Orange....The future's bright??

[Guest madu]

Orange..........

You get promised an SPV with all the features and Orange support for those features and... a lot - you get promised a lot by the sound of it.

Now. As I come to see (not only I) there are a lot F%$^UPS.

I went on same contract with my sis, coz they had probs running checks on me (i am a spy). So now, whenever I have a problem - they say that i am not authorised and tell me to piss off. So if I don't count these phone calls, my sis does - and she's fed up now with me asking her to do this and that.

To start, I noticed that of all the advertised features, only CALLing and SMSing (normal) is there to start with.

To use GPRS - you have to call them and activate it (which takes up to 24hrs 'Orange time' and up to 3 days 'GMT UK time'). Pain in the arse (since you already signed up and paying £6p/mnth for the service).

Do you want to use MMS as well?? Really? U sure? Ok. You have to activate that too.... Same timelines, more pain, same arse..

Wan to know how many free minutes you have left? Should I repeat myself?? It seems to need activation as well.. Interesting. More pain.

So, unless it is me being overcritical and it is not the case with most of you - appologies. Otherwise - my arse hurts from all this pain. How much more do we have to take?

ps: I still lovehate the phone though. It's great sh*t.

[Guest amo]

Regarding your authorisation to change account details etc, simply ask your sister to ring orange one last time and ask for a "Third Party Authorisation" form. Fill this in and mail it back to them. This allows you to have almost full access to the account.

[Guest mjc1975]

Next time your sis phones up get her to ask for a 'third party authorisation form' when this has been recieved by Orange you will be able to make changes to the account and get people to help you without clamming up!!

I agree with you on the other point. I sat in the Orange shop for 1/2 hour while they upgraded me, and had to make the same 2 calls to get it working.

Wouldn't be to hard to assume if someone is buying a phone like this one they might want GPRS and MMS!!!

[Guest madu]

That's my whole point!! Thanks for making it short & clear!!

The sister part was more for the storytelling (i wasn't lieing), but I will get the authorisation thing sorted. Thnaks

[Guest Funkyberry]

Hi there...

Its hard in your situation, as even the dumbest employer for Orange could tell that you were not your sister, but we had this problem where I worked for my placement year.

One of the developers was in charge of setting up the handsets, and this meant he was the primary account contact. I shall call him "Bill" for this purpose. Now even the CTO of the company tried to call up to get something fixed while Bill was on holiday... and they refused to do anything unless they were talking to Bill.... even though the CTO was the one to sign off their payments, and knew the pasword....

Then I was made responsible for the handsets, and for about 8 months, I was Bill when I called Orange... I knew the password, and my name was Bill.... wasn't it!!

There was one time though where I was arranging a new handset, and I accidentally forgot... and said "Hi its Chris".... then I was thinking "DOH!!!", so I had to make my excuses, then call back as "Bill"... of course it worked though....

Interestingly, one of the other directors had a problem, and spoke to Orange, who refused to talk to him about it. So he walked across the room, gave the phone to Bill who told them the password and handed back the phone. The director then asked

"How did you know that was Bill? What if I called up and said "I'm Bill, the password is X". How does that work?"... to which they asked him to give the handset back to Bill, and then started asking LOADS of questions like "what was the balence of the acount 2 bills ago", and stuff like that!!

So out of this, 2 things are clear:

1) if you want to get something done, just say that you are the primary account holder's name, and the password, and they'll give you full access.

2) don't ever question this procedure on the phone to them!

Oh and yes your name can be added to the account, but you STILL can't do any of the useful things that you really need to do! I was made a secondry acount person when I joined the company... which is why I resulted to being Bill!!

-funkyberry-

[Guest madu]

This is ABSOLUTELY F*****G REDICULOUS!!!!

This prevents honest decent people from getting thei bloody phone to work, but wait - conmen allready know what to do in this case, don't they? Just like we all know now - and it's easy to figure out. They won't even send a simupdate... how strange is that?? am i accessing an account by receiving an update, any harm i can do?? NO.

They are all a GAI and have a GAI:

generally annoying issue.

Common sense would mean that If i know my number, pin, password, d.o.b. and all acc.info - surely I...... oh, i can't be arsed going on and on and on........ and she's just called me saying she added me to the acc.holder list. hehe.

they are still pretty gay though

[Guest dan.peterson]

Yeah, stupid as it is, the orange guys are just going thru what is prescribed by the UK Data Protection Act, in which no one, (thats NO ONE) can get information held on somebody else without that persons permission.

arsey and crap, but blame the EU and Westmister, not orange.

[Guest Sculli]

Absolutely Dan.... I'm sure there'd be plenty more moaning if it were easy to ring up and gain access to other people's accounts.

As for the activation of the data services - these topics have all been dealt with, in some length, a while back.

