HOW TO GET MONEY BACK FROM ORANGE DUE TO SPV FAULTS

[Guest drblow]

I'm with Fraser! I figure Orange owe me approximately 29.99 for my lost days of GPRS!!

Lets face it, the cost of the calls isn't high because of people claiming refunds or 'goodwill gestures' - they are high because the telecoms industry in the UK has been too long used to making extreme profit, and aren't going to let that go, because your average UK punter will just sit back and let them do it - maybe blame it on people getting refunds.

So I'm all for taking it to the b***ards!! Obviously, only in the context that you can justify to the cust service that you feel you have paid for service which is sub standard, or been charged for things you were not made aware of etc.

The only way things will ever improve is by people taking money off them, ... coz

'money talks,

but it don't sing & dance,

& it don't walk ..."

em... sorry, it's late!

[Guest midnight]

yeh, but some people are takin the piss, and claiming for everything they can

oh, and i never said the cost is high because of it, but if, like this thread suggestst that everyone should go and claim loads of money back from orange, then it cant help the prices put it that way.

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Errmm, Sorry to inject a little reality into some of these fantasies, but the facts aren't exactly hard to come by - I've posted the salient ones on this very forum myself a couple of times.

(1) Orange has c. 17m customers

(2) Orange's UK profits last year were roughly £137m

For those incapable of joining the dots for themselves, that's a "per-customer profit" of just over eight pounds. or 67 pence a month per customer.

Anyone justifying larceny on the grounds that "they're making loads of money and they can afford it!" should maybe remind themselves that 67p isn't exactly "loads of money".

[Guest fraser]

Exactly. We are doing them a favour by spending our money on their service. It's not the other way around. Don't just pay corporations blindly, stand up for yourself. If you haven't recieved a service that you are paying for, then you have to question why you are paying for it.

Big Ron, the GPRS deal was not done out of the goodness of their hearts! It was done by their marketing department who decided that it would attract more customers. And I'm sure it did, it was a nice big carrot on the end of the stick for me. I switched networks to Orange for this phone, the first time I'd switched network in five years. They know what they're doing!

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

"Orange," as long-time employees kept telling me apologetically, "has changed, and not neccessarily for the better, since it was taken over by France Telecom." They had the highest customer retention in the market - known as "churn rate" - because they really were different. Their attitude was different - to both employees and customers. That's why I became an Orange customer, and why I applied for a job at Orange. Discovering that these days they're "just another Telco" cruising on past glories was what prompted me to decide to leave (they decided not to keep me on anyway) and is why I'm no longer an Orange customer - when choosing between near identical products, cost plays an increasingly important role... and O2 offered me a far better SIM only deal; £10 down, £3.54 a month (standing charge for itemised billing) gets me an hour a month of "free" air time. Orange has nothing comparable on offer., so.... the hell with them.

[Guest mantrac]

I'll have to agree with some previous posters.

A decision to ask for a refund because of bad quality of service, should never be affected by whether a company is making profits or not!

I mean, how would Orange react if I called them at the end of the month as said to them: "Oh, I didn't make much money this month... Can you please be compassionate and charge me less??"

At the end of the day, we are paying for a service. If the service is not up to standards and Orange are aware of this (which they are!) they should either do something about it or give us a refund! If you don't complain it's broken, they'll never fix it! Trust me, you're doing them a favour.

And I can assure you that two software updates down the road, nothing much has been done about any of the bugs I asked refunds for.

And as for Orange increasing call costs due to a high request in refunds, may I just say that this is B$$$$CKS!

The reason you will see an increase in call charges is not because of a handfull of customers asking for their 20 quid!!!

It will be because of the telcos' kamikaze attempts to secure 3G spectrum licenses at a cost similar to a small country's national budget!

The only valid excuse to me for not asking for a refund is because someone can't be arsed calling and explaining.... Which is fair enough!

[Guest fraser]

wot he said!! :lol:

[Guest Rob.P]

I have to agree with you on this Mantrac, but it is a fine line, obviously if you have a legit claim then yes, stand up for your rights and don't act like the rest of the muppets in this country that allow corporations to walk all over us and make this country one of the most expensive to live in.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the reason this sort of thing is so rampant in the US is probably because their public is being shafted by their corporations and has been doing it for longer. Corporations over there run the government and ours is slowly getting that way as well.

Most corporations will quite happily rip you off until you point out to them that you have noticed and that unless they sort it you'll start showing your teeth.

