Orange Care woes

[Guest Palindrome]

My poor SPV got jammed on headset profile yesterday so I called Orange Care, described the problem and asked for another phone to be sent out to me (which was the normal state of affairs when my previous two phones had died).

The person taking my call said he could not do that until he had gone through a list of steps that his computer would tell him to do. :? These included asking me to take my battery out, replace my sim card, try to put it onto another profile and try to find (the nonexistant) factory reset button. This led me to believe that Orange don't have a clue about the SPV (the person I was taking to didn't even know what an SPV was).

At the end of the list of inane questions his computer told him to email technical support for more information. I was told this would take 4-5 working days and he would phone me back when he got a reply. :evil:

I told him this was unacceptable as my phone wasn't working and I needed it for work ('Sorry sir, got to do what the computer says). I asked to speak to someone higher up the chain (I'm sorry sir, there is noone else who can help you with this problem). I rang back later and taked to another Orange Care person with the same results.

Has anyone else had been through this frustration? From what the people told me everyone has to go through this process. I want to know if I'm being sidelined and if so what to do about it that doesn't included shouting down the phone at the Orange Care telephonist. :)

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

Unfortunately it isn't just Orange's CS that are like this. The employee's are given a list of specific questions that cover 90% of problems with the phones on their network, in general this will cover most problems. Unfortunately when the problem does not fit into this criteria you are stuck.

This is reflected in almost all CS now. I have called Pipex CS asking if they were having problems with their network, all i wanted was a simple yes/no but ended up being told to "reboot my LAN". The "3" CS is based in India, where as good as the employee's english is, you still end up explaining yourself repeatedly. AOL offer an online chat service with their CS, which turns out to be a center based in the Phillipines where the employee's are told to look for keywords in the queries, and then copy/paste possible solutions.

I know this probably doesn't help your situation much, but from experience i've learnt to not expect anything useful from CS services that is not routine.

(bad weekend with AOL, sorry :))

[Guest Palindrome]

Cheers, Mono. Glad it's not just me. Funnily enough I'm also with Pipex so I'm certainly glad I haven't had any problems needing CS aid.

Just have to sit this one out. At least there is a small hope that I may have my SPV replaced by an E100! :)

[Guest beersoft]

I think is a bad week for customer disservice, and its only tuesday, but its all msblast and sobig's fault

i've had some fun with demon today, trying to get them to fix our flakey dsl router at the office which has fun with the following things

keep a ssh connection open to anything off the demon network for more than 20 mins

retreving webpages and transfering more than 7 bytes at a time without hicuping

they did sulk when i told them my gprs was more reliable (look its drifted on topic) and faster most days :)

and they have broken stuff so you can't do any diagnostics to find out where the problem is

then i had a monkey from 'The giant telco that shalt not be named' go 'whats DSL.....whats a telephone....' and hang up on me.

and to think i stopped doing tech support because i ran out of space in the body fridge

-- Owen

'Step away from the keyboard'

[Guest Palindrome]

If MoDaCo members had a day in Orange Care there'd be a lot less problems out there. But who'd volunteer for a day of pain (unless it was a case of record-altered E100's for the boys). I wouldn't want to be the front man for enforcing Orange's policies to irrate customers. This is why I don't want to give the customer support staff a hard time over this.

[Guest beersoft]

We are a little mean to orange in this forum.

In my experiance orange have some of the best customer service people i get to deal with in my crazy world i live in,

i have a short list of companys with crapy service on the telephone

BT

NTL

T-mobile

british gas

computer associates

BT (because they can be that rubbish, they get listed twice)

and Milton Keynes council

and whichever bank you use :)

-

Owen

Insert coin for new game

[Guest davidhorn]

With BT, you get the impression that they really HATE customers.

I also detest call centres in India. Like the new directory enquiries.

"Hello?"

"Hi, could I have the number for B&Q in Exeter, Devon, please?"

"How do you spell that, please, Sir?"

"E..X..E..."

"No, Sir, 'Devon'"

*This is going to be a long day*

"D...E...V...O...N"

"OK, that's X...A....B....Z....Z. Is that right Sir?"

*Repeat 4 times*

"Sorry, Sir, we are having computer problems!" [stock excuse]

"Oh. What's the weather like there?"

"Hot, Sir. I'm in India."

"How do you spell B&Q, Sir?"

*Give up*.

[Guest HelloDave]

GRR :evil: Don't get me started on BT! Orange are bad sometimes, but BT win it on useless customer service. Recently I wanted to transfer my ADSL from one phone line to another (I moved from uni to home for the summer) but becuase I wanted to transfer broadband to a line that already existed, BT got very confused. I won't go into details, but they managed to cut me off broadband for a month, lose my parents' phone no for 3 days (nervous times - "we should be able to get your number back sir, as long as a new customer hasn't already taken it") and CS denied all knowledge of my problems when I called them. I managed to fill 4 pages of A4 with a diary of my woes, and I now know BT CS's hold music off by heart. Why they have to play the same bl**dy track on repeat is beyond me :evil: After the first half hour it gets a bit tedious (hence the 4 pages of A4).

After about 6 hours on the phone to CS trying to sort out problems, and a few angry e-mails, 2 months later I get a letter saying basically "oops, we messed up, have £50". Joy... (the month without broadband effectively cost me that bearing in mind I paid £27 for ADSL and dial up charges on top of that)

Rant over :)

topic>

I've had 2 new SPVs from O care and both have been sent out within 24 hours with no arguments or inane questions. The fact the CS guy couldn't hear me (headset bug) when I got the first replacement probably speeded things up a bit though!

[Guest beersoft]

192??

www.yell.com, we have smartphones here remember !!

There is a special way through the BT phone system is to throw a 6 before you start or

optin 4 - things are broken

then option 3 - im pissed off make it all nice again daddy

a little off topic i found somthing that makes all the .jp sites engrish

http://www.excite.co.jp/world/url/body?wb_...e.jp&wb_lp=JAEN

wayhey!!

--

Owen

just on more format and reinstall before bed

[Guest Kallisti]

Going back to the Orange Care issue. I had exactly the same. Essentially if their computer doesn't recognise the fault they refer it to Technical. In about 2-3 days they'll come back with a stock suggestion (such as try your SIM in another phone and vica versa).

I went through the first 3 days of this when my phone suddenly lost ability to authenticate to the network. I then told them I considered them in breach of contract for not providing a service and therefore a consideration and that I would therefore be cancelling all payment authorization.

After a quick, Them: "You've got a 12 month contract" Me: "You're in breach. I've got no contract" Them: "You've got a 12 month contract" Me: "You're in breach. I've got no contract" Them: "You've got a 12 month contract" Me: "You're in breach. I've got no contract".....

....a supervisor called back to say that a new phone would be with me in <24hrs. Which it was, and it works fine. (Personally I think someone was logging in with my IMEI, but that's not in their checklist)