I've been charged for GPRS!

[Guest dognbone]

14.5 Mb here, and no extra charges.

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

I have been PM'ed by other forum members who were also charged, so i'm actually not the only one!

P

[Guest Smiffy99]

Hi all,

I have been reading this thread (From start to finish) and can say the following from a legal standpoint:

The Charging is, as Paul has found out, technically a breach of contract BY ORANGE (Hence they changed their tune after speaking to the legal dept). You would be able to bring an action for this if it really went the whole hog - which it wont. A warning will be issued etc, fair enough.

There is a tremendous amount of ambiguity in the terms and Conditions as to what is considered "Fair use" and as such, in law, there is a term known as the "Contra Preferentum" Rule which is legal speak for any ambiguity being decided AGAINST the party wishing to rely upon it. SO, there is ambiguity, Orange want to charge (Well, try to) so the terms and conditions would be interpreted in favour of YOU and not Orange.

Incorporation - Contracts need the terms and conditions incorporated into them to be of any effect. This means that they must have been given to you before the commencement of the contract. If you only find out the terms AFTER The contract has started then they are void (Olley V. Marlbrough Court Hotel [1949] 1 KB 532)

IF after your "Warning" you continued to "Abuse" the service and Orange cut you off, I would consider an action under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. I cannot recall the specific section (Will find it if anyone interested) but suffice to say that termination of the service or an increase in price (Charging for GPRS) would allow you to cancel the WHOLE contract without penalty.

There are so many holes in the T&C's over the GPRS that no charge should ever be incurred!

Anyone need further infor please PM me.

[Guest Neiko69]

W :evil: hy don't we all just send the bugers back and stop messing around. Orange will get the message, and release this thing when it's finished, instead of this massive beta test of a very buggy phone by experienced techies (us lot). My view is Orange isn't arsed about customer service, as long as they get the units out the door, they're happy.

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

I quite like being an SPV beta tester, but it's not quite what I bought the phone for :D

A bit of gratitude would be nice too, heh.... :(

P

[Guest lucky]

I agree with smiffy99,

In addition I dont believe orange is able to discontinue the plan after April 30. If you look through your contract, there is a section where it gives Orange the option to change its pricing.

If however, this is deemed to seriously disadvantage you, you are able to cancel the contract without penalty.

Even if it was £12 for unlimited usage this would be double the price and they could not do that.

Comments?

[Guest Torque_79]

Damn, Orange charges 8£ per MB in the UK?? :shock:

Thats f*cked up!!

In Denmark, we are charged 25kr per MB, thats roughly 2£ !!

But thats also from MB 1! Theres no "free" first 10MB or something like that. We pay for the whole lot.

On my bill for Dec, i was charged for 11MB, and still found it quite expensive. So i must say, you guys are really being ripped off!!

I sure hope, that reasonable GPRS prices will be coming, as more and more competition comes along.

In General, im very satisfied with my SPV. Sure, it has a bunch of flaws, but i hope they will be corrected, in the DK update coming late January.

Im very pleased with the mediaplayer, and use it for WMA's all the time.

I´also use the Messenger a lot, and check my email daily, using the SPV.

Paul has a very good point, early in this thread:

What good is the SPV, if those great internet features are ruining us???

When i received my bill, i was ready to throw my SPV in the bin´(along with the SIM card), and pull out my Siemens S45i again.

[Guest zenabi]

Just to add, this is from the January 2003 issue of the Orange Shop catalogue:

Orange's fair usage policy states 10Mb as fair usage. No automatic charging takes place if the 10Mb limit is exceeded. However Orange reserves the right in some circumstances to contact the customer and ask them to decrease their usage if there is danger of overloading the network.

Not to cause more of a stir, but the above terms apply to the Free Photo Messaging offer too! :roll:

[Guest RMWD]

I agree Orange's fair use terms are for roaming and I have not seen anything related to this GPRS trial. The peolpe at 156 also promised me a call/message at the 10mg limit but thei boss in customer services, denied that they would do this absolutely. He also said that though they monitor usage for monthly billing they couldn't let us know for our own information and that they would charge above the 10mg limit for the month.

I would suggest that as most of use pay by credit card unless there is clear written evidence of an agreement to pay for use above 10mg then a dispute should be raised with the credit card company. If you pay direct debit then that can be stopped.

Personally I think Orange should get a fair and reasonable pricing policy out which encourages internet /email use, and create a new mass mobile internet market. If you're reading this Orange.......

[Guest Firaas]

As a user of the phone that pays his bill each month via direct debit I'm more than concerned that at the prices mentioned I could possibly be buggered for a month until they credit my next bill.  

Well it's yet to come through so we shall just have to see.

Ian

Direct debit is covered by the direct debit guarantee.