Just for the record - my GPRS and MMS functions were both active within 2 minutes of a single phone call. No problems with these since. When I have needed to phone Orange CS (Vodafone were stalling the porting of my old moby number) they were friendly, courteous, honest and extremely helpful. This is no mean feat when the only people you get to talk to are all complaining.... how often do people call CS to say they're happy with the service / hardware?!

It's not a bad old life.... ooh hold on - I've just spotted a half-full glass!

Seasons Greetings y'all!!

Sculli

[Guest ssj_kakarot]

hi just wanted to point out some facts that i think might make things clear if not well am bored, ok.

to actually gain access to the account all the you need to is phone up and put the account holder on, the operator will ask for a few details off them and then if they confirm these details most probs d.o.b and address the account holder can then ask for a password to be placed on to the account to give whoever they want full access to the account, you do not need to have any forms sent out or any thing, i know this as i did it the other day as my mothers name is on the account, im a kiddy not 18 yet, n now i have full access to account on quote of my password me mam set.

the reason these things are asked or people refuse to talk to you is casue of the strict date protetion acts we have in call centres ( its exactly the same as i work for vodafone and we do the same things) we just need to check details for example d.o.b and address and then we are free to talk to customers, if some one fails to quote details we have to by law refuse to talk to them, as we can get very much but badword in court if we talk to people without taking details.

and also i think its really stupid that you have to get mms and gprs activated on your account, lucky for me i new i woudl have to so i made the store person do it then, but its the same with any network dont ask why?????

any way nice little rant there, n remeber be nice to call centre workers in future its the shitest job in the world.

[Guest Funkyberry]

Hi there...

Infact, I think you will find stuff like ordering a new handset and stuff can ONLY be done by the primary account holder. Anyway, if I can call up and say I was "Bill", and get the job done in 5 minutes on my own, then that beats waiting around for the real "Bill" to be free, then get him to tell them the password, just to hand back the phone for me to ask to change the phone, to them telling me to hand the phone back to the primary person to make sure this is ok...

You may say this isn't true, but it happend to me 3 times... since I was "Bill", I didn't have any problems at all (apart from when I forgot to say "Bill"! :D

About the call centres... I actually set 2 call centres up from scratch on my placement year, which is quite a kinda £60,000 responsiblity and one of the key targets to be met by our company's business plan... So I was quite happy with that :(

It was an outgoing call centre, so its not quite as bad has having people calling up moaning about things that have nothing to do with you... although we did sometimes get the odd "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER!!!" people....

-funkyberry-

[Guest ashes01]

as mentioned before:

data protection act you should look it up some time its quite handy and a pain in the arse at the same time.

WRT to activating additional fetaures on your handset eg: mms and gprs...

MMS is automatically activated on your account if you have a mms handset.

The reason why it has to be activated on your phone is because your having a photo bundle at an additional charge to your monthly line rental and HAS to be authorised (check your T&C's in your manual).

And gues whats the score with activating GPRS too....

RTFM

climb down off the horse purlease

:twisted:

[Guest davidhorn]

when my phone arrived from SmallTalk the GPRS SIM updates were waiting in the Inbox.

[Guest Wildfire]

Hi madukrainian

Working within one of these call centres i can honestly say that the Data protection act is a pain in the a$$, but to break it would cost me my job and i would be prosecuted as well (fine and possibly a custodial sentence)

My advice would be:

Have your sis (or whoever is named on the account) call 150 and ask for 3rd part access, specify they want level 2 (this will allow you to change dtails such as talk plans and add products), they will ask to speak to you and they will take a password from you, from there on you have access.

you never know you might end up speaking to me :wink:

Regards

Wildfire

[Guest xanadu]

Orange..........

I went on same contract with my sis, coz they had probs running checks on me (i am a spy).

If you are that dodgy, then you don't deserve to be able to own a phone, let alone have the cheek to complain about somebody doing their job properly !!

[Guest madu]

Hey, I'm not asking to access the account info!! I just need a bloody sim update! So what if I'm dodgy??!

My appologies, Wildfire, and all other call centre ppl. Didn't think of legislation issues, soz. But I still think they should be able to send me my sim update - no harm there, is it?? Don't think it falls in any way under Data Protection Act...

And yes, I know I'm dodgy and call centres are a pain in the arse, and I do feel sorry for people working there (not in a bad way).

But, I'm not that bad after all, so if I offended you, please accept my appologies - i did take it very personal with all the activation issue and then the sim updates... One of them hung my phone and I could do F.A. but take the battery out. So I needed another update (my gprs still didn't work).

But I'm more annoyed with Orange itself - this "MUSTactivate every feature this phone is designed for" thing and Lack of 'number of symbols" thing in new SMS - I'm pretty sure it's one of those things everyone knows about, so doubt it that Microsoft just did NOT include that feature. Surely, it will come, but before it does - there's some money pouring in... And little bits and bobs like that...

Right, enough moaning, after all they do provide a fair (enough) service and we all have our GPRS free for now (untill the point when most will hardly be able to afford it freely...)