Just 6% of respondents to a Mobile Business reader survey conducted in November said the O2 revenue share system actually works well for them. Altogether, 69% of respondents said of O2’s model, ‘It sucks’, while 25% said they have left O2 because of the new revenue share model.
However, the process of leaving O2 is not an easy task. One dealer that spoke to Mobile Business commented of the revenue share scheme: “I thought it was crap then and I think it’s crap now. Apparently if you are forced to move distie due to O2’s system inadequacies you then fall into a ‘process black hole’ which just means that you have to spend hours and hours trawling O2 data to point all the mistakes they’ve made, and that’s for the dealer that sits atop a main distributor’s recent O2 promotion. It is, at best, slightly disappointing and at worst it really p****es you off.”
He continued: “You couldn’t begin to imagine what an almighty cock up this whole thing is. I’m dealing with two disties on it and honestly nobody has a clue what is going on. The processes don’t work and has been changed so many times in a year that no one appears to know what is actually supposed to be happening.
“The data received to support this grand scheme is completely random and looks like being just plain inaccurate in many cases, and nobody really knows how to check it or fix it. And in the meantime, dealers are receiving true ups and true downs of the commission advances received last year based on all of the above.”
The anonymous dealer continued: “It is just scary. I am allocating myself and my finance person a month solid to try to work thought this and try to get to the bottom of it. The disties are obviously having to throw resources and money at this as well, as are O2......and all the time the networks swan around with this arrogant ‘we know best’ attitude. I am so pissed off at having to spend my time trying to sort someone else’s mess up.”
An O2 spokesperson said in response to our source’s accusations: “We appreciate revenue share was a big change after many years of an upfront approach and regret that it doesn’t suit everyone. O2 believes that revenue share creates an environment where partners and network share equally in the risk and reward.
“Since the introduction of revenue share we have seen churn reduce and ARPU grow which, with our new commercial model, is good for our partners and O2.”