If an error is made by the organisation or your bank or building society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

I think come April I'll be Quitting GPRS and doing updates and downloads via my PC :D Orange really know how to ruin a party :evil:

I hope all the other operators start a pricing war, then we will get a proper service. HELLO Orange remember us? we're the ones who made you no1 operator don't start being a no2

[Guest]

Typical Telecoms company B :evil: :evil: sh1t!

While this little episode turned out ok for Paul in the end, it's sent a clear warning that Orange will ARBITRARILY charge customers at their whim.

I for one will not go a week now without checking my usage online. Which is a real shame at the end of the day - we've got this great little gadget but now I'm scared stiff of using it's functionality. :D

[Guest arm_ageddon]

Well this hole thing stinks a bit of the whole bt unlimited internet thing and oftel told them they wern't aloud to use it in their advertising as it is misleading and I have emailed various tech columns in the press today to complain about this and am also considering appraoching oftel and the advertising standards people as this is blatent misrepresentation of a product

- just my little thoughts!!!!

[Guest HelloDave]

The whole point of the promotional pack is to get people using GPRS so they'll pay for it when the offer ends, but they're not going to do that if they're too scared to use it now! Personally I think GPRS data charges take the pi55 at the moment; at £8 per mb we pay twice what PAYG customers do! And why is GPRS is measured per mb when my bill tells me the data i've used to 2 decimal points? Hmm, Orange wouldn't be trying to make a bit of extra revenue here now would they?

The GPRS 0.5mb bundle is £4 p.m. plus £8/mb. According to Orange's examples, this works out at £8 for each 20 web pages (1mb) you view! I can go into a new BT phone box and get 30 minutes broadband access for about £1 (I think - it's something like that). BT Broadband is £27 p.m. and I can downloads GBs of data for that! I know I'm not comparing like with like here, just illustrating how expensive GPRS really is. The bundles were designed when all people did with GPRS was use WAP occasionally and check a few e-mails, but they're just not suitable for the SPV - perhaps Orange could introduce a fairer priced SPV only plan? Say £2/mb (which is what it costs in another EU country on Orange, Denmark I think) with per byte billing like we get with per second billed phone calls. Orange would make a lot more money if people felt GPRS was a reasonable price and thought "ah, i'll just listen to a bit of Talk radio on the way home - it won't cost much" (and pigs might fly, but you get the point), instead of now where we think "oh god, I won't check my e-mails today, it might cost me another £8" :D

Another thing Orange could (but won't) do is introduce what I believe the Carphone Warehouse's Pogo does, where web pages are compressed via a special gateway before they reach the handset - ie images resized, HTML compressed (blame M$ authoring tools, esp Frontpage for the bloat!) which would reduce bandwidth usage a bit, and speed things up too. Will they do it? Of course not!

As far as being charged for GPRS goes, I only used 8.5mb last month, but have a suspicion i'm over the magic 10mb this time, and Orange had better not even think of charging me over £6! :twisted:

Well, that's my 2p. I'd feel left out if I didn't post in this thread! :(

[EDIT] Incidentally, do the 6310, T68i or any other GPRS phones have data counters in? Just wondered, because i've never had one!

[Guest Sculli]

The T68i has a fabulous little data counter in it. Not that it ever got used because GPRS was pants on it. But mine has been sat on my desk, in a state of readiness, just in case the SPV goes t*ts up and at £8/MB I fear it is going to be impossibly expensive to run as folks have been during the "unlimited" trial.

I'm not so worried about them charging for the "over 10MB" use, because I know that I can claim it back according to what has been posted in this thread. More worrying is that Orange will automatically place people on the GPRS plan that equates to their data usage during the... err... "unlimited" period. For some of you guys it sounds like your May bill will be massive (the 50MB bundle is £60) and I certainly can't see an easy way of claiming this money back.

Far too sobering thoughts for a frosty Wednesday morning... sorry!

Sculli

[Guest Gadgetman]

Quote from Orange SPV GPRS terms & conditions:

The purchase of the Orange SPV is subject to connection to the Orange SPV promotional pack. It provides unlimited web browsing, email and access to a great range of information and entertainment services (terms and conditions apply) and costs £6 per month on top of your existing Service Plan. The pack can be purchased until 31st March 2003 and runs until 30th April 2003. At the end of the promotional period you will automatically be changed onto an equal or lower priced GPRS bundle with a megabyte cap.

So they can hardly put you on a 50Mb plan and charge their current price. I reckon 25Mb cap on £6 per month, with extra Mb at £1 would be about right :D

[Guest phaedrus]

Reading this thread scared the hell out of me as I know I've been using the gprs service with "enthusiasm".

Anyway, just checked my bill online and my gprsdata summary says:-

Inclusive megabytes used 34.1450 - :shock: Charge 0.00 :D

Obviously £8*24.1450=£193.16 would have been most regrettable.

Also no overuse warning in the bill.

Phew!

[Guest Rolandrat]

Thing to do:

Wait for the Bill - if it's wrong 'cos they've put you on a high GPRS tarrif, cancel your Direct Debit and then sue there arses for breach of the terms and conditions.

