Sources: Azzurri coughs £1m to end O2 call centre spat

what do you expect from a company that considers customer service an optional extra?

Cannot say I'm surprised

Azzurri were why, a year ago, O2 offered to allow me to take my small business account elsewhere.

I have rafts of contradictory emails from Azzurri - from the same person even, which proved they were out-and-out lying to me.

In the end, a senior manager within O2 offered me three new handsets of my choice (iPhone 5's in the end) plus cut the account cost by 50%, and gave me a boost-box if I'd sign to another 24 month contract on the pomise that they (O2) would take the support of my contract on in its entirety and should they try to shift it back to Azzurri the contract would become null and void again.

The information I was provided was that O2 themselves had underestimated the uptake of iPhones, hence the need to ship some of their support to Azzurri.

Unfortunately there was no warning or choice at the time - the first I knew was when I received an email from someone@azz.com or some such vaguely connected email address explaining that he was now my account manager. I very nearly wrote it off as a phishing email.

On the whole, I've always been reasonably happy with O2 and when things have occassionally gone wrong, when it was O2 I dealt (or now deal) with, it was generally settled quickly and well.

My account manager at Azzurri was asking a simple question of his manager(s) for almost 6 months.

Hopefully, O2 will have learned a lesson and will endeavour to keep their support (at least business) in-house.