What is the point of Mr Orange being here?

[Guest MARKUKCOUK]

Firstly, I know I'll probably get a lot of flames about this, but a forum allows people to form opinions, and I feel I'm entitled to put forward mine.

When it was annouced that "Mr Orange" would be joining, I was obviously very happy that some of our concerns may now be taken seriously. I thought maybe we would have someone who would give us news that maybe wasnt available before.

Unfortunely, things started bad and have got worse in my opinion, and todays post just takes the biscuit.

We can get press release talk from a number of places - and it looks to me like todays post was just a standard press release.

I realise it was important to correct the wrong information given out by another site (less said the better), but it was almost like he WANTED to wind us all up a bit.

I have a E200. I cant phone anyone unless I use the handsfree earphones - and even then sound isnt exactly "good". A lot of games/applications I have used on my E100 now wont function as they should on my "new model" because of the joystick issue. I'd even let him off with the joystick problem - but not the downright awful call quality. I've complained on this forum, and to orange, and found a lot of other e200 users have exactly the same problem.

A read through modaco makes it clear there are major problems with the phone.

Yet he claims "Orange is not aware of customer complaints regarding software faults"

I'm sorry, but could someone point out the reason we should all be grateful he/she is here?

In the e200 chat that paul hosted - he said next to nothing, and whenever Paul disagreed with him - he was told "lets talk about this off chat".

I hope this hasnt come across as a personal attack on him - im sure he's probably getting told what to put.

So I'll state my question more carefully...

What is the point of having a orange rep on this forum?

i hope this post wont make the mods give me a warning, and i feel im only expressing my opinion. Sorry if ive "gone off on one" lol

EDIT: added a poll suggested by someone who pm'ed me. Up to him if he wants to admit to it!

[Guest Bunchie]

I do have to say that I agree with some of your points. I too was very excited to hear than an Orange rep would be joining us here at Modaco but it does seem that he seems to be very selective about what he will talk about. This is understandable of course as he is not able to give away information that is not officially released but I do get slightly annoyed when it takes less than 24 hours for him to post a response to the E200 allegations and its taken a ridiculous amount of time to keep us informed about other issues (i.e. the 1.6 update)

[Guest goinnuts]

can anyone please state what probs they have with this phone on any other network? oh are they the same? congrats to orange for having the balls to release this phone. and the spv, after all they dont make it they stick there brand on it.

[Guest Brody]

MARKUKCOUK: if your call quality is that bad then you have a duff handset. There is no way that the E200's call quality is that bad, it is a little bassy but is easily useable, so much so that i would feel a little guilty complaining about it. As for your comments on Mr Orange, you are as you say entitled to them but i feel that they are unfair in that i reckon every single member of this forum would be acting the same way if they were representing Orange and one wrong response would reflect badly to over 20 thousand people. He is not really one user, more a voice for Orange as a whole and therefore i imagine has to consult the powers that be before posting news etc.

As i'm sure you didn't, i mean nothing personal by this post as there seem to be many that share your feelings but i think they are a little unfair.

[Guest statscat]

I think that Mr O has at times a tough job but I guess we could use theis thread to discuss the areas where we would like Mr O to respond more than perhaps he does.

In fairness Mr O acted quickly over the dodgy rom and over the dodgy news report so that I guess is good as it could confuse users, so fair do's there, so he definately did that right so it was good to have him as an known official poster for those.

but it would be nice if he could cofirm the joystick thread.

I guess its hard for him to provide news on ROM testing as it company confidential but perhaps there is a compromise to be struck here in that he told us when it arrived, so maybe just to say phase 1 testing etc he doesn't have to say what that testing is but just an overview maybe?

I guess the main thing that people would like is for him to acknowledge the issues or bugs (tbh things do slip through the net) and keep people as updated as to the progression of the fix, thats the only extra bit I would like the rest he is kind of doing.

Mr O has a great oppurtunity here all he has to decide is what to do with that oppurtunity, will he be just be the voice of Orange or will he be the ears too.

[Guest rikwebb]

Give the guy a break......

He can and does help, but remember, he works for O, so hill will not say or do anything to jepordise his job.....

WOULD YOU??

I would defend them if I worked for them, no matter what my personal opinions where. The company I work for now are not the best, but I have to promote them, its part of my job!!

I think he was very brave to join in the first place.

Rik

[Guest morpheus2702]

I think this thread was called for.

People don't need to make excuses for Mr O. Given the fanfare that was given when he arrived, everyone should understand his position.

By his own admission he is selective in his replies - based on the reason that he 'doesn't like to be wrong'.

To me, that's not right.

[Guest midnight]

also, anyone is allowed to join the forum you know, he has as much right to be here as any of you :lol:

[Guest midnight]

I think this thread was called for.

