02 iPhone App mirrors level of service.

It has been a long time coming, but i was most pleased to day to check the appStore and noticed that there had been a new release from 02 (the exclusive iPhone carrier here in the UK) allowing you to monitor your minutes, bills and account from your phone.

Although a little overdue in my opinion it is still nice to see they have made the effort, …or so i thought.

It turns out of course, that the app simply does not work. You load it up, enter your details and it simply says:

“Error: Network unavailable. Please check network connection of try again later”

Amazing !! So I had a little google on the subject as well as checking the comments on the appStore. It transpires that the majority of users are experiencing this exact same problem, and although some report to success over 3G with wireless disabled I can report this did not work for me.

Have o2 under estimated the number of users who may want to use this service, ..surely not, surely as we are all signed up to contracts with them they know exactly how many people will potentially want to use this service.

Is it just me or is this pretty much the worst bit of PR a telecommunications company who currently have a national monopoly on a handset could manage to heap on themselves.
As a developer the mere thought of releasing a piece of software  that quite simply does not work is almost criminal, and certainly someone somewhere should be hung out to dry.

Has this altered my opinion of o2, of course not, it has further cemented it in my mind as a corporate giant so fat it can’t see its feet and what they are treading on, us, the customer.

Let us all take a moment to congratulate them on such an unbelievable fail :)

In case your wondering, ..this is what it would look like if it actually functioned.

Additionally, those who did get the application working were not exactly heaping praise on the usability either. No doubt if it ever works for me i shall let you know.