www.orangeiscrap.com
please send your complaints about orange to www.orangeiscrap.com and www.ofcom.org.uk

“The worst thing is that orange don't care about my problem - I have been told to live with it

No call back and didn't get refund!

''Have been with Orange 12 years now! And had an experience poor signal and losing calls. Phoned up customer services and made my views and issues! The customer advisor on phone said if you don't like you could elsewhere. No apology or anything. Dam rude and he should be sacked. 
And over last few months again raised issues with my rewards why when you dial 453 it normally tells you what data reward was left. Then for months it didn't work and phoned up customer services who said it was being worked on went over my reward thinking normally what I would last. I phoned up again said I had gone over amount and questioned it. Not helpful they attitude its you're fault and wasn't there problem to me it was as dialling 453 didn't give the answer and on 450 the same! 
And also I was being charged for a subscription service even though I hadn't. Again phoned up customer service women gave me a text message to stop it. Did that it stopped. But she made a promise I would get a refund and a call back. No call back and didn't get refund! The golden rule don't make a promise you cant keep! And again they made out it was my problem and not theres! Very poor orange I don't rate you at all! 1/10 only.
And again after that wasn't happy the way I was treated and again promised call backs they didn't what a surprise not! Was even given email address to make my concerns issues and complaints! It kept bouncing back! No surprise again!
And on many occasions promised call backs it never happened! And they have some issues but when they say we will refund you it a load of rubbish they didn't!''

Disgusting abusive service?

''I've been with Orange for 8 years and have had odd problems here and there but nothing as bad as the last 3 months! I was called and asked to go onto 4G network and agree that it was the same price. I soon realised that they had swapped me over the EE (no real issue) but had put it through as an upgrade which meant that I was tied in for another 2 years with no new phone!!

I cancelled that same day and they cut my phone off! I called back and was spoken to very abusively by every member of staff I spoke to. I was passed to 11 different people and hung up ok 4 times. I logged 3 complaints, one written, one by phone and one by email and no one has ever got back to me.

The swapping to and back caused issues with my bill and I was advised to cancel my direct debit which I did. I had a bill through today for 1 month at a total of £301. The magic number to my husband was taken off by orange!!! The issue has taken me all day to sort out and have been told that I will receive a decision in 8-10 working days!!

I have refused to pay the bill and was told I didn't have to do anything until I get a revised bill.

Went to make a phone call and my phone has been cut off!!!!! I called back and spoke to another rude person who said I had to pay my line rental plus £3.68 non direct debit few!! I was willing to pay the line rental but not the extra fee as Orange told me to cancel my direct debit!! After half an hour on the phone my husband managed to get the charge taken off. I know it's only a small amount but I have been screwed over by Orange so many times it just took the piss!!

As soon as this is sorted I am leaving as I am finally out of contract. They better reverse the £301 charges or I will be taking them to court. Absolutely disgusting abusive service. Can't wait to get the hell away from them!!!''

You can go if you want, no problem ...

"To keep this short, I have been a loyal Orange customer since 1997, I have 2 business lines with yourself and Orange broadband and the service I have received from you has continuously deteriorated. I have a Sony Xperia T on my second line and every 2-3 months without fail the phone stops working causing weeks of problems trying to arrange a repair and the last time I requested a completely different phone, even a lower model but no! This time, probably the 6th time the phone has developed the same fault I was told I wouldn’t even get it repaired! I was speaking to your business representative R******* P****** and showed no sign of empathy calmly giving me all necessary details to cancel like saying, “you can go if you want, no problem, even though you’ve been a loyal customer for 17 years!!!!

I am completely amazed and will be taking my 2 business contracts (that could grow to a lot more) and my broadband elsewhere.

I will be sharing this email far and wide so everyone knows how terrible a service you provide.

An astonished once loyal customer"

Orange Customer Service – unbelievable.

"After my trip abroad and using my travel bundle (£6 per 30Mb of data) I received two bills calculating usage at the normal rate without applying this bundle.

I first called to Orange challenging the bill (24/04 for £119.07) on the 13th of May. I was told the bill was correct. The 2 agents on 150 I spoke to were very unhelpful and impolite, totally unprofessional. They were trying to explain that the extra charges were applied to the data used above the bundle, however when I asked for the itemised bill to be sent, I could clearly see that the data was used within the bundle limit and the bundle was not applied. I could not get the agents to listen to the problem and when asked to be put through to the manager I was put on a long wait and then was cut off. I had to call again next day to speak to a different agent, who confirmed that the 24/04 issued bill was incorrect and indeed it requires recalculation. Just over a week later I received next bill (24/05 for £433.92)with the same error again. I called customer services and again I was told that this bill also requires recalculation. Two weeks later – I see no change on my account against any of these bills. When I called customer services again I was told that the bill was forwarded to a wrong department and they had to redirect it. I was getting really frustrated with the whole situation, asked to be put through to the customer services manager and was refused. I requested cancellation, but when was put through to a cancelation department, a very nice person indeed has convinced me to wait a little bit as my issue is going to be resolved. I was reassured and decided to wait.

Today, 21/06, I have checked my account again and could not see any change. Called customer services again and was connected to another absolutely disgraceful agent. I was trying to explain myself, but he did not seem to listen interrupting and showing no compassion neither interest to explain and reassure. I was getting nowhere and asked to be put through to a manager, but was told that I was forbidden to speak to a Manager “Do you really think that everyone can speak to a Manager? There were 5 managers looking into your case!!”, yet, I have never been able to speak to any of them. I asked for this agents name or an identification number and was told “150”, which is the customer services number. I asked him: is it a joke? I know what number I am calling, I just want to know who I am speaking to. In response I was laughed at and was told that there is a note against my account – not to disclose any information (!!!!!) including the agent names / identification??? I was getting utterly frustrated and upset as I was spoken to with a huge disrespect and was laughed at. I asked to put me through to a cancellation department. He laughed again and told that they don’t have a “consideration” department. I felt totally humiliated: English is my second language, but I was very clear and it did not sound even close to “consideration”. I had to repeat several times with the same result and was about to end in helpless tears. I asked whether I had to spell it and was told yes, then I was cut off by that agent. I don’t know who I spoke to, but I would like investigation and addressing such a horrible treatment of the customer – I hope there is a record in Orange system of who I was connected to. I am holding a senior management position in a large UK company, I would have never allowed any of my stuff to treat anyone, never mind customers, the way I was treated!

I could have understood the situation with the bills and could have waited if I was not treated so badly and with such a disrespect, if every agent I spoke to in the customer service was polite and had a dignity to show respect and understanding and handled the issue professionally. After I had spoken to the last agent and the way I was treated, I had to cancel my account – after being a loyal customer for at least 7 years. Never again.

I am truly shocked by the calibre of people working in Orange Customer Service – unbelievable. If Orange wants to have an image of a respectable company with an excellent Customer Service such agents like I spoke to on 13/04 and 21/06 should not be allowed to work with Customers."