People don't need to make excuses for Mr O.  Given the fanfare that was given when he arrived, everyone should understand his position.

By his own admission he is selective in his replies - based on the reason that he 'doesn't like to be wrong'.

To me, that's not right.

so he should jeapordise his job should he?

he wants to give facts, no rumour, i think thats completely fair

in fact, no, i dont think this is called for, its well out of order in my opinion

[Guest morpheus2702]

Ah, so by also answering some questions 'I don't know' or 'no information on that yet' he's jeopardising his job too?

Sorry Midnight, but Mr. O can speak for himself.

Can't he?

[Guest midnight]

he's already said he's trying to find out the 1.6 info hasnt he, seriously, this is one of the dumbest threads ever, everyone has a right to be here unless they break the rules, a poll to say how competant someone/anyone is beyond belief, i'm tempted to lock this, but i think i'll leave that decision up to Paul

[Guest morpheus2702]

from midnight: oops, not deliberate, promise, accidentally edited your post instead of quoting it (dumb buttons) sorry about that, post it again will ya ;)

:lol: heheh it was something along the lines of "Mr O was quick enough to respond to the E200 withdrawl story, but there are a lot more people out there waiting to hear about the 1.6 update.

Then it was a rant about locking the thread and vindicating that MoDaCo is a 'softly softly don't rock the boat' forum now where Orange can never be said to be in the wrong." :wink:

[Guest nCoder]

I know I haven't posted here much but I have been reading for ages. I agree with Midnight it is out of order questioning someones worth on the forum. I also think it is a bit strange that you would rather Mr Orange guessed or made up information rather than just not posting replies to questions he doesn't know or is unsure the answer to...surely accurate information outways post counts and participation levels?

[Guest beersoft]

Im going to stick with midnight with this one

Mr O, comes here and helps, he doesn't get paid by modaco or orange to be here. its his choice, and he gives his time freely so we should cut him sone slack.

His statement today was a little short, but hes visiting HTC to sort out the problems we are having,

with Mr O. we get hard facts, without him its all rumors and lies (im not going to point any fingers but you know who you are).

he can't tell us dates about updates and things untill orange relase them, he may have signed NDA's at work, and i will put money on he is.

now if you can all get your toys back in to the pram.

later

Owen

"when its done means when its done"

[Guest rikwebb]

I know I haven't posted here much but I have been reading for ages.  I agree with Midnight it is out of order questioning someones worth on the forum.  I also think it is a bit strange that you would rather Mr Orange guessed or made up information rather than just not posting replies to questions he doesn't know or is unsure the answer to...surely accurate information outways post counts and participation levels?

Well Said !!!

Rik

[Guest midnight]

i'm busy making games at the moment and havent had chance to post my new tweaks (yes there are some and i deliberately havent told people yet) and havent had time to develop the new homescreens i have planned, does this mean i should have a poll aswell to determine my worth?

[Guest morpheus2702]

I read the poll question as 'effectiveness', not 'worth'.

Every member has worth, adding to the value of the forum. To paraphrase Animal Farm, all members are created equal in worth.

But there is undoubtedly members whose presence is far more effective. I don't consider myself effective in the least. I don't program, I don't create, I'm not in the know. I'm a chattering gigglehead who gives an opinion, right or wrong.

You Midnight are effective - you create stuff, multiply its frequency by its quality and you get big-time effective. And there are a lot of members like you on here.

Using the frequency x quality rationale, I can understand why people are rating Mr. O as being all that effective. Not worthless.

[Guest rikwebb]

Boy's !

Lets agree to disagree, and not fall out, cos its going that way!

Rik

[Guest morpheus2702]

Opinions are like arseholes - we all have them. Its never worth falling out over an arsehole. :lol:

[Guest nCoder]

But surely, the effectiveness of Mr Orange is the communication going the other way? By that I mean the information taken from Mr O from this forum and acted upon in some way.

I am frustrated about the 1.6 update myself, but the thing is, if it's not 100% ready then I don't want it, and if they were to rush it out just due to customer pressure the odds are it wouldn't really be a worthwhile update to have.

One of the pit falls of being an early adopter is that you have to put up with all this stuff :lol:

[Guest drblow]

Em ... now, I know I'm one of the first to start, but I have to say that I think a thread like this is very harsh - but not entirely unecessary. I do feel that alot of personal grievances with peoples phones are being taken out on one poor guy - but it has to be acknowledged that that poor guy is here as a representative of the company behind everybodys grievances. There has never been any doubt over Mr. Orange's role at Modaco - I think the problems have arisen because at the introduction, the impression was definately created that the prescence of official Orange staff would hail a new era in smartphone users communicating with their network provider. This has, however, not turned out to be the case & I understand alot of people feel "cheated".

