O2 gets more stick – now it’s from lawyers

Rating: If you’re think of suing we may well know the right lady

Gosh. O2 is coming in for some serious stick [criticism] for the network outage it suffered yesterday [July 11th 2012]. As previously reported here, an unknown number of its customers were unable to access basic services. And guess what? The lawyers are on the case now. Sophia King, a solicitor who specialises in technology and media at Thomas Eggar, observes, ” What comeback, if any, do O2 customers affected by the disruption have?” Good question.As she says, “Tens of thousands of O2 customers have been affected by the loss of all voice and data services in the last 24 hours and the disruption for many continues. O2 has confirmed that the issue is with a fault with one of its network systems.

At the moment, it is unclear how many of O2′s 23 million customers have been affected.”

King continues, “O2 states in its own Pay Monthly Terms & Conditions that “the service [it provides] isn’t fault free.

Like the majority of contracts, O2 has what is known as a “force majeure” clause which states that where things go wrong and those events are outside O2′s reasonable control, O2 will not be liable for any loss suffered.”

That’s not good. So if you are thinking of suing things don’t bode too well.

But, King adds, “So, whilst the disruption will have caused problems for both private and business customers, it is unlikely that anyone will successfully be able to bring a claim against O2.”

We get the message. If anyone does think they have any grounds to sue, Thomas Eggar is ready and willing to help.