Shame on you Orange

"Orange conned my mother-in-law who is 82 into having a contract for 12 months.  She had a pay as you go for emergencies and to contact her grandchildren who are not on landlines. They told her she could still put money on in the shop which she did and then she had bills sent through.  She didn’t understand.  They gave her unlimited texts ... she can’t use text and internet access.... her phone is the most basic you could possibly get with no internet on it what so ever.  They told her to complain via the internet!!!!!!!! It was a sim only contract and the sim didn’t even fit her phone!!!! Do Orange not care?  Would they sell a phone to a child? They won’t cancel her contract. Shame on you Orange for ripping off old people."

Roaming Issues

"Dear Orange,

I am writing to you with a strong complaint regarding your Customer Service Department. I contacted Orange back in July regarding a bill for data roaming charges, I explained to the advisor on the phone that I had been to America but it seemed that the data roaming package I had did not cover this and I was charged almost £500.00 in roaming charges, as you can imagine a huge shock to myself taking into consideration the average of my historic monthly bills.

I was assured this would be looked into at the start, in turn, putting my mind at ease, since that conversation I have called Orange on numerous occasions and have spoken to countless advisors who have told me they would personally deal with my account, great, or maybe not! Two months this has been going on for, each time I call back I get told someone will call me back and advise what is happening. No one EVER calls me back, I have always chased. I called Orange on 11th September to be told that someone called Miriam would now be dealing with my account and my bill would be sent for recalculation. I had already been given this information two months ago.

I am now two months in debt with Orange because I was told to cancel my DD until this was resolved; I am receiving threatening letters stating my account will be sent to Debt Collectors due to failure of payment which will affect my credit rating, not a position I wish to be in as I am currently looking to apply for a mortgage. 

I have been cut off twice whilst on the phone to Customer Services, Supervisors and Managers never call me back. I was promised a credit and a call back the next day, given an email address for someone called Nicole Morgan who never replied to my emails and never called me back as promised.

I have been a customer with Orange for at least 15 years now, this is the first time I have had such bad Customer Service and have considered changing providers. My company has an account with Vodafone and their Customer Service is very professional and concise, with issues in the past I have contacted the Vodafone Customer Services and upon hanging up the issue has always been resolved hence happy Client.

I have spoken to the following people within customer services; Renee, Nicole, Miriam, Ash, Ramin, Zheam, Nitin to name but a few all telling me they would personally deal with my account and get this sorted, apologizing and making promises that never materialize. I am so disappointed with your Customer Service I am almost speechless, I used to rate Orange highly to anyone looking for a provider, I pretty much doubt I will anymore.

On the 17th September I spoke to Nitin on extension 64937 with another promise of a supervisor call back to have my account fixed, no call back.


For a further update I called your department on 19th September, when I asked to speak to a supervisor I was transferred to a debt collection agency much to my surprise, not really a nice feeling when you think you are in the knowledge that your account is being dealt with.

I have never missed any payments on my account throughout the whole period of being an Orange customer, again I was told to cancel my Direct Debit, in the next breath I am on the line to a debt collection agency.

I was miss-sold a roaming plan, now I am the one who will be getting black marks on my credit score.

Finally on 25th September after being mucked around for 3 months now, I have now been told I am not entitled to a credit for roaming charges even though I was in actual fact miss-sold this and that I will get a “good will” credit of £150.00. What I really cannot understand is that one minute I have been told I will receive a full credit and it has passed onto the re-calculation team, then I have to chase yet again after being promised a call back, to then, quite frankly what I really feel the advisor thought she was doing me a favor with a £150.00 good-will credit. I truly think Orange have a misconception of a “good will” credit especially after three whole months of chasing what really is surely a basic administrative task.

Is it completely impossible to get just one person, preferably a Supervisor/Manager within Orange that can look through the ridiculous history of my case, the amount of time I have personally wasted being promised calls back thinking I am getting a resolution to this, as previously stated I am at a complete loss as to why this has been such a saga and so hard for Orange to resolve for me. All I have tried to do from my first initial call is resolve this but it has constantly been myself that has chased after all the promises of calls.

I can quite honestly say I really look forward to at least a response by way of a call or letter; I just want this resolved immediately, it is these kind of situations that you hear about on Watchdog.

NB
1st letter to orange was sent on 13th Sept - no response
2nd letter sent on 2nd Sept – no response
3rd letter being sent on 2nd Oct"

Kicked from pillar to post!

"I am writing regarding my Orange account, for the phone number ****** ********".

As of mid-March this year, I made the first of many phone calls regarding my account, I noticed upon checking my Orange bill online that my balance was £60+. This caused some concern as I had previously changed my tariff to £12 per month in order to save money so it was much more than I expected.

When I got through to an advisor I explained my concern for the bill and they told me the reason for it was that I had gone over my allowance of minutes. This came as a surprise to me as I know I only really call my girlfriend, who is also on Orange, for anything longer than a few minutes. We checked the numbers I had called and discovered that nearly all my calls were to the Orange number ****** ******* (which you will see has been the case for a while now). What I then discovered was that upon changing my tariff my Magic Number service had been removed without my knowledge. The only reason I knew changing my tariff to such a low allowance was viable is because of the Magic Number service, I worked in Phones4u for 4 years so I know how tariffs work. This should have been an easy fix at this point, the advisor promised me she would look into it with the person I initially dealt with, get back to me in a few days and that I should continue to use my phone as normal I can’t stress this enough as along every step of the way in this whole case I was told to continue to use my phone.

So I wait for a call back, a few days go by, I give the person I spoke to the benefit of the doubt and wait a week, still nothing. So I call again to the customer service line and explain the situation, they tell me that in a whole week they had not been able to contact the person I initially dealt with when I changed my tariff to check about what they had offered. Now I don’t know how this is possible in any business it shouldn’t take a week to make contact with someone inside that business should it? Again, I was told I would be called back within a few days keep using my phone as normal and wait. So I did this and again I did not receive any contact! This was a recurring problem as I tried to get to the bottom of the situation, all I wanted was to get a credit applied for the calls made to the magic number, (which at this point was only about £50) get the magic number applied to the tariff, and pay my line rental owed.

Instead, I was knocked back so many times I lost count, every time I had to explain to situation again and every time I didn’t get a call back, I had to keep hassling your customer service team to get my issue resolved! In the meantime I of course have to use my phone, I can’t do without it, and I wasn’t told otherwise by any of your customer service advisors, so the balance of the account starts creeping up month on month. It became a regular thing to try and get this sorted and I must have called at least 10-15 times over the course of April and May. Of the many responses I was given, I was promised more minutes on the account, the magic number re-applied and that they were still trying to get hold of the person who initially changed my tariff!?

This is obviously just terrible customer service, I was kicked from pillar to post, spoke to about 4-5 different supervisors and promised to be contacted back with no results.

