O2 - A staggering example of the worst possible customer service imaginable.

I'm generally a pretty honest bloke. I believe that karma can re-visit you, and why take the chance. So, rather than go to a moody fella down the Tottenham Court Road to get my iPhone 4 unlocked so I could use it abroad, I contacted my network provider. 'Well, Mr MacDonald, you've been on quite a high tariff now with us for some time, and there's never been a problem with your payment history, so that's fine.' I dutifully filled out the 'unlock my iPhone' form on their website, and then waited the aforementioned two weeks before receiving a text saying 'Your iPhone is now unlocked' Note, dear reader, that this is all the text said, nothing else.

I was away on holiday on my own for the first time, and one of the things I was looking forward to was blogging, and twittering, and facebooking etc. Luckily, Thailand is well served with WiFi hotspots.

The saddest thing about this whole debacle is that when I stepped bleary eyed off my plane in BAngkok and went to the AIS shop in the terminal, I was not the least bit surprised when they put in a Thai SIM and it didn't work. 'It's not unlocked' the Thai lady said, in her customary pleasant tone. I showed her the text from, O2 saying it had been, but as you can imagine, I might as well have been showing her the instructions to assemble a particularly challenging set of shelving from IKEA. The lady advised me to take it to the MBK centre in Bangkok where they'd sort it out.

I went there. This is using a day of my holiday, by the way O2. Shall I send you an invoice?

They sorted it out by putting in a gevey chip thing. www.gevey.com if you're interested, but I presume it's some kind of hack chip. It cost me about £35. Can I have that back, O2? Thought not.

I then entered into negotiations with O2 via twitter - this is when it really pissed me off. Precis to follow:

O2: Did you unlock?
Me: Yes
O2: Did you then sync?
Me: Yes [Although, where in your instructions does it tell you to do that? Nowhere, that's where]
O2: Have you synced it with a non O2 SIM before coming away?
Me: No. Where on earth do I get a non O2 micro SIM from, and why do I need to? You told me it was unlocked?
O2: You'll need to find a non O2 SIM and sync it with iTunes for it to work.

Let me insert a brief hiatus here, and also apologise for the swearing.

I'M ON TOP OF A FUCKING MOUNTAIN IN SOUTH EAST ASIA!!!!! WHERE THE FUCK DO I FIND A PC WITH ITUNES ALONG WITH A NICE MAN WHO WILL SUPPLY ME WITH A NICE SIM CARD AND TEST IT OUT.

I then received the following:-

Suffice it to say, I DM'd the number and got no response. None at all. And I told them that quite frankly, no I was not prepared to waste yet more of my holiday pissing about with a phone that should have taken me all of 5 minutes to sort out having followed all their instructions. No apology. Nothing. Throughout the exchange I was polite, and courteous. I understand O2 don't want people unlocking their phones for obvious reasons. But I bet they prefer even less their customers blogging like this, to over 1000 of their followers, then leaving to go to Orange as soon as they possibly can.

I think the saddest thing is that I'm just resigned to it. It's pathetic. Next time, I know for a fact there is a lovely chap on Tottenham Court Road who'll do the whole thing for me for a tenner. It'll probably invalidate my warranty, but the same fella will swop my smashed screen for £40, and their native insurance at £15 a month is a sum I am astonished they have the audactiy to charge. I get more comprehensive cover, including water damage, for £6 a month on my home insurance.

I cannot believe that there is no-one at this company that can see why this is unacceptable. Honestly, I have not been biased here- this is exactly how it happened. Are any of you really surprised either. They are all the same. I could tell you a story about Virgin installing home broadband when I moved to Winchester that I could only possibly file under fantasy fiction. Sky and BT? Don't make me laugh.

In the past, I have lauded O2 when they sorted their 3G network out. Often, when I speak to them they are very pleasant. Someone, find me the nefarious doom-monger who is orchestrating their appalling service performance.