Damn Orange want to charge me £135 to change tariff

[Guest daisysmurf]

Hi Guys,

Just been on the phone to Orange CS and they are trying to charge me to change tariff to a lower OVP Virgin even though i have been with them four months. They say i can't do it for 12 months becuase its the SPV can they do this ? thanks ;)

[Guest Richie M]

I don't think they can love, your airtime agreement should just be the standard one and doesn't include (as far as i know) any clause about hard-ware requirements for OVP.

Phone them again, different operators give out different information :roll:

[Guest bdmoore]

Evil Orange :evil:

I can't see how they can expect to get away with that unless the company you bought the phone from had some really evil Ts and Cs - who was it?

[Guest daisysmurf]

It was onestopphoneshop and i called him back and he told me to wait a week and try again so i will !!

[Guest tt5th]

:shock:

I am afraid to tell you that they can do this...... The price you paid for your SPV at first is a subsidised price based on your 12 months of line rental at £x per month. Within this is a clawback of the original cost to subsidise the handset to the price you paid. If you want to change to tariff that has no line rental then you have changed the agreement and so they want the clawback from you in one hefty lump sum. If Orange did not do this then everyone would by a special offer Nk6310 or something on contract for £30, then change to Virgin zero line rental making a massive saving. If you check the prices of Virgin handsets and of PAYG offerings you will see the difference in price. This difference is the subsidy that is clawed back through your line rental.

I hope this is clear enough! Give me a shout if you need more info.

(Orange employee with an SPV)

Fantasic Site BTW! Without it I would not have discovered half of what my SPV can do!

[Guest s_cox_99]

Nope, onestopphoneshop says 4 month mimimum before you can change tariff, obviously you cant change network provider though, you signed a 12 month contract. I think the guy above might be mistaken

[Guest lycrawearer]

If what "tt5th" is saying is true .... I didn't know that Orange actually enforce the T & C's of a third party (ie .. that of onestopphoneshop) ? After all - Orange usually send out a welcome letter within 7 days advising you can change your tariff anytime you want ....

Another point worth mentioning is, I picked up a SE P800 from Phones4U last Saturday, the phone was free on the Orange YP 700 tariff - I rang Orange yesterday & changed that to the HSCSD tariff @ £10 per month ... no questions were asked !

So daisysmurf - it may be wise to try again ! Usually have to take the best of 3 with Orange !

Lycrawearer

[Guest Richie M]

:oops: yeah tt5th is right, i forgot Virgin was line rental free, there are completely different T&C for Virgin OVP :roll:

And if your onestopphoneshop contract says a minimum of 4 months before you can change tariff they have included there own T&C into your agreement as Orange say 1 month.

[Guest Vector]

Yep tt5h was right, i tried it but i had to pay out the remaining amount of money owed from my contract ;) so i didn't bother :wink:

[Guest s_cox_99]

Ah ok, sorry I take it back I was thinking about the Virgin free line rental, I just want to drop to a lower o2 price plan, but havent lasted the 4 months yet, hopefully I wont have the problem.

Real-6 Man Utd-5

(sorry had to get that in there)

[Guest Vector]

Man utd 4-3 Real madrid, sorry just had to get that in :wink:

[Guest Hax]

I've just passed the 4 month period and O have no problems letting you change to a lower tariff so long as you are paying line rental - I've dropped to the the T-Mobile £13 a month equivalent. Tried to push for the Virgin tariff first (got that on old numbers for free after 12 months) but knew that they'd charge the line rental. Was told that I'd have to pay £15 for each month left in my 12 month contract - total of £120 so thought I'd go for the T-Mobile equivalent as it works out cheaper! ;)

As already stated, Orange are perfectly within their rights to make this charge due to the handset subsidy and I'm sure this *is* covered within Orange's terms and conditions somewhere - I have seen it a long time ago but can't be bothered to look again!

Hax

[Guest fozzie]

And if your onestopphoneshop contract says a minimum of 4 months before you can change tariff they have included there own T&C into your agreement as Orange say 1 month.