So in the end my phone gets barred and by this point I’m ready to cancel the account and take this to trading standards as I can’t see any further course of action. As of my most recent phone call though I spent about 30 mins explaining the situation to a girl in customer services who promised that she would arrange a credit to pay for ALL the calls I had made to my magic number since the start of the issue, by this point it was somewhere around £200+! So I accepted that and waited for my next bill, no credit showed up. At this point I went in to an Orange shop and explained to them to the whole debacle, they explained to me there was nothing they can do and that if I want this escalating properly I should write in. At not one point during maybe 20-30 phone calls did ANY of the customer service team I spoke to mention that I should write in!

I’ve been a customer of Orange’s for a long time now and up until this point I was really happy with how you worked, having dealt with all the major networks with my job I rated you as one of the best. This whole mess has really knocked my faith in you as a business, I don’t want to continue to pay money to a company that can’t even call its customers back when promised.

All I am asking is that you credit the account with the balance made from calling my magic number, and let me pay the line rental for the bills. The account balance currently stands at nearly £300 and there is no way I can afford to pay this, and by rights I shouldn’t.

Please get back to me as soon as possible to discuss this as I don’t want the overdue balance to damage the credit file of the account holder
."

Threatened legal action?

"I recently read a piece on your website regarding Orange and their lack of customer service, they have recently transferred my details over to a Debt Recovery agency whom have rang and demanded money of myself and threatened pending legal action. I have paid the outstanding balance on the account as I am unsure the validity of their threats and the last thing I want is to have Legal action pending.

It was mainly the company’s sheer lack of professionalism in dealing with the case, now I’m sure they record their Phone calls and would hope that they listen back to it and see that they are actually in the wrong and admit liability. It is beyond a joke now as this has been running for 3 months now. What concerns me most that this is not the first or the last time this will happen and this as a consumer concerns me not for me as I have moved Network provider but for every other person that they try to palm off and demand payment from."

Shocking Customer Service?

"
I am writing to express my total disgust at the level of customer service I have received from your company recently.

Initially, I took my son’s phone (a Rio) back to the shop where it was purchased (the Orange or EE shop as it is now known in the Abbey Centre near Belfast). They sent it away to be repaired and took months to get back to me. Only when I chased it up (taking some time to identify their phone number as it is not readily available) was I told that it was ready to collect. Apparently they had left a message on my phone but I didn’t have any record of any such message. Having completed the 60 mile round trip to the shop (where I waited about 25 minutes, despite being late for another appointment, for the shop assistant to complete forms before I could leave the shop – surely this could be done without my presence) I discovered on returning home that the phone still didn’t work. I returned to the shop and went through the same process again (with the same long wait for form filling) and when I got the phone home for a second time some weeks later it still didn’t work. More tears and distress from my young son.

My only option was to return again to the shop where I asked for a new phone (given that it had been repaired twice already to no avail) but was told that they couldn’t do this and that it needed to be sent away again (more form filling and more idle time on my behalf). This time I insisted on a replacement phone and was given a very cheap phone (with other people’s numbers still on it!). When I got home and tried to charge the phone I discovered I’d been given the wrong charger (a charger not even of the same make as the phone – new levels of incompetence!).

When I returned to the shop a few weeks later to collect my sons phone following its third repair I asked that they demonstrate that the phone worked before I left to avoid another needless return journey. Unbelievably the phone which had now been repaired for a third time still did not work! I asked for a refund or at least a new phone but manager said they couldn’t do this. Quite unbelievable given the inconvenience we had now been through but that was the response. How a manager couldn’t make a decision to take the common sense approach is a very poor reflection of your company. I left the shop in complete shock and rang Orange customer services and explained the situation. The lady in your customer services department was rightly embarrassed and said she would credit £30 to my sons SIM card to compensate for the cost of the phone – I explained that this was merely a token compared to the cost, time, distress to my son and major inconvenience we had suffered. In fuel alone we were out about £25-£30 travelling to and from the shop, not to mention my time (as a senior accountant),
the distress to my son and the stress to myself associated with dealing with such incompetence. She acknowledged this but said she was powerless to compensate me adequately.

Unbelievably the incompetence didn’t end there. When I got a replacement phone for my son it became apparent that the £30 had not been credited to his account as promised. Also he spent £44 on internet access in a 2 hour period when I clearly made sure the connection was via our home wifi. I rang customer services to resolve these two issues a number of times over 2 days (19th and 20th March) and was met with a combination of ignorance, lies and the inevitable incompetence that I now come to expect when dealing with your company. There was no record of the £30 credit or our conversation apparently and I was basically called a liar for implying that I was promised this. On 4 different occasions, when speaking to a range of departments, I was told a manager or supervisor would ring me back. Needless to say I’m still waiting on a phone call from any of these managers. At one stage I was told I’d be rung back at 7pm on the 19th – at about 7.45 I got a text to say I’d get the call in 15 minutes. You’ll not be surprised to learn that I’m still waiting for this call. I started recording these conversations after I’d been called a liar and whilst it would take too long to list all the shortcomings I’ll give a few examples – I was told it isn’t possible for customer services to credit a SIM card which has since proved to be totally inaccurate, I was told on two occasions that my sons number didn’t exist only for it to be proven very shortly afterwards that it did, I was put on hold for lengthy periods only to be told the same thing that I was told prior to being put on hold which was utter rubbish etc.etc. I was told that I should ring the repair shop and deal with them directly as they had nothing to do with orange (unbelievable considering I bought the phone from orange and took it back to an orange shop). One manager even hung up on me when I asked him to explain why customer services were so unresponsive!

Eventually after a few days I rang again and a customer services representative eventually credited the £30 back onto the SIM card (despite this not being possible according to at least 2 of your staff!) but no resolution to the £44 issue. This is a very small token considering the considerable wasted time and energy that went into my pursuit of a satisfactory conclusion to this incompetent saga. I spent a number of hours in the evenings catching up on the work I didn’t get done whilst trying to resolve the issue, unsatisfactorily so at this stage as I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s difficult to express how stressful it is dealing with such incompetence but I found the whole experience really unsettling.

I don’t really expect a satisfactory response from you given my experiences to date but felt it only appropriate to give you an opportunity to respond before taking my complaint elsewhere, which I plan to do if I don’t hear from you in the near future.

To enable you to confirm my version of events - my mobile number is ************* and my son’s is **************."

 

Fit for Purpose?

"Until recently I had a pay as you go phone. In view of increased phone usage I reasoned I should go to a monthly paid contract phone. Through Phones 4 U, I got a Samsung Galaxy S3 on an Orange Panther Tariff at £28.50 per month ( Orange normally charge £36 but Phones 4 u specifically stated that for the length of the contract the cost is reduced by an Orange discount of £7.50 per month). The main advertised point that was put to me was that it was a better deal than the equivalent Vodaphone tariff as I would be entitled to 2 (TWO) free swappables.

18TH Feb 2013 – Received the new phone. I was able to pick one swappable (Sky TV) and this worked for the first 3 days to Wednesday February 20th. The other swappable selected was Deezer. From the start this would not work. I was able to set up a Deezer Account and a username. At no point of doing this was I asked about whether I was an Orange customer. After setting up the account and registering I received a message page that said to activate my Deezer account I should launch the app I only needed to click on the button “submit”. I did and it took me to a blank page. Nothing at all a Blank Page.