The situation has now seemingly got a bit out of control in the frenzy of the first few weeks of the e200 - again, this is down to people feeling "cheated" or let down by Orange (the company, not the fella!). This is all very understandable frustration from phone users who have been told various things which are not true, &/or have been promised something that has not been delivered.

The crux of the whole situation is COMMUNICATION - & I have to say that my honest opinion is that Mr. O only really has himself to blame for the current situation - which I percieve very much as a BREAKDOWN IN COMMUNICATION. There has been nothing but rumour & speculation about the 1.6 update, which has been frustrating in my view because we are all very aware of Mr. O's prescence & when we see posts sayinf that it's in testing, it's all good, & we expect release ... it is VERY disappointing when the release date (which had been stated as being on the Orange website - this was never REALLY confirmed or denied by Mr. O) comes & goes without so much as a word. I think todays frustration has been borne of some very ill-timed & ill-chosen words from Mr. O. If these statements are just the company line being towed, then fair enough, the guy is only here to give us a press release statement. But that has today been shown to be clearly NOT how the smartphone community has percieved it.

At the end of the day, I thought that Mr. O was here as part of the overall MARKETING of smartphone for Orange. Things like this thread just demonstrate that if that IS the case, it's kind of backfired.

All that said, I don't think it's really fair to start really slagging the guy off!! I can't imagine why Mr. O would wnat to stick around in the face of such vehement opposition. But then , he hasn't really tried to defend his position at all, & todays comments were clearly going to be pretty inflammatory, so I would imagine that this is not quite such a big deal to the man personally ... however, I guess that depends on how seriously he takes this part of his job!!??

I seem to remember when Mr. O joined the forum, among the very many welcome messages, there were quite a few comments on how "brave" we thought he was for taking on the role of Orange "target practice" for modaco ...

Sorry - but my final comment is that I think, while being particularly harsh - this is a web discussion forum, & as such is the last bastion of freedom of expression. It is only to be expected that people will use this forum as an outlet for any feelings they may have, which is absolutely their right to do (that's what makes modaco so much fun IMO). Any realistic business man/woman would have been able to tell you this morning, that the post about the e200 not being withdrawn (etc) was going to result in some pretty fierce responses from the proletariat!!

[Guest SeeJ]

I don't know about anyone else - a lot of people on here seem to spend a lot of their day calling 156, but personally I would rather wait for an official response from high up in Orange to the issues raised here. Mr Orange does just that. Why microwave your brain for half an hour for some made-up (or otherwise innaccurate) date for 1.6?

You can be sure that when there is news Mr O will give us it. Why would a Orange want to p*ss off there most loyal customers?

Having said that, I do wish Mr O would at least post some kind of acknowledgment to the fact we are getting impatient here! :lol:

[Guest nCoder]

Things can get a little exagerated in an environment such as this. It is perhaps being a little nieve to expect anything other than todays statement that was given. Lets say it had gone alone the lines of

"The E200 hasn't been withdrawn from sale, but we are aware that a number of rather serious complaints have been raised on these forums regarding both the hardware and software on the phone."

This would have given the media, rivals, phone reviewers etc. the perfect opportunity to say the phone is completely rubbish, as acknowledged by an official Orange representative.

Also, I assume there is the chance that Mr O makes other posts here under a none official name for legal/professional reasons? In which case a topic like this isn't really all that productive or indicative.

[Guest Kallisti]

On the 1.6 update and lack of information. The most I can find is a comment 27 days ago saying that he was off to the far east and would be finding out about it. I take it he got there, oculdn't find the offices and came back? Also, once again, lets not overestimate Orange's part in this. MICROSOFT do the update and issue it to all the licensees. This update has proven to be particularly good for other phones (battery life, speed, reduction of stupid bugs) and would do EXACTLY the same for our SPVs.

On the issue of the E200 comments. They were just stupid. We're talking about a phone that's incompatible with it's predecessor's accessories (complaint #1), seems to have a quality control issue over some earphone issues, bluetooth has been implemented as a rush job, and many other issues STILL haven't been fixed (backlight in windows media player).

I think those two are evidence that little information is coming out of Mr. O, and obviously little is sinking in.

[Guest samjam]

There has been nothing but rumour & speculation about the 1.6 update, which has been frustrating in my view

And this is the source of the dissapointment.

People without authority saying "I work for Orange and on my intranet it says blah...."

And people who dont work for Orange speculating and saying that the E200 has been withdrawn etc.

Those who pay attention to what Mr Orange says and ignore the other cruft realise the whole matter is as simple as "be patient, wait till its ready, when there's something to say I will say it".

I take it all the complainers aren't really expecting to go get online status reports more often than the project managers?

It seems the complainers want Mr Orange to explain why each rumour didn't come true.

The answer is easy, stop taking the rumours so seriously.

Sam