I love Orange!

[Guest cepheus1]

Yes...you read it right! I think Orange are fantastic!

I love my SPV. The update went well and was a big step in the right direction. I think Orange Care is the finest Insurance policy. Everyone that ever served me in the Milton Keynes Orange Shop was a STAR!Orange customer service is good and everyone I've ever had to speak to has made it their mission to help me and solve what ever my problem was! What more can you ask for?

I know it's not trendy to "big up" Orange, but IMHO they are fantastic and I love them!

I've only just escaped from SINGLEPOINT who are without a doubt the biggest S**** in the world! You'll find yourself stuffed with SINGLEPOINT if you buy a phone from Phones 4 U and sign up for an O2 or Vodafone contract (I think you also get them if you buy the same from Car Phone Warehouse too!) Just a word of warning - Don't go anywhere near SINGLEPOINT :evil:

I can say, categorically, that Orange ROCK :!:

[Guest Rob.P]

To a certain extent I agree, the level of service I have recieved from Orange has been good. The way they talk to me on the phone is great, best customer services I have spoken to in along time, especially in todays climate, most CS's are nasty, couldn't give a shite, your wasting my time attitude.

They are still not excellent as their product information and general staff knowledge base is a bit on the crap side, but then so are most companies and you can't win them all. (Hey Orange you might want to start training the NTL Customer Services Dept, cause they are disgustingly useless)

[Guest BAMN]

i agree. I had carphonewarehouse insureance the phone developed a falt and the wanted to send it away for two weeks. I took orange care and within 2 days a had a brand new handset. :)

[Guest Shire29]

well I can't complain about the service I have been given either, however Orange have been slow to react to a number of general SPV issues especially certification, which is still slowing down the growth of this great phone. Which is now more of a problem for Orange than for me :wink:

The update took an age and their internal communication is severely lacking, imo. Not that it is any different from any large organisation, including the other major networks.

They also "listened" and sorted out some decent GPRS tariffs, correct me if I'm wrong but these are so far the cheapest out of all the networks ?

Singlepoint, I believe Wathdog did a programme on them, didn't see it myself, so can't comment, but a lot of customers that we get in have not had good experiences with them.

Dealing direct with Vod, Orange or O2 is pretty much the safest way to go.

Cheers, Shire

[Guest yatpeak]

I love Orange isn't a statement I much hear around here...

Wyatt

[Guest cepheus1]

Exactly :wink:

We live in a world where everyone is quick to complain, but we rarely take the time to compliment :roll:

I'm starting a new movement :)

[Guest mashkhan]

yep, phoned them up yesterday because my phone wasn't working properly. The operator already knew my phone had a fault on it! I'll get my new one today.

[Guest casper508]

Finally some nice words! :)

[Guest Matt Whitfield]

Well as a first time Orange customer, all I can say they are one hell of a lot better than 02...

I've only had to call customer services twice, once to get my g/f's roaming turned on after she went to Paris and forgot to get it enabled and then subsequently to get my roaming turned on and both times they were very friendly and helpful... That is not something I'm used to as an 02 customer!!!... I think they send all the 02 CS people on hate training before they let me out to be rude and unhelpful to customers...

[Guest madu]

Fare point you all. They are not very technically clever and most MoDaCo'ers would know more than an average OCS person - but I agree that they are nice and polite and usually do 'try' helping you as they can (as if it's not their job though).. But you are right - we love complaining and we really should pay attention to things that can be complemented on more often..

To make a point though that I think many will support - it is not OCS or Orange Care that we moan about - it is the *management* that send wrong messages to customers whether through their CS or otherwise. They are THE people that make us angry and don't live up to their promises..

[Guest jhew]

I have to agree! So far (touch wood) I've not had a problems with orange. There was a minor blip in this view when I 1st got my SPV....just a small case of 'SPV? What's that?' syndrome from 156, but otherwise their service has beem exemplary. They are always helpful, cheerful, and when they say they'll do something, they generally do. I was on Vodafone for years (been on Orange now for nearly 5) and they're not a patch on O.

I really hope someone from O reads this thread. I work with the general public, and they can be the most ignorant, whining bunch of s***s possible. Hopefully this thread will go some way to cheering up OCS and make their day a little more bearable. :)

[Guest SeaneyC]

Have to say that over the last 6 years i've been on One2one, Orange, Vodafone, Cellnet, One2one/T-mobile, and now Orange again, and have to agree that Orange has by far and away the best customer service, even if orange care isn't free anymore :)

And where are all the call centres, it's like every time i call i get a different sounding sexy lady with a regional accent! Have to say that the One2One customer service was also excellent 1st time round, but last year didn't seem to be so hot. T-Mobile cutbacks? Also have to agree with Jhew that the general public complain about anything and everything, compounded with my experience of them during the day in retail, and in the evenings working at bars and clubs!