21st February 2013 – The Deezer problem of the blank page was still happening. I e-mailed Deezer customer services who told me to download the app from the Play store.

The access to Sky Sports Swappable also stopped working on this date after having worked for the previous 3 days.

I phoned Orange and spoke to initially Nicola. She confirmed that my account was active. That the tariff I was on warranted 2 swappables and also that the phone I am using (Samsung Galaxy S3) is compatible and there should be no problem receiving them.

Nicola transferred me to Natasha at the first tier technical team. Natasha stated that she would check the problem and phone back at 19.00 as she was working until 22.00 that evening.

At 20.00 I phoned up again as Natasha had reneged on her lying promise to phone at 19.00. Indeed when it was checked she had “logged out of her phone extension”.

22nd February 2013 – Following the instruction from Deezer customer services I downloaded the App from the Play store. I used Deezer. My Data usage – which by the terms of the contract SHOULD NOT have been affected, clearly was as my Internet Usage registers a significant spike on that date. A phone call to Orange confirmed that the usage was at Deezer.

Friday 22nd February and Saturday 23rd February and spoken to Saoirse who went through several supposed solutions, changing some setting, deleting cache history and also taking out the battery whilst the phone is still switched on. None of these worked and the same problem occurred. When accessing the Sky Sports swappable through Orange world there was either a message stating that the phone was not recognised, a text message with an access link was provided, received and attempted only to get a message stating that the code was not recognised and I needed to ask for a text of a new code (which “wasn’t recognised” and I needed to ask for a text of a new code.... so I basically became stuck in a loop of asking for a code that by the time I received it was redundant). Finally Saoirse stated that she would elevate the problem to the Technical Team and she would call me back at 08.00 on Monday 25th February.

25th February 2013 – By now I realised that this was not a problem that was going to go away with time. Saoirse had reneged on her promise to phone at the arranged time. 3 hours later I sent a text message using the reply facility to her text arranging the call. To this day Sunday 6th April she has not bothered to reply nor has anybody from Orange.

I phoned and spoke to April who arranged for someone from the technical team phone make back. Quite unusually someone from Orange Customer Services broke the habit of a lifetime and DID phone back as arranged. It was however someone from a sales related team. He explained that there is – and indeed has been for a long period of time – a fault with the swappables. My complaint had been raised to the top of their list of cases to be dealt with although he warned, technical queries can take 2 hours to fix or they can sometimes take 2 weeks to fix. I declined his attempt to sell Broadband to me or Wi-Fi whatever and prepared to give Orange 2 weeks at least to see if things started working. He (I cannot be sure but I think he was called Kevin –this being one of only two calls made to Orange where I did not note the name of the customer services operator) also promised that someone from the technical team would contact me to let me know what was happening and how well the fix was going. I was well aware that Orange do not seem to employ people for their Honesty or their Customer Service skills so wasn’t too fussed about the 2 week deadline he had set himself.

2 WEEKS LATER – Neither swappable, the Sky Sports or the Deezer was still working. I am not that impatient so resolved to let them get on with it. Naturally nobody from Orange got in touch

18th March 2013 – I decided I should really get around to finding out what was happening. The Sky Sports Swappable was still not working and on any occasion I used the Deezer swappable it tore great chunks out of my Data Usage such as it was not supposed to do.

I had a relatively quick phone call with a customer services operator. This was the second of the many calls on which I cannot be sure of the operators name though I think it was Niamh. She confirmed what the previous call had also confirmed. There is still, and there has been for a long time a problem getting the swappables to work. Several e-mails had been circulated to the Orange Customer Services team to advise that it remains an ongoing issue and there is no resolution. She refuted a suggestion which had been given to me by Nicola on the very first call 3 and a half weeks previous that for each day the swappables were not available compensation accrues at £2 per day – this hadn’t seemed feasible to me anyway as it would have led to the monthly contract being for a negative amount – but reiterated that she was not aware of what compensation was made for this breach of contract by Orange.

Monday 1st April 2013 – Quite remarkably the Sky Sports swappable started working using a code texted to me previously on 24th March 2013. It is still a bit uncertain. Most times the link did work, on a handful of occasions it still did not work –and indeed as I sit here now at Sunday 7th April there are only a handful of the less popular channels that I can access – and it is still not possible to go directly through “Your Orange”-“Swappables”-“Use it Now” to access it because the usual error message “Web Page not available Web page at rtsp://94.236.22.554/live/645883.3gpAuthorizationKey=~MD.77RDXZj&ClientID=11563 might be temporarily down” So it is NOT possible for you to say that the problem is fixed.

Thursday 4th April – Quite amazingly there was no effect on my Data Usage when Deezer was used. After using Deezer the amount of data still available on my Your Orange account details page remained correctly at 357mb even after some considerable use of Deezer. It appeared as though the problem was fixed naturally.

Friday 5th April – Again after some use of Deezer my data remaining figure stayed at 357mb. Bizarrely this remained the figure even after some very, very light normal internet usage too. I reasoned that presumably Orange were not looking to recompense me for the amount of Deezer usage that had been incurred and were holding my entire Internet Usage at the 357mb remaining figure until any usage of Deezer in the current monthly period could be compensate for by other internet use.

Saturday 6th April –Sadly I seem to have put more trust in Orange than their Past record and indeed the astonishingly poor customer services record that they as an organisation have. Despite again very, very light internet usage on Saturday 6th April the outstanding figure remaining in the inclusive 1 gb of the particular contract I have suddenly reduced from 357mb to 235mb and then quite out of the blue is now at 71mb. It is as though Orange ignored the likelihood that the Deezer problem they and their rubbish customer services and technical and sales teams had ignored was still ongoing.

Furthermore there is a big problem as completely out of the blue, completely unexpected and never before experienced, when I use the Deezer app it restricts me to 30 seconds clips of music rather than the full track which I have previously been able to access and add to any playlist. If I try to use the “Your Orange”-“Swappables”-“Use it Now” path it reverts to the original problem. It asks me to register, it asks me to validate my details, it states that I have set up the account and I need only press one more button to launch the app and then when I do it goes to a completely blank screen.

So the problem of Deezer access is also STILL NOT fixed.

Now what is to come of this:-

1. My Phone and my tariff has been accepted by several phone agents at Orange to be compatible with swappables and more specifically I should according to them, the technical and the sales team have no problem accessing either the Sky Sports or the Deezer Swappable.
2. In a couple of previously seen cases Orange have unsuccessfully argued that the swappables are a free add on and not subject to the vagaries of the contract. Orange of course know fine well that the sale of a phone and contract with an advertised service demands that , subject only to some conditions such as overall signal or payment of the bill, the phone or contract is not “fit for purpose” if that advertised service is not available as specified for that phone or that contract
3. I expect to be able to access both the Sky Sports and the Deezer Swappable as and when a signal allows. And to avoid you trying to crawl out by stating that my problems are due to overall signal problems, they are not. If I can access my e-mail and the internet in general, and indeed the Your Orange site then the swappables should also be available so don’t insult my intelligence by suggesting otherwise.
4. If you cannot tell me a way that I can access both the Sky Sports and the Deezer swappables with no effect on my data usage, and cannot guarantee me a time when this will be so, then either the contract or the phone is not fit for purpose and needs to be respectively either cancelled without cost to me or replaced.
5. In the event of paragraph 4 being the case you are to put IN WRITING EITHER BY LETTER OR E-MAIL but NOT BY PHONE whether the phone is to be returned to a Phones 4 U shop or whether it is to be returned to an Orange Phone Shop."
Andrew Macfarlane

Copy of a letter to customer services ...


