push from its press office, and cancelled the £164 charge. It has offered you £200 in compensation but you, understandably, feel this does not reflect the anguish and expense the blunders caused you.

O2 says: “We have a range of policies to protect and support customers who have been victims of domestic abuse, ensuring they can safely disconnect unwanted numbers without having to meet an ex-partner in person. This existing support was not accurately offered, and we apologise for the experience she had, and the time taken to resolve her issue.”

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