[Guest cepheus1]

It's really nice to read that others are prepared to stand up and be counted with a nice word for Orange :)

And madukrainian's point IS the point really. The people you get to vent your spleen at when you phone Orange weren't responsible for any of the short comings with the SPV...and I don't actually expect them to know everything about every phone they sell either.

I just want someone on the other end of the line to value ME as a customer and CARE about dealing with my call to my satisfaction. And they've done that every time :!:

Thank you Orange ;)

Keep the nice comments coming friends...if you want to complain...start your own thread please :wink:

[Guest sykix]

I thought exactly the same as you guys - until recently.

They seem to be fine, as long as I ask them common questions.

{BEGIN SENSELESS RANT}

You've asked for it guys, your pro-orange talk has made me boil inside. I can't take it any longer :) .

I had a Siemens SL42e last year on orange, and the service I received then was excellent. But when I moved to my spv (new contract on same account) I started having problems.

First of all, it took them two months and lots of phone calls to get the bill right. At one point, I had a bill for £120 (should have been 30) which I phoned up and corrected, only to be followed with a FINAL REMINDER notice the following week, with what could have been very serious consequences.

But that didn't bother me too much since the problems were with their databases, and the people I spoke to did actually have a brain so the problems were sorted out with one phone call at the beginning of febuary.

I've been trying to get my SL42 unlocked since the early january. Still no sign of ANY code, even though I've phoned them up, and 'emails' have been left with the unlocking department. They say it's a problem with Siemens, but I can't believe that, it's been 6 weeks now.

I spoke to two people today who were quite rude to me. I wasn't pleasant myself, but still civil. It has been 6 weeks!!! The first one wouldn't put me through to her supervisor, and the second (dave) gave me the HELPFUL advice that phoning again 'won't really do anything', and also wouldn't put me through to his supervisor. The whole thing made me realise that I'm not actually going to get an unlocking code from orange. I was also wondering if they've all had a pay cut or something :x .

{INTERLUDE FOR COFFEE AND GINGER NUTS}

(BTW, if any one knows where to get hold of a working unlocking program - the ones I have seem to crash in WindowsXP and VMware Win98 (I have the data cable), please pm me. Looks like I'm going to have to risk my precious dough with a cheap thirdparty unlocking company)

My sister is on singlepoint (waiting till the end of her contract). She was working as a junior doctor in a hospital last year, without a landline internet connection. She bought her phone because singlepoint had promised GPRS in the 'near' future. Apparently still not here!

{BACK IN THE RANT THEATRE}

T-mobile and btcellnet (I presume mmo2 have followed on in suit) aren't that great either.

Other utility companies have far better customer support. Telewest have the best customer support I've ever seen. It seems to me that mobile telcos abuse the 12month contract trap, and fail to provide customer support that we should expect (not hiding away until the complaints roll in - catering for everyone's needs). I will be moving my tariff right down after 120 days and switching supplier. Luckily I won't have to get that unlocking code from orange!!!

{END SENSELESS RANT}

Thanks to orange for completely screwing my morning up.

EDIT: Customer service should, if they can't resolve the problem with the customer, to the customer's satisfaction, forward to their supervisor, or give some kind of contact point (I asked for an address to write to, APPARENTLY no such address exists). When working in customer service, which I have done in the past, you have to accept that you'll get angry customers - people aren't going to phone up if they're happy with their service just to have a chat (well, most people). You have to act AS the company, not a poor sod who has to put up with this idiot rant on for half an hour.

[Guest Matt Whitfield]

Heh, I'm surprised to hear that Telewest's CS is excellent, but fair enough. Shame NTL's isn't and their customers ended up setting up www.ntlhell.co.uk.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! :twisted:

[Guest pipin]

:x are you people ill ???? cause i know a good doctor who gives free treament :roll: Lets not go over the top here ORANGE as alway been crap they will contuine to be crap untill such time that we the public show them that we are not prepared to take thier S*** anymore, and show them by not re-newing our contracts. yes orange care is a good insurance and so it should be at 60 bucks a year for the first year. OCS knows about as much, about their products they sell, as a maket trader know about selling snow to eskimos. they are ill-informed by management, and trained to answer the simplest of questions, anything beyond a basic question get the answer????? bahbahbah bah i put you on-to our tech department to see if they can help??? tech department log your fault and says they get back to you?????? (and they do? when your contract runs out) i,m still waiting for my return call since December 28th Orange Are s*** wake you people :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: It was only a week ago that everone was calling them Crap now cause u,ve had your update they are saints ( give me a break and also my WinMe update ORANGE YOU ???????s )