My Wife is the user of the above mentioned number. Due to the lack of memory and impending battery failure of her old phone decided to buy a new phone.

She has £18.00 on her phone fund and a call credit of £44.00 therefore she chose to remain on the ORANGE system.

Eventually she chose a phone that suited her and bought it on-line from the ORANGE shop. the information stated that the new phone would be "ready to go"

The new phone duly arrived on Friday. When we placed the new SIM into the new phone the message "SIM unavailable" was showing. No problem get on the website to activate the SIM, says it only takes a few minutes and the phone should be working within an hour.

Except that for some reason or other we could not register the SIM because of " Essential maintenance".

Saturday lunch time. I got into the website and duly did the SIM swap on line. The old phone stopped working, the new phone still showed as "SIM unavailable" So I called the support via the circuitous press button menu whereupon having been told that ORANGE was suffering technical problems, I was placed on hold for about 8 minutes , certainly not the " within one minute" that was claimed.

Eventually I spoke to a man who told me that the SIM could take "up to 24 hours to acivate" Definately not the "ready to go" that we had been expecting, in the meantime the old phone had stopped working now showing "unregistered SIM"

24 hours came and went and I duly took the new SIM out of the phone waited and then replaced it, put the phone together expectantly the answer came "SIM unavailable".

Onto your support helpline again via the tortuous push button menu. this time however instead of the on hold music that I had come to dislike I was greeted with ear splitting static. I persisted and eventually after what seemed like an eternity I spoke to a man who asked me to put the SIM in, and then take the SIM out, and check that I had the right SIM and is the SIM the right way around, and put the SIM in again and take it out again and do I have another Orange SIM in the House can I put that in. Take it out again and put the new SIM in another phone then take it out again and put it into the new phone again and try the SIM another way around. 
Having put the SIM card in out and shaken it all about the man told me the handset had been blacklisted!
the man then said that he would reactivate the handset, success at last...
... No. Tried to put the SIM into the new phone, only to find that the SIM would now not physically slide into the phone. Further examination showed that the terminals had become dislodged and were preventing the SIM card from entering the phone.
I was then told by the man to take it to a ORANGE shop where they would get the SIM in "somehow". Call terminated.

Fed up now so I called your support helpline again via the push button menu and the earsplitting static. Spoke to a female "advisor" about what had happened, gave her the IMEI number and the SIM number to be told " This is not a phone that we sell"
" Yes it is. " I replied.
" You must take it back to where you got it from."
" I bought the phone from ORANGE from the website, the ORANGE shop."
" This phone is not one we sell you must take it back to where you got it from."
" I bought it from you, ORANGE, from your website."
" What website?"
" Your website."
" Where was that."
" I bought the phone from the ORANGE online shop, ORANGE sold me the phone, I bought the phone from ORANGE, that's you I do not know any other way of telling you".
" But we do not sell that phone, the details you gave me say that we do not sell that phone, you should take it back to where you bought it from"
" I bought the phone from the ORANGE on line store, I have the invoice in front of me, let me give you the order number"
" No I don't want the number. One minute"
Another interminable bout of static.
"Hello Mr Wilson"
" Wilkins, my name is Wilkins"
"Yes Mr Wilson. I can arrange for a replacement handset to be delivered to you tomorrow."
"Where would you like the it to be delivered...

Monday: It was arranged for the phone to be delivered to day between 1pm and 5pm. I have stayed in today to wait for this phone having been told that If I was not available to take the phone I would be charged £30 pounds. The time now is 6.45 pm, No phone no call as to why I have not received the phone. Can I charge you £30 pounds plus the value of the phone, plus the cost of the calls, plus my time waiting for a phone that has not turned up, plus the hassle, plus the amount of money it will cost me in hair replacement and anger management. 

The future is not Orange, it is bright red with steam coming out of it's ears.

Orange Broadband Matters?

Below is just one of many emails, letters and phonecalls that illustrate our problems with Orange. We are now exchanging formal complaint letters with head office and about to go to arbitration.

We are so incensed about this con that we're starting an online petition about Orange's rubbish broadband speeds and mis-selling techniques. If I send you the link, would you be kind enough to help promote the petition by posting it on your orangeiscrap page?


Click here to connect to www.thepetitionsite.com

"To Laura (from Orange Helpers who didn't actually help)

James actually called Orange yesterday and once again was on the phone for 45 minutes (at our cost) and we have totted up 15 calls so far.

He got absolutely nowhere with accounts dept and was promptly transferred to an Indian who just wanted to do yet more diagnostic tests on our Orange supplied router.

We have endured numerous router tests for 8 months without any conclusion mainly because your tech staff in India do not seem to comprehend that this is not about our router but about Orange UK transferring us from BT's IP stream (capped at 8mb) on to the BT WBC network. Having checked at length with BT, we find our area is WBC compliant and has been since last year so why are we still waiting?

If you want James to discuss this with you by phone (he is technical), please supply a direct number, otherwise we will commence a formal complaint in writing as we feel strongly that we were unquestionably duped by sales staff in your shop.

The shop assistant repeatedly assured us way back in march, that broadband speed would increase to 16mb 'within a few days' if we changed our billing over to you. James even double-checked details with him over the phone before we committed. They then promptly managed to screw up the transfer paperwork by quoting the wrong BT line number so BT did not progress the transfer.

As a result we lost all broadband during a tardy and botched transfer in June and when BB was finally reconnected, it was at the much slower speed. We regard this state of affairs as a breach of our contract with you and certainly blatent mis-selling of the product.

When I called into the same Orange shop last weekend to complain in person, I was asked why I'd waited eight months to return to the shop and there was nothing they could/would do about it now. Why? The unapologetic assistant who I spoke with, didn't seem to care or comprehend that we have, in fact, been bitterly complaining about this mess repeatedly since June - check your computer logs, it's all there Recent Facebook conversation with Orange Helpers"

 

David Dunlop and Orange Helpers?


