Orange taking the pith?

[Guest barrybryce]

To summarise the story to date...

I had lots of problems with data calls from my SPV (original) in July, as a result of which my phone was diagnosed faulty and replaced. Unfortunately lots of long data phone calls then turned up on my July bill, especially ones that lasted 7 to 10 hours.:roll:

I phoned up Orange at the time. I tried explaining things like common sense, the fact that I don't use my phone for hours solidly, and about the SPV battery life, and got nowhere. I then threatened to cancel the contract, and they agreed to credit my bill for the value of the calls.

My next bill came through with a credit of £10 for three of the calls (the ones during the night), but not for a series of calls exactly 1 hour long and an hour apart made all the way through one day (cost £56).

I hit the phone to 150 again... at first they told me that the £10 credit was most of my GPRS bill for that month, and as I always made some GPRS calls I'd probably come out it better off...

Treid again and got someone who knew the difference between CSD and GPRS, and they promised to look into it. They promised it'd be dealt with by 5th October (in time for the next bill).

Just called them to check it had been; and they said definitely not. This time 'it WILL be dealt with' in time for the next one. Interestingly - they did tell me that they have a big backlog because they've had lots of enquiries of this nature :shock:

Unfortunately, they did also tell me that they wouldn't put me through to the section that is dealing with the enquiries, as they won't speak to the public. :evil:

In the meantime I made the extremly bad move of thinking that all had been sorted out and upgrading to a [wonderful] C500 on a new 12 month contract, so I can't use the effective threat any more.

I detect that strong smell of someone getting fobbed off... is there any known way of getting through to Orange? Would writing to them and demanding a written reply have any effect?

[Guest adamski]

They are AWFUL at customer service now. They used to be the best in the market but None of them seem to care a jot once you are signed up!

I Would refuse to pay the fees questioned FORMALLY in a REAL letter.

Let them respond again on paper, keeping your paper trail going..... they WILL roll over, but not to phone calls and email in my experience.

[Guest barrybryce]

Unfortunately it's a little difficult to refuse to pay it as the direct debit comes off... I'm trying to get the money back!

[Guest Lady Marmalade]

Hiya,

I'd suggest calling once more and finding out where the 'off-line team' dealing with it are located - and send a letter straight to them.

It is normal for Orange to get an offline team working on specific problems like this - not taking calls mean that they can get on with it.

Lady M.

:roll:

[Guest barrybryce]

Thanks!

I took your advice. The first time the person I spoke to said that the team I needed to speak to sat close to them, and that they'd get them to phone me today.

No phone call three hours later, phoned back and they had no idea where it was, except that they were somewhere in the North East :roll:

At first they refused to give me an address and said I'd have to wait for their phone call, which would be some day during the week as they didn't work weekends! On persisting for an address for somewhere in the North East... I got an address - in Bristol. :? Not my idea of the North East so either they were too daft for me to be able to believe it, or more likely, I've not got the address of the team I need?

Then they read out the notes of the call from when I first complained. It was extremely short and brief, including absolutely none of the relevant information I'd given to them in a half hour conversation.

"Customer phoned to dispute data charge on his bill of 5th August. Said had problems with phone during this month"

Groan... ^_^

Long letter to Orange prepared.

Companies like Orange make you despair. It's sometimes hard to remember that, like myself at my work, not one of the countless people I've spoken to are either thick, not bothering, or trying to be useless. But if Orange employ 5050 people, the fifty (getting paid the most) will be adept at creating systems that thwart the rest in any efforts to be useful.

[Guest hotphil]

It may not be the best move, but you have got some protection through the Direct Debit scheme. If you are certain that Orange have made a mistake, your bank is obliged to give you a full and immediate refund for the questioned amount. Your bank then chases up their loss from Orange. Be very clear what you are asking your bank to do though or you'll end up with a cancelled Direct Debit. You need to ask them to recall the erroneous claim only - they have a list of a dozen or so "reason codes" for doing this through the system, I think the one they need is code 4 ("Advance Notice Disputed").

Before messing about with your Direct Debit, I'd write a nice simple (remember the audience here :wink: ) letter to Orange and explain that a response is required within a reasonable deadline and if they choose to ignore you again they will have a whole Direct Debit mess to sort out as well.

If, like me, you can't really be bothered to spend the time and money sorting out their mess for them, another useful thing to do might be to send your bank and Orange written, signed authority to speak to each other about the matter for a period of say, three months. Be sure to give them each other's phone numbers/addresses/account numbers and just sit back and let them sort it. Let your bank know you'll switch all your accounts to another institution if they don't sort it out and you'll be surprised how much they'll be prepared to do for you (but they do need your authority to speak to Orange on your behalf and obviously Orange need your permission to speak to them).

I agree with earlier comments, Orange used to be great. These days my AVERAGE on-hold-to-speak-to-first-point-of-contact time is +40mins just to get them to sort out their mistake (I've had a completely wrong £100+ added to my account - and if I can quote the lady for a minute "Oh, yes there's notes all over the account saying not to charge you that, so why they've done it is a bit strange"). Genius. And then she said that it couldn't be taken off and I'd have to pay it and sort it out the following month - which was a) unacceptable ^_^ wrong (back to the guarantees of the Direct Debit scheme - they could and SHOULD have sorted it for me, but I just couldn't trust them to do it!). Believe me, you've never seen a Direct Debit cancelled so fast!