It used to be 1 month but IIRC, 4 months is now part of the standard Orange T&Cs. I have seen this on other sites such as MobileShop. The handset subsidies were disproportionately larger for the higher useage tariffs. So what a lot of people were doing was taking a phone on a high useage tariff, getting a huge discount on the phone plus probably some other goodies thrown in (such as DVD players etc), stumping up say £50 for the first months rental then immediately changing to say ED50 at £15 p/m - cheers Orange ;)

I don't know what sort of people could think like this and do such a thing :)

Of course now, you are stuck on the higher useage tariff for a few extra months and so Orange get their money back!

[Guest Richie M]

Cheers Fozzie, i stand corrected ;)

I didn't know they had changed :roll:

(i think i'd best dig it out to see what else they changed :roll:)

[Guest nutmanuk]

Man utd 4-3 Real madrid, sorry just had to get that in  :wink:

Erm Real Madrid 6-5 Man United, sorry just had to get that in! ;)

[Guest Vector]

yeah, that's an aggregate, Man utd won 4-3 on the night :wink: , so we still beat real madrid in one game ;)

[Guest badboy4life]

I don't know if O have changed the terms recently but i work in a phone shop and we tell many people they can't change for 3months.The reason for this is that if the tariff is changed within that time then the shop loses its extra commission for selling that particular tariff!

Note:I don't tell customers this!!!

[Guest alanorange]

the changing talkplan within so many months is not orange term and condition but a condition of the dealership that wants to ensure they get their commission.

You can change your tplan whenever you want - orange if notice you had just connected will say not within 3 months due to the fact the dealer may charge you if in their terms for the loss of commission but if they have not stipulated this then free to change whenever you want. This has been in place with dealers as far back as over a year now. So its not new its just dealers losing their commission due to lots of people cottoning on to the fact that once connected can change tariffs immediately and orange only gave the commission after 3 months of having the contract. So you could blame orange but the dealers are the ones that will charge you a subsidy.

With Virgin OVP within 12 months Orange ALWAYS charged a subsidy for changing to that tariff - it used to be £10/month for each month left of the contract up front on next invoice plus virgin connection fee and talk time credit. then the connection fee to virgin tariff was removed such a long time ago. then only recently the subsidy changed to £15/month.

[Guest daisysmurf]

Hi,

But ironically just a couple of days ago I chnaged my other Orange mobile to Virgin OVP with no charge . Maybe I am being cheeky asking for two on Virgin, but thier other tariffs just don't suit me !

[Guest midnight]

when you say other orange mobile do you mean another SPV?

dont forget, the SPV is unique to orange it is their baby, why should they allow you to change to virgin?

its like buying a mercedes car then asking mercedes to downgrade the engine to a fiesta engine cos its cheaper to run (no offence fiesta owners and silly analogy i know, but kind of relevant)

[Guest daisysmurf]

No , I got a free 3510 last year from talkworldonline on a wicked free 12 months line rental deal. But in January when i saw the SPV , i immediately fell in love with it, so I got that too. The 3510 is redundant , so thats why I changed it to the Virgin OVP. I want to do it to the SPV too because I'm techno freak and my mates just got me a 3560 Video Phone. ;)

[Guest midnight]

3650's suck ass, and are nowhere near as good as the spv, 3650's have gotta be one of the ugliest bricks ever aswell

[Guest daisysmurf]

Calm down , calm down no need for all of that. Actually size doesn't matter :wink: ! Just being impartial about things, i wanted 1 windows based platform and one java based platform. The 3650 is a quite decent phone , with lots of free software, its cool , sexy and different, BUT theres enough room in for both phones ;)

[Guest dan.peterson]

Yeah, I ordered from onestopphoneshop and they said at the time that the virgin tariff would mean I had to pay the remaining line rental anyway. Its not clear tho unless you ask, even on the orange web site.

Feel sorry for those with Vodaphone via single point - they can not lower their tariff at all. And they only do cheap phones after £30 really. grrrr

DP

[Guest midnight]

they just look like toys to me :wink:

just my opinion, but with the 7650 and now the 3650 they seem to have lost the plot, and both are way too bulky for trouser pockets, but ah, maybe thats their plan, maybe they want to make them for women because they can carry them around in a handbag or whatever ;)