Terrible service from Orange today. I have a Samsung Omnia 7, got the notification to update to Windows Mango which I did, now the phone continually resets and guess what? Orange does not want to know. Pathetic!!! Well they will be getting the phone back along with the contract. NEVER AGAIN!!!!
Like · · 20 hours ago · 

David Dunlop Latest from Orange "Hi David, we understand you are angry, however, in order to get further explanation; we invite you to get in touch with Orange Helpers at http://tinyurl.com/messagehelpers. They will reply you as soon as they can. Kind regards, Orange.com team"
19 hours ago · Like

Orange Helpers Hi David. Sorry to hear you're having some problems there! If you can send us your details via http://tinyurl.com/messagehelpers , we can make some enquiries for you. Thanks! ^Darren
6 hours ago · Like

David Dunlop Well I have sent them my details, watch this space.........................
6 hours ago · Like

Orange Helpers Hi David, We have received your details so thanks for that. We do need need further information to be able to investigate. If you could reply to our email response we will be able to take a look at your query. Thanks. ^Laura.
5 hours ago · Like

David Dunlop Latest from Orange

"Hi David,

Thank you for getting in touch privately.

Please confirm the first and last characters of your Orange password so that we can take a look at the dates and give advise relating to the warranty situation with your phone.

Thanks in advance.

Laura 
Orange Helpers" 

Even although the phone is 8 months old, I am just waiting for them to quote Orange Company policy that we (Orange) are not in any way responsible and you need to go to the manufacturer of the phone!!!
5 hours ago · Like

Orange Helpers Hi David, If you can please get back to us we will be able to let you know the best way to resolve the problem. I am sorry that the email came across differently. Thanks. ^Laura.
4 hours ago · Like

David Dunlop How long does it take someone to supply a returns address and confirm that the contract will be disolved?
4 hours ago · Like

Orange Helpers Hi David, This is not information which is appropriate given the problem you have highlighted. If this is a separate issue please provide the mobile number for this connection and we'll look at this for you too. Thanks. ^Laura.
3 hours ago · Like

David Dunlop Hi Laura,

I have given you my number, I have sent the two letters from my password as requested. 

The issue is that Orange are contracted to provide me with a service. The phone that Orange provided me with to use the service does not work after an update, notified by Orange.

The only remedy I can see working is for Orange to take the phone that has been rendered unusable because of the update, approved by Orange, back and cancel/terminate the contract.

Because of this update, Orange approved, my phone has continually reset and locks itself on the Samsung splash screen and I therefore cannot use the service that Orange has contracted to provide. This will be day 13 of the continued problem.

Regards,

David
2 hours ago · Like

David Dunlop Here we go folks, Orange's response, I could have written the script before the emailed me.

"Hi David,

We have taken a look at the account and can see that you have not had a replacement from us within the last 3 months and that the handset and agreement were taken out over 7 months ago which means that you fall outside of the Orange warranty period. As I am sure you have already been advised you do have a year's warranty with the manufacturer. Notes on your account suggest that you were not happy when told this previously and proceeded to advise that you were going to try and cancel your mobile service agreement with us. I am not sure whether the agent was able to pass on contact details for Samsung so that the issue can be resolved so am providing them here.

Tel: 0330 726 7864 (0330SAMSUNG) They are available from 09:00 until 18:00, Monday to Saturday. 

You can view details of the product warranty here: http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/warranty/warrantyInformation.do?page=POLICY.WARRANTY .

I regret that we are not able to assist further.

Laura 
Orange Helpers" 

The moral of the story is that once Orange has you locked into a contract they pass their obligations on to another party at the earliest opportunity. 

Do not buy any Windows Mobile product from Orange they will not support you and have the attitutude "it not us, a big boy did it and ran away." 

Remember that once your handset if over 6 months old Orange DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Engineers are looking at it?

If you havent paid your bill or something has gone wrong you are barred from using your phone. You call 150 to sort it out and go through the options to speak to an operator and then.... "sorry you are barred CLICK". You try other options to get through to an operator, "sorry you are barred CLICK". You call from Skype and immediately every number you call is "Sorry we cannot process your call" - because your number is coming up witheld caller ID due to it being Skype. The only way to call them is on a BT landline. The number they want you to call is an 07 number - so charged at full mobile call rates.

I have spoken to Orange over the last 4 months and they say "yes we are aware of our 'cant call 150 problem' and engineers are looking at it". 4 months on and still doing it!? I dont think so. The bottom line is Orange quite clearly dont want to speak to you for free if you havent paid your bill etc... and they want to make money out of your calls to sort it out. They wont accept Skype calls because they arent making the same dosh from Skype as from a BT landline so this sucks badly.

Any company who cant let you speak to them on their own network when you have a problem is c**tish. What if your walk way up the Brecon Beacons and cant get to a callbox? Forcing you to get to a callbox and no 0800 numbers in existence should say it all.

Optional Orange Care?

I popped into my local Orange shop on 18th September 2011 to see if I could get a free upgrade. A friendly and very helpful assistant confirmed that I could, and showed me a range of models that best fitted my needs. She then checked out my account, and noted that I had a 24 month contract. She said that as my contract was very good it would be better for me if I waited until it expired before upgrading. I was impressed that she was looking after my best interest, and I decided to take her advice.

On 24th September 2011 I received a “Confirmation of Insurance Cover” letter from Orange for my old phone, advising me that I had purchased Orange Care on the 18th September as an optional extra for the cost of £6.00 a month.

I phoned Orange and explained that insurance was never mentioned when I discussed the upgrade, so I was more than curious as to why I received the confirmation of cover letter for a something I never asked for or agreed to.

The guy I spoke to said he would cancel the insurance. I explained that I wanted to know why it had been initiated in the first place, and was this normal Orange policy to set up cover for customers without telling them? After some further questioning he said that although it wasn’t Orange's policy to arrange insurance without the customer’s agreement, some shops would set up cover even if an upgrade was merely discussed.

I asked if he would send me something in writing about the issues raised in the above conversation, and he said he would. I will publish it as and when it arrives. 

If anyone from Orange would like to comment on the above, please contact me via the link above.

Debt Collection Agency sent after Orange Customer?

Orange's failure to cancel a broadband contract as requested lead to them setting a debt collection agency on my trail. Only found this out when First Direct (an organisation that seem to care about customers!) recommended I check my credit file following a (thankfully successful) mortgage application.

This is one of many problems I've had due to Orange being incapable of sending letters to right address or simply calling me (they have my number after all!)

Currently engaged in a fruitless email exchange with credit.referrals.inbox@ orange.co.uk.

Is there anyone else I could Cc in an attempt to speed things towards a resolution?

 

Special Circumstances?


On returning to the UK I took a pay as you go phone for myself , a 24 month contract phone for the wife and a dongle. Where to start? Firstly please ensure your visitors are in no doubt that if they use Orange they are in for the worst customer experience of their life.

Firstly the dongle started to bill us for excessive usage, this went on for months and even when we did not use it they claimed we went over the 2gb limit. Now I work in Internet security and data monitoring and installed a usage tracker on my laptop, this showed (as did the local orange data tracker) that I was well within the limits they claimed I was exceeding. They refused to accept my findings after my engagement with tech support, despite being told if we proved they were at fault they would refund the costs, but they forced us to pay. We then tried to cancel the dongle. They continued to charge us for 4 further months, each month we would spend at least 3 hours calling to try and get this cancelled. Each month they bleated how it was not on the system that we had cancelled.