[Guest SeaneyC]

Sorry to hear about your recent experiences sykix, surprised you got that final reminder notice so quickly! With my experience in call centres (not that much, but a good year or so temping in them) I would say that the supervisor doesn't really have much more power to do anything than a normal advisor, do just supervise, any problems get passed up to their boss. On the unlocking front, managed to get my old SL45 done in a matter of minutes at a dodgy market stall for £10.

Also have to say my experieance with Telewest was awful! Not really sure what part of customer services dealt with it, but i was looking for a mid - high end deal with TV, Phone and Internet, and it took them about 2 months to decide whether they could off the service or not. Turns out the cable was not laid for our block of flats (newly refurbshed) so now the wall 3 foot from me now (nextdoor) has cable, but we can't get it. Same goes for at the other end of our block. Two months for that information? Eventually getting ADSL next week.

[Guest jhew]

I don't ever recall posting that orange are 'crap'. I agree with the previous posts in the fact that the person on the other end of the line is a) only knowledgable of what they've been trained/told, :lol: not personally responsible for the problems their customer(s) are having, and c) only human.

Having worked in customer service, it's very hard, and totally demoralising when people (i.e. customers) think you're beneath them and less that human because u work for a company that they think is jerking them around. They think that you're personally assembled their video/tv/phone or whatever, so it MUST be your fault that it's gone wrong. Granted you are a 'representative' of the company, so should expect this sort of attitude to a degree, but there are a lot of people out there that take it way too far, and imho it's getting worse. In my experience the nicer the customer is to me, the nicer I'll be to them and the more I'll want to go out of my way to help them. I also agree that the levels of training these poor people who work for these big corporations receive is, well, pretty lousy. But what did u expect...proper training = more £££. I know how they feel, I had to learn by doing. Hang the managers/chairmen/accountants/penny watchers I say! Failing that, do a job swap for a month or so: let the grunts run the show, and the managers can man the phones and take the s**t for a change :)

I'm digressing here just a tad me thinks. Need a cuppa ;)

[Guest Big Ron - No Longer a Mem]

"And where are all the call centres, it's like every time i call i get a different sounding sexy lady with a regional accent!" Plymouth, Bristol, Peterlee and North Tyneside - so basically you're getting Westcountry or Geordie. And the "second line" crew are at a secret South Coast location. (seriously!)

"Telewest have the best customer support I've ever seen." They also make phonenumber losses each year.... maybe there's a link?!

"I was also wondering if they've all had a pay cut or something" No, but they've all been told that henceforth they'll be working every third weekend, not every other Saturday. That's an 8% increase in "unsocial hours", 8% LESS time spent by mothers with their children. And there's NO associated pay increase; just "take it or leave it."

"The first one wouldn't put me through to her supervisor, and the second (dave) gave me the HELPFUL advice that phoning again 'won't really do anything', and also wouldn't put me through to his supervisor."

Orange supervisors have VERY little additional power compared to general CSR's. They're both reading from the same script... one just has a little more experience. Their main job is to "help the helpers" - if you can't find what you need in the script, they probably know where to look. But "the script" remains KING. So, passing you on to an already over-busy supervisor (known at O as a "Soup") means you don't get any farther, and someone else gets put on hold because a supervisor isn't available to tell the CSR where to find what they need.

Bottom line (and I've said it before) Orange are GOOD at PHONES. 156 TSRs deal with dozens of different types, and a wide range of queries - many of which are pretty basic. When you call, the person you speak to has typically been fielding quesries about Sony t68i's, Panasonic GD87e's, Nokia 8310's... and (suprisingly, given the minusucle proportion of SPV customers) an SPV query or two. They get paid £12k. With hindsight, it would probably have been a smart move NOT to "generalise" SPV support and attempt to make EVERY 15X CSR an "SPV expert", but instead to have earmarked specialist staff. But when they planned this out (as much as Orange plans anything) they can have had few ideas of the type and number of problem calls the SPV would generate. Plus, an "Independent SPV unit" would have been a very loose cannon - people making up the scripts as they went along.; and that's NOT how Orange do things. I'd never work for them again... but I've owned an Orange phone for years, and intend to remain a customer for as long as they stay in business. Given the shaking up in the market that accumulating 3G losses will cause throughout the industry.... how long that will be is guesswork. My guess would be one fewer mobile telco within five years.