[Guest barrybryce]

I've thought long and hard about the DD. I definitely don't know if I'd trust my bank to pass it over to their hands.

Trouble is it comes down to a my word against Oranges thingy. I know I didn't make 6 hour, 7.5 hour and 10 hour data calls. I also know I didn't make 17 data calls exactly an hour long at at exactly five to each hour in succession. I also know that I was complaining to Orange about trouble making data calls throughout the period this was happening, and that my phone was replaced as a result. The bank don't...

If only I had taken that upgrade with the new 12 month contract... if only... :?

[Guest hotphil]

Fair point. I guess their comeback would always be "even if you didn't manually initiate each call, you are still responsible for the device and its actions". Wish you luck in sorting it out.

[Guest Chaser81]

This is why I dont pay by direct debit.

My only real grievance with Orange is that they force people who dont pay by Direct Debit to pay an extra £3 a month extra as an admin charge. If this was one £3 charge I wouldnt mind as much, but Orange add this £3 charge to every account I have with them, even though it all comes on the one bill. Thats £12 a month in supposed "Admin Charges". Admin my arse!!

[Guest barrybryce]

I phoned them again today. They said only the Data Integrity Dept could help, and that not only could I not speak to them, neither could they! Kafka novels have never seemed so real.

But of course both the people I spoke to were doubtless completely helpful to the best of their ability. THEIR final suggestion was that I should cancel the next Direct Debit, but god knows whether to trust their word that I wouldn't get their collection department hounding me in the meantime...

Starting to think that under a small number of selected cicumstances, Orange are $%£&% swines. ^_^

[Guest barrybryce]

Letter from Orange.

I wouldn't have thought they should have been trusting that their reply answered the issues raised in my letter. :? They haven't, and they still haven't even said when they will. ^_^

letter from orange.jpg

[Guest furby]

Damn that sucks, Orange seem so unreasonable and untrusting these days. Customer services ends up being more irritating than the problem your having

:roll: And my god, If I hear another comment about a "non customer facing department" I will absolutely loose it :!:

[Guest mike-oh]

"and i rust that my response answers the issues raised in your letter." WHAT?! Do orange not own a spell/grammar checker, or perhaps they do and don't know how to use it?! Orrr maybe it's the hard nosed orange guy from adverts since gone by and he cried so much when he realised how much he upset you that his nose rusted. ^_^

and i'm talkin crap, damn that pub and it's delicious ale.

[Guest barrybryce]

If I'd been at the pub I'd accuse them of being osspots. But I won't get into hat. Or I'll ry not o anyway ^_^

[Guest amo]

I know i've suggested this before, but perhaps a global "Network Specific" forum section may be a good idea on MoDaCo now its gone to such a large scale site? Would help threads such as this and others like it to be more constructive and keeps the "Main" section more appropriate. Moderators?

[Guest barrybryce]

Well, I should post again seeing as it's to Oranges credit this time. They've sorted it, or at least they say they have.

Though it never did get as far as the Data Integrity Team, and I never did find out if they do exist. A team leader in the contact centre said they'd sort it for me.

Fingers crossed I'll be back to praising Orange again in hopefully no time ^_^

[Guest Sharky]

Hi, just to add that if you do get any further problems with Orange, write to their head office, as I find that the staff there are extremely helpful, when the people at the normal service centre are useless :evil:

The address is as follows:

Orange Executive Office,

Birchwood Drive,

Bracken Hill Business Park,

Peterlee,

Co. Durham,

SR8 2RS.

Hope this helps anyone who is fed up with being fobbed off by the normal Orange helpline

Cheers

Mark

[Guest virtual alan]

Hi, just to add that if you do get any further problems with Orange, write to their head office, as I find that the staff there are extremely helpful, when the people at the normal service centre are useless  :evil:

The address is as follows:

Orange Executive Office,   

Birchwood Drive,   

Bracken Hill Business Park,   

Peterlee,

Co. Durham,

SR8 2RS.

Hope this helps anyone who is fed up with being fobbed off by the normal Orange helpline

Cheers

Mark

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No one has managed to find a telephone number for this office at all???

[Guest virtual alan]

No one has managed to find a telephone number for this office at all???

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If this is of any use to anyone

An e-mail address to the ORANGE HANDSET UNLOCKING DEPARMENT

[email protected]

But you didn`t get it from me right :-)

[Guest bikespod]

;) :D :D Hello all, its been a while. i've left orange out of sheer desperation, and a need to retain my sanity. leaving was almost as much hassle as dealing with the so called customer support, couldn't port my number either.

anyway, i digress. at my time of leaving the number for orange executive was 08708700862 and the managing director was 02079841888. don't know if these numbers are still current, but if they are, hope it helps. i was with orange for 6 years, virtually from their launch, and they went downhill slowly and steadily. doesn't sound like things are improving any.

was hoping to read good things about orange and smartphones, but to my dismay, its not the case. :D :( :(

keep at it, nice to see the old names still there plugging away. take care MoDaCo.

the site looks great by the way

[Guest monkeygadge]

If those are real. Nice. ;)

[Guest Paul Varjak]

No one has managed to find a telephone number for this office at all???

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Here is the phone number you require: 0800 079 0134

If Orange ask where you got the number from just tell them that you got it from CISCAS which is the arbitration service they are supposed to tell you about in order to resolve disputes.

Orange may try to give you an 0870 instead - but they cost 7.9p/minute so always use the free 0800 number.

I have found Alison Thompson very helpful. The manager's name is Angela Jones.