Then, as we are moving overseas again we called orange to see if we could cancel the wife's contract after 14 months of a 2 year contract claiming special circumstances as stated in their T&C's. Of course they refused and obviously as we called an Indian call centre who were clueless we have not got anywhere with this.

I despise Orange above any other company and will now go out of my way to ensure their business is damaged and their reputation is denigrated. What an absolute shower of crooks and 'del boy' wannabes. 

 

Orange Blackberries?

"I spend about 4k a year with orange and in the past year they have delivered 10 faulty blackberries to me.  Again they don’t seem to care.  This week alone they have delivered two faulty blackberries to me.  They won’t give me a different brand of phone.  I hate them!"


A recent experience with my daughters phone, thankfully now resolved.

Today (3th April 2010) I discovered that Orange had blocked the phone that I bought for my 19 year old daughter to use on her gap year travels, apparently because they had concerns about my debit card. 

I cannot imagine why they decided not to contact me if they thought my debit card was being used fraudulently, or why they decided not to tell me that the phone was being blocked?

I have been an Orange user for many years, and Orange have all my details on record, including my address, home number, mobile numbers, date of birth, debit card details, etc, so is it unreasonable for me to hope that they might at least had the courtesy to let me know what they were doing and explain why?

My daughter has now been in Europe travelling on her own with a blocked Orange phone for 4 days!

Update - 4th May 2010

After 7 hours of phone calls with Orange over the 30th April and 1st of May, my daughter's phone is now working, thanks to the sustained efforts of Julie Watton at Orange's Head Office. She was simply superb, and immediately understood how best to sort out a custumer's problem. Thank you Julie!

Update - 20th May 2010

Today my daughter told me today that her phone kept coming up with the error message  "card registration failed".

After 50 minutes of waiting, being disconnected, waiting again, speaking, being put on hold, passed on to someone else, more waiting, put on hold again, etc, etc, I was informed that the phone had been de-activated again.  After being bounced around the system, someone was eventually able to re-activated it, but I now need to find out why this has happened again, and will it just keep on happening? I cannot understand why Orange failed to contact me if they thought there was a potential problem.

Update - 21th May 2010

I spoke to a very reasonable guy called Keith this morning about the above issues, and he is now going to look into what has gone wrong. However, the optimism I briefly enjoyed suffered another blow this evening when I tried to put some credit on the phone, as the credit that had been on the phone was  wiped when it was de-activated. 

After another 30 minutes or so speaking on the phone to Orange, it now seems that my debit card has been barred! I asked if they could simply reinstate the credit that was on the phone prior to it being de-activated. I asked if they felt some compensation might be appropriate in respect of the 9 hours that I have spent on the phone trying to resolve this issue since the 3rd of April.

Orange said that they hoped the barr on the debit card would be lifted within 24 hrs and that any existing credit would be re-instated. They refused outright to put any credit on the phone at the time of calling as a good will gesture, but said that they may compensate me for the price of the phone calls I have made but only after checking their records. 

Surely, it would have been a nice gesture if they had put a few quid of credit on the phone after I have spent 9 hours of my time trying to sort out the above problems?

Update - 22nd May 2010

I tried again to add credit to the phone this morning, but to no avail as my debit card is still apparently barred, and as yet the credit it had prior to it being deactivated has not been reinstated. Interestingly though, I was able to top up my wife's phone with the same barred card! 

Update - 25th May 2010

Beth's phone received a txt from Orange today advising that her credit had been reinstated, and I got a message from Keith at Orange asking me to call him. In a nutshell, he explained what he had done to ensure that everything, including my debit card, will now  work normally, and there should be no further problems. It's reassuring to know that there are good folk at Orange that are prepared to sort out problems on behalf of their customers; it's just a shame that their system's don't always share information to the benefit of the customer? 

 

Useful Contact Details

Steve recently contacted me, suggesting  that I might want to publish the number for Orange's Head Office - 0800 0790134.This was given to him by Ofcom and Trading Standards, and his problem was resolved within 12 hours of phoning this number.

And to be fair, I recently contacted Orange to say I was moving to Talk Mobile, as they had a much better deal for folk that wanted "unlimited" internet access, as well as texts and talk time. Orange beat the deal I was offered within 15 minutes! 

Maybe things are looking brighter for Orange users?

 

Below is one Orange user's recent experience in some detail... 

 
"My initial contract with them was for 12 months, after 10 months l called them to see if they had any initiatives to keep my custom, first of all the lad l spoke to said that as a token of their thanks and appreciation of my custom they would, at no cost to me, extend my current plan for a further 12 months ..after l picked myself up off the floor after a fit of laughter l told him l was considering leaving orange for Vodaphone. He then came up with 50% off my current plan for 6 months, after that if l wanted to stay with them l would need to negotiate a further contract . Mmmm, l thought, 6 months is ok, and l went with that.

 

A month later my bill came, and guess what....  no half price plan... l called them and the associate l spoke to said that the following months bill would be adjusted to reflect the change and a credit would be issued also on the next bill, I said I wasn't interested in what the next months bill was going to state, I wanted an amended bill being sent to me, she said she would see what she could do.... no amended bill came but what did come was a threat of disconnection if I didn't pay the full amount that was outstanding, so I paid it (grudgingly of course) ..... the following month, guess what? ...  no half price plan... called them again, and of course l got thru to someone in India, he hummed and ahhh'd a little and said he would need to contact customer services and that he would call me back in 30 minutes....  surprise, surprise.. l received no call. So l called them again.. and again l got thru to an Indian associate, l asked to speak to a manager or team leader and eventually got thru to a 'floor manager' Manmeet Kaur' a very unhelpful associate indeed. I was on the phone for 1hr and 10 minutes explaining to her what the problem was. After being placed on hold several times she finally came back to me and said she would call me back the following day because the person she needed to speak to was in England and wasn't working at that time. I said to her that l had no confidence whatsoever that l would receive a call from her......  and guess what?...  lol .. yup.. l got no call.

 

The following morning l called them once again, this time when their automated voice asked if l was considering leaving Orange l chose that option. My call was answered straight away. I went thru the whole rigmarole again with a very pleasant English lady called Shirley. I explained the whole situation to her, the number of times I'd called, the length of the calls, the broken promises regarding call backs. She said everything was there on the system and she couldn't see why there was a problem in changing my plan to 'half-price' I told her that it had gone beyond just wanting the plan correcting and that l expected some kind of compensation for the trouble l had been caused....  she said she will look into it and... famous last words...   'will call you back' .......  guess what? .. she called me back... yes! .. she was a lady possessed with getting the problem resolved. She said she could put me on the plan herself, refund the 2 months half line rental and let it run that way until November when the 6 month contract is due to run out... l thanked her for the work she had done on my behalf but declined. I said that as far as l was concerned by charging me full rental for 2 months as opposed to half rental Orange had broken their contract and I was giving them one months notice.........  bliss...... I'm now with o2 ... if anyone from o2 is reading this, then get intouch with Shirley at Orange and give her a job, she would do your company proud.

