Complaint about O2 service

Dear all,

I was hoping you could help me resolve an issue. I am a long term o2 customer for many years, through 3 countries. I have a phone with dual SIM functionality and have both a UK and DE SIM running simultaneously. For the last 3 months, this has been running without issue, however last week my data was inexplicably cut off, I could also not make calls or send text messages. I went into two o2 shops in Frankfurt on Saturday to try and resolve the issue, my account was reviewed and all settings on my phone were checked, so I was informed by an O2 guru that my phone was broken and I needed to replace it. As my phone does occassionally give me some issues, this was not out of the realms of possibility. I purchased a new phone in full on the day, and set it up (which took several hours). By the time it was ready and installed, it was after 8pm, the shop was closed as were both the o2 chat function and hotline. I also discovered that the same issues were happening with this phone as with the last one. I also would like to point out that my UK SIM had always been fine and receiving data. As it was a Saturday, I had to wait until Monday before I was able to contact anyone from O2 about the issue. I went through the chat and someone promised that I would be called urgently as there was some suspicious activity on my account. No one called. So, I went back to the chat on Tuesday and asked again. Here I was very unhelpfully given a number to call, but as my phone was not making outgoing calls, this was going to be difficult, meaning I had to call from my UK SIM and incur those costs. When I finally got someone on the phone, they refused (quite rudely) to help in English, and so I had to use my not so wonderful German to explain to someone that I had bought a phone that still didn't fix the SIM problem, on O2's advice. He was finally able to tell me that there had been a massive call from Japan and until this call had been paid for, I could not have my SIM reactivated. My partner was in Japan and we have a joint account, so this was totally feasible, however my partner said that she had received a text telling her that the phone could be used in Japan for 1.99 a day, and she was calling a German number. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to pay over the phone and was told that I had to go into a shop to do so, or request a paper bill. All of this was confusing to me as I pay my bill by direct debit, why could the money not be taken out on the next bill? I then went to an O2 shop yesterday (Wednesday) and asked to pay the bill, where I was again not allowed to pay it as it would mess up the billing system, and it would come out of my account automatically on the 21st of August. That means that I will have been without a working German account from the 3rd of August until the 21st of August, plus I have had the expense of having to buy a phone that I did not need. Frankly, I am not impressed with this customer service, and I would like to know what O2 plan on doing to compensate this issue.

Thank you