I will not be dictated to by Orange and will not except this.

We will wait and see. Flak jackets at the ready!! :wink:

[Guest Shire29]

Thought I'd put a couple of comments myself.

Firstly right from day one launch there has been a lot of confussion over the "unlimited" GPRS usage bundle, as is evident in the number of threads on this forum that mention it.

Orange have never made it absolutly clear and don't even quote the same info themselves. i.e. when I bought the phone in the Orange shop I was told it was unlimited usage, howver when I had my courtesy call from the Orange the rep he made a point of informing me I was limited to 10MB, completley different.

Now so far I personally have been please with the service I have received from Orange, always very helpful. I can view my account on line including my bill 5 days before it came in the post, as a new Orange customer I was suitably impressed.

This episode scares me though, cus this is a major, major balls up by Orange. Without doubt we are testing the software, hardware and useability of what I feel is a new bread of phone. I have made countless Demos to friends, family, work colleagues with this phone, and of course the advantages are data accessability, so the Radio Streaming, internet browsing is a must show.

I'm sure this is the same for most users, we are promoting their own product, by using it. OMG Orange don't want us to use it, oooops, big mistake.

Of course we all should of been aware of data costs after the promotion, the info has always been available, and yes at the moment it is expensive, whatever network u are on or phone u have, however I had hoped that Orange would offer some special tariffs for data after the trial period, but the evidence is that this won't be the case.

Add the certification issue and I don't see me staying with Orange in the long run, shame seeing as they must have invested a lot to pilot the MS Smartphone Software, only to cut their throats with some poorly thought out policies.

I also know that Orange review and monitor this forum and the fact that they have made no official comment about this thread is infuriating. We seem to be the only ones that really give a damn if the SPV succeeds or not.

Cheers, Shire

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

...I can view my account on line including my bill 5 days before it came in the post, as a new Orange customer I was suitably impressed....

i'm also a new O customer, i tried viewing my online bill but i needed an account number, i assumed this came with my first bill, where did you get yours from?

cheers

[Guest Smiffy99]

Thing to do:

Wait for the Bill - if it's wrong 'cos they've put you on a high GPRS tarrif, cancel your Direct Debit and then sue there arses for breach of the terms and conditions.

I will not be dictated to by Orange and will not except this.

We will wait and see. Flak jackets at the ready!! :wink:

Whatever you do - DO NOT cancel the Direct Debit!

Doing so will put you in clear breach of contract and allow ORANGE TO SUE YOU! (as well as messing with your credit rating).

What you can do is ask for the refund and, if refused, bring an action yourself for many of the reasons mentioned in my other post.

[Guest DJHope]

you need to apply for a special account access code, which is sent to you in the post, in order to apply for this code you need your account number!

As for the GPRS thing i rekon all the networks will be screw us over right now, i think their very pissed about 3G licenses theve gotta recoup their money somehow. Nice to seee the british govenment taking away billions from telecomms but not putting a penny back in do they want us to be 50 years behind? The japaneese are already looking at 4G 100mbs

compared to our measely 3G 512k/sec.

[Guest philgriffiths]

Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans!!! Ive just read this whole thread and pooed myself.

I dont really use the GPRS very much and havent had the phone very long so gratefully im pretty sure im safe from a massive charge. Ive never really seen much use to GPRS before but seeing some of the options opened to me by the SPV I really wanted to start using it, and now like many others i guess am terrified to even click on internet explorer.

Despite studying a little of the law for my uni course my contract law is amatuer to say the least. do the people on the forum reckon id better phone up orange and get something concrete about what will happen before my first bill arrives or wait and see what happens because to be honest even a few meg at 8 pound a meg will probably leave me royally boned!

I appreciate any advice people are prepared to offer. When some of you say you have asked for the details to be sent to you, or copies of what the CS rep says do you do this at the beginning of the phone call or at the end?

One last point that i see is that someone earlier said that the whole'fair usage' thing was the stop people taking the piss. i find it hard to see how you can 'take the piss' are people malicously checking their emails in a clandestine attempt to screw something out of orange?

[Guest philgriffiths]

ive jsut had another thought. When people say that orange will phone you or txt you and will do this only once whether they get through or not. How can this be classed as giving a warning? surely its simmilar to being 'served' legal papers, i.e. that you have to actually recieve the warning for it to affect you.

PS: Sorry for posting the last ting twice. had a connection prob and did know it had allready gone through.

[Guest Danlance]

ive jsut had another thought. When people say that orange will phone you or txt you and will do this only once whether they get through or not. How can this be classed as giving a warning? surely its simmilar to being 'served' legal papers, i.e. that you have to actually recieve the warning for it to affect you...

Has anyone recieved a warning by any means (other than after phoning Orange up and politely suggesting that the few hudred quid they've surreptitiously added to your bill without warning be deducted...)