[Guest cepheus1]

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

I suppose it was too much to expect that all the miserable whining sods wouldn't hijack this thread as another opportunity to bitch about Orange :roll:

If it isn't enough that there are already over 3000 threads on this board bitching about the SPV and 156 et al - some of you still felt it was neccessary to "jump" this thread with more whining!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not disputing that the complaints about the product ain't justified, it's just that I speak as I find!

And I didn't think they were crap before the update...and I don't think they are crap now!

The people we get to deal with, in the shops and on the phone are just ordinary decent folks who come to work to do a good job and earn a buck so they can live their lives. Be nice to them :)

And they have always been great to me...which is why I wanted to say "I love Orange"

You don't have to agree with me, but if you do it would be nice to see others positive experiences on this thread...and if you don't agree - go play in another thread - there's over 3000 to bitch in:!:

Man!!! I'm loved-up today :wink:

[Guest rangero_gerant]

yes OCS are polite ???? its part of the training but come on lets be fair here if you were running the company would,nt you have polite people answering the first line of customer serives. and at least 1 person on sencond line that knows a little about techincal help. i have phoned orange tech help line 8 time since i had my phone in December regarding different problems, and not once have they been able to sort them out, i have had to come to this forum and find fixes for the problems from the members. And i,m still waitng for a return call from both customer services and their tech help line since the 28th of Dec.

What i surgest you do is phone up their tech help line listing a few problems " like how come my singal is lock out, or my phone wont reboot or why are my keys keep sticking" why dont i get the same service that your management get" or maybe how come you have not re-leased win98/Me update for my phone yet" and see what and how you get treated .

Open your eyes people dont be blinded by an update this is Orange we,re taking about remember. The company that cares???? i dont think so, the company that keeps your phone locked to their service unless you can get a workround. WAKE UP :roll:

[Guest cepheus1]

rangero_gerant :)

I think you missed the point there.

I believe the "crap" part of mine and jhew's post was in reply to pipin saying "only a week ago *everyone* was calling them Crap"!

Our point being that he is including me and jhew in the sweeping *everyone* statement and it just isn't true!

And yes, I have phoned up with technical problems with my phone and *everytime* I spoke to really knowledgable people at 156 who sorted the problem out...that's why I love them :wink:

And hey!...it ain't my fault you can't afford XP Pro is it :?:

LOL...just kidding friend :wink:

[Guest jhew]

Quote: ''It was only a week ago that everyone was calling them crap''. At the end of the day rangero/pipin, we can each only base our opinions on the experience we've had with O. I havent really had a bad one in the 5 years I've been with them save for the GPRS hiccup I mentioned in one of my previous posts. I agree with cepheus, I am happy with the service I receive from O, post AND pre update. As cepheus says, we, be it as individuals, a group, or a collective public spend to much time complaining, and whinging, and normally over things that, in the greater scheme of things, could be regarded as petty. It is not my intention to belittle the troubles you are having, as I am sure that you are finding them tiresome. I am just trying to make the point that, as cepheus, I believe that we do not spend enough time complimenting people/groups/corporations in this day and age. My eyes are open, tolerance, patience, and above all good will, are rare virtues.

[Guest cepheus1]

HEAR HEAR! Well said jhew :wink:

Don't think that for one moment I tolerate bad service, or that my standards of expectation are low - 'cos they ain't!

I am the worlds *BEST* complainer and I *ALWAYS* get satisfaction, because I'm calm, polite, articulate, logical and constructive; but above all I *NEVER* lose my temper and *NEVER* swear when I'm complaining to a corporation or who-ever :)

But I also very very very strongly believe that we never say thank you often enough when something goes right - that's the point of this thread!

[Guest jhew]

HEAR HEAR! Well said jhew :wink:  

I'm calm, polite, articulate, logical and constructive; but above all I *NEVER* lose my temper and *NEVER* swear when I'm complaining to a corporation or who-ever :)  

But I also very very very strongly believe that we never say thank you often enough when something goes right - that's the point of this thread!

I thank you ;)

And I agree. Like I said before, you get what you give. At work, the minute a customer swears at me, or looses their rag, that's it, I walk away to leave them standing there with a face the colour of a baboon's arse. But if their nice, I go out of my way to help. The xmas b4 last I got a bottle of JD off of one customer, and a tin of biscuits from another, just for sorting out their individual problems. It made me feel very special, and above all appreciated for doing a good job, which I believe is the point cepheus and I are trying to convey.