(Having one of those days where everything needs putting to rights :lol: )

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

Strange... I started my Orange career with a few weeks in billing. Periodically, I'd get a call from someone who saild almost EXACTLY "I didn't make much money this month, so I cannot afford to pay the bill". And Orange's standard response was "no problem. Pay off as much as you can, and we'll set your phone to "receive and 999 only" until it's paid off". That's kind of an "understanding" attitude - at least they didn't leave their customer with nothing but the threat of the bailiffs - they were prepared to compromise.

Call charges seem currently to be influenced mainly by Oftel rulings - they claim that calls from landlines to mobiles are overpriced, and demanded that the MOBILE telcos reduced their charges to the landline telcos (i.e. BT) but made NO requirement that BT passes on the lower cost. They also claimed that mobile to mobile "same network" calls were too cheap, and that phones were oversubsidized. So, from the 1st April, hardware costs rose by around £40. But I note that there are now a number of good deals (yes, yet again from Scancom.co.uk I should be getting a blasted commission!) on SPV Upgrades (i.e. upgrades TO SPV)

[Guest Rob.P]

And Orange's standard response was "no problem. Pay off as much as you can, and we'll set your phone to "receive and 999 only" until it's paid off". That's kind of an "understanding" attitude - at least they didn't leave their customer with nothing but the threat of the bailiffs - they were prepared to compromise.

It's not just Orange that do that, vodafone were doing that for me when I was a student a number of years ago, most companies will/have to do something along those lines.

[Guest fraser]

Putting you to 999 and receive only isn't compromising...it's common sense. If they were to cut people off completely, they'd never see any of the money.

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

"Putting you to 999 and receive only isn't compromising...it's common sense. If they were to cut people off completely, they'd never see any of the money. "

Before they'll let you sunbscribe to ANY kind of contract, they require proofs of identity - precisely so that they CAN get their money back if you fail to pay. They eventually just pass your details to a debt recovery service. But Orange (in particular) are very proud of their low "churn rate" - they lose less customers to other networks than any of their rivals. (There are "motivational posters" proclaiming their superiority plastered all over their offices. My heart sank when I first spotted them, during the interview...) So, they'll bend a little to keep you - and keep their "churn rate" low.

[Guest fraser]

True, but debt recovery is expensive, and as you say, it's to keep you on as a customer. It's not out of the goodness of their hearts!! :lol:

[Guest Firaas]

Strange... I started my Orange career with a few weeks in billing. Periodically, I'd get a call from someone who saild almost EXACTLY "I didn't make much money this month, so I cannot afford to pay the bill".  And Orange's standard response was "no problem. Pay off as much as you can, and we'll set your phone to "receive and 999 only" until it's paid off". That's kind of an "understanding" attitude - at least they didn't leave their customer with nothing but the threat of the bailiffs - they were prepared to compromise.

Simple reason for that - it's a lot cheaper for them to say "right you're making no calls but we'll let you pay it off when you can" than to initiate debt recovery/legal proceedings.

Call charges seem currently to be influenced mainly by Oftel rulings - they claim that calls from landlines to mobiles are overpriced, and demanded that the MOBILE telcos reduced their charges to the landline telcos (i.e. BT) but made NO requirement that BT passes on the lower cost.

There's an implication that BT should - and Oftel regulates BT a lot more than it regulates mobile providers - probably because BT has a wider customer base, and also has its public duty. There is no doubt that if BT doesn't lower its call costs, Oftel will force it to - and an Oftel enforcement is bad for PR.

[Guest Rob.P]

...and an Oftel enforcement is bad for PR.

BT don't seem to think so, you should subscribe to the OFTEL bulletin magazine, BT are mentioned in it everytime. Bless BT they are trying hard to hang onto their technology.

The thing about debt recovery is that the debt is usually bought off of the company concerned, so the money you owe actually goes to the debt recovery company. Also another little known fact is that some of the large corporations actually own their own debt recovery companies, BT and HSBC are 2 that I know of.

The usual thing that happens is that once it is passed to debt rec. it will stay with them, but if you ignore them and eventually you start get letters from the corporation concerned again then it's pretty safe to say that the corp. owns that DR company.

It's amazing what you can learn from being a debt ridden student :lol:

[Guest Firaas]

BT don't seem to think so, you should subscribe to the OFTEL bulletin magazine, BT are mentioned in it everytime. Bless BT they are trying hard to hang onto their technology.

To an extent, but this has been quite a major move by Oftel - the biggest move in fact affecting mobile operators for two years!

Oftel are suggesting policy changes all the time, and if BT complied with their informal suggestions, there would be no need for a bulletin - Oftel realistically acts against BT 70-90% of the time compared with other operators.