Orange puts the squeeze on customers

[Guest tsutton]

From The Register

Orange is to overhaul its pay monthly tariffs and services as of 1 April.

Details of the new range of packages were released today, each with its own animal theme (see below).

Orange is cutting the minutes new and migrating customers get from lower-priced tariffs. From April, ?19 a month will buy 50 rather than 60 minutes, and ?25 gets you 100 minutes - 20 minutes less than the current amount. Mid-range bundles will stay the same and high-end customers will pocket an extra 100 minutes for their ?75.

The text bundle range will be revised to introduce something called a "digressive pricing structure": the more you buy as part of your plan, the less you pay per text. The standard out-of-bundle text rate will be upped from 10p to 12p under the plans, as will a minute's talktime to a landline, and to another Orange phone.

There will also be proverbial carrot-dangling to encourage 18-month contracts in the form of what Orange calls "Magic Numbers".

The blurb put it thus: "The customer will be decremented [sic]one minute for up to an hour call to the Magic Number."

This seems to mean that you get an hour's worth of talk time to a nominated number for the price of a minute.

An internal document seen by El Reg reveals when the new structure comes in, Orange will start hitting up customers for ?1.50 a month for itemised billing. Not paying by Orange's preferred direct debit method will now set you back ?3.50 a month too, and delivery reports on texts will cost a penny a pop.

It's just left for new Orange customers and those migrating to the new rates to decide: are they a dolphin, a panther, a canary, or a raccoon?

Looking grim... or not?

[Guest sporkguy]

Yeah It's not looking bright over at Orange.

French Telecom have squeezed the fun out of Orange's company and now they're getting the customers too.

[Guest tsutton]

Still no word on whether there will be half decent data plans either...

Yeah, there are high demand for that but the GPRS price plans has been like that since the old days... they need to move on to the future and more people will use it!

Can't believe PAYG got better deals... (?1 for unlimited GPRS a day)

[Guest ricardo the fish]

Nice one Orange!

I think it may be Time to say goodbye.

Now this T-mobile Web'n'Walk looks more like it! :)

Or can Orange redeem themselves by giving us a really, really good data package?

[Guest moroni]

i have just spoken to my orange rep who assures me that they have NOT done anything good for the data users out there :D

after having looked at the new tariffs on offer it seems that some of them are pretty good, at least they will be including texts etc now but i cannot help feeling that they are going to find the party has moved on from where they are!

I sell orange for the customer service thats offered( and cos its REALLY easy to get a credit pass on it :) ) but these days i am getting more and more customers who are going to t-mobile for the tariffs, and dont even get a decent coverage for the mob down here!

methinks orange have got some serious issues to work out, or they can be kissing goodbye to a LOT more customers than they are at the moment

[Guest RobertCeuppens]

Have Orange stopped doing the OVP tarriffs?

If not wouldn't they then have to match the Flext from Tmobile?

[Guest sporkguy]

Indeed Paul, thats one of the most frequent reasons for O not covering Tariffs of other networks, and as of last month they removed OVPs from the Magazine, even though they are still connectable.

[Guest moroni]

We have the same sort of thing at my place as sporkguy, we have had less and less options to connect orange customers to nowadays.

I got the impression form the rep that OVP's were going to be vanishing complately as well, which is a shame as its one of their best features i think.