 

As for Orange?.... well can you believe you cannot switch your answer service on yourself? You have to go thru their customer services.. yes, l know that can sometimes take up to half an hour to get thru...

 

Steer clear of Orange ...you would do better with a box of pigeons."

Another Orange customer's experience

My problem is slightly different than the others.
I had Orange internet for years then decided to cancel it. Then the problems started. I wanted to go over to Sky and was told by Sky that I needed a MAC code. I was then told by Orange that if I called them for a Mac code they would charge me x amount but if I done it by post then it would be free. Sent a letter to them requesting a MAC code. A few days later I recieved a letter from them with a MAC code (brilliant I thought) I then phoned Sky and they told me that it was one digit too short.
I then phoned Orange again to tell them and they told me that it was actually Sky that had got it wrong. After several phone calls backwards and forwards between them guess what, Orange was to blame.
I was then told that I had to wait another month for the new MAC codes to be sent to them before they could allocate me another one. I waited a month and another one was sent out, guess what MAC code was actually addressed to me but with someone elses name on the letter and the MAC code had been swapped to someone elses address.
After wasting another couple of days of my life ringing orange they then told me I would have to wait yet another month to receive another MAC Code.
Anyway got the MAC code it worked after alot of shouting. (nothing against the Indian call centre as I am half Indian myself) but it seems as though they are in no hurry at all to help.
After changing over I was told that Orange would need one more payment to which through gritted teeth paid.
I then noticed on my bank statements that they had taken an extra £36. Trying to get this money back is getting bloody stupid now. They told me I had to wait to get MY money back until the 16th October, no money paid into account. I then called them and they told me they didn't have my account details, so I gave them the numbers they wanted. Still no money called them again. Then I was told that they would have to send me a cheque. To my surprise, no bloody cheque.
I now know how these big organisations get there money, they piss you off so much that you let the money go. Don't think so.
I know other people are in the same boat and since I have seen this website I now know i'm not the only one.

Another Orange customer's experience

"Well 4 years ago Orange decided to take away the Orange Mobile Mast in Lyme Regis because the local council denied them a licence to continue here, obviously unknowing to us users! We suddenly had very poor or no signal what so ever. I cancel my contract. 

Now two years later I thought it would be nice to use my phone so I would get it unlocked..... 6 months later after 30 phone calls which most of them I was cut off and contacted ofcom and oranges direct head office on 08000790134 someone decided to sort it out..... I had to top up my phone with 20 pounds and they would contact me in 7 – 14 days.... SIMPLE.... NOT I had to contact them in 3 Weeks to ask what was going on and yet again they cut me off mid conversation.... I am yet again going to contact ofcom at 9 am when they open and try to get some sense out of this whole mess. Why for the life of me is this so difficult to resolve, half the battle would be over if there was not such a bad language barrier between customer services as they can’t understand me and vice-versa."

Another Orange customer's experience

 

"My son bought a Motorola L6 from Orange on 12/10/06. It had all the whistles and bells that he wanted, but the battery, even after a few charges, would not last longer than 3 days . Since it should have been lasting around 10 days, we informed the Orange shop and returned 14 days  after the purchase date. The shop assistant fitted a new battery and said all would be well.

It wasn't.

The replacement also had a life of about three days and then kept dying. My son and I returned to the Orange shop and stated that the product had been defective from new, I therefore rejected it and would appreciate a refund. No dice!! The shop assistant said that it was not Orange's policy to give any refunds on defective products after 14 days of purchase EVEN if they were informed prior to this date!!!! ( An interesting attitude here given current Sale of Goods Act!) Naturally I suggested that the assistant seek advice from someone in authority, since no-one on the premises could apparently arrange a refund.

TWO AND A HALF HOURS later........all we have to show is incessant  "hold" music via the speaker on the assistant's mobile and a message  stating that the lines were busy. I'm not surprised, since all the  other staff in the store were also listening to "hold" music, with equally irritated and bored customers.

By now I was losing the will to live, and my son grudgingly accepted a replacement Motorola L6. GUESS WHAT? This phone is as crap as the previous phone!!

I have e-mailed Orange via their web site - NO response!

I have spoken to a "customer services representative" and been told "over 14 days? Tough!" (note: Orange charge for calls of complaint!!!)

I have now referred the matter to Trading Standards.

I have to agree with the sentiment expressed on another website:

The future's sh*ite if the future's Orange."

A recent letter sent to Orange's Customer Care 

 

"I upgraded to the Dolphin £35/month tariff in order to take advantage of your free broadband offer. Unfortunately this has proved difficult and the service I have received has been disgusting. I have recently moved into a new rented house and it appears that the landline that is present has been blacklisted by yourselves due to unpaid bills by previous tenants. To find this out took many hours on the phone talking to several different people.

Whilst the numerous people I had spoken with at that stage had all been very friendly and helpful, it seems clear that if anything out of the normal happens, the system is not in place to deal with it. At one point I had been on the phone for over half an hour and eventually spoke to someone who couldn’t deal with my problem. He then told me that he couldn’t transfer me to someone who may be able to as they were all busy. I said I was prepared to wait but this was not possible and that I would have to start all over by phoning 150 again and going to the back of the queue I had been waiting in already. 

As I also got passed from department to department there was clearly no communication between anyone and I had to tell people who I was, all the security information and what the problem was again and again, sometimes up to 5 times within one very long call. 

It took approximately 5 separate phone calls and several hours on the phone before someone eventually said this couldn’t be sorted over the phone and I would have to write.

I put my problem in writing, along with my initial problems with the service and sent it to this address. Since then my experience with orange has become much worse. I received a reply, in writing a week or so later. This letter simply stated, that the bad account would be cleared within 10 working days and if there was anything else that could be done I should phone customer care. I felt this was very impersonal as there was no apology for my troubles and the situation was still not resolved, I would, once again have to get on the phone in 10days to apply for broadband. I felt that the letter could of said that we will clear the account and proceed with setting up your broadband. 

With this in mind I phoned customer services and after some discussion I eventually got put through to someone in a supervisory position. He told me that I would simply have to wait 10 days and then phone 150 and start over, he was simply not prepared to do anything for me and told me to phone “like every other customer”. This I felt was very unreasonable, unless of course every other customer has to spend hours on the phone and write letters in order to get the broad band they are entitled too. 

Whilst I understand that it is not Orange’s fault that the bad account is on my line, it is not mine either. To make matters worse, all this time I have a phone with which I can only use for around an hour a day. I upgraded whilst living in Weymouth, I moved around a month later. My new address has no signal what so ever, nor do I get a signal from 9- 5 in my place of work, meaning the only time I can use my orange mobile is on the journey to and from work, whilst driving! So in short I pay £35 a month and was left with no broadband and a useless phone on an 18 month contract, which incidentally was extended every time I got on the phone and tried to get broad band installed!

However, despite all this I decided to try again. I called 150, around 15 working days after the letter, only to find out that my account still hadn’t been cleared! At this point I had had enough so I was transferred to the department that deals with cancelling contracts. Here I had some success, the lady on the phone got in touch with the various departments and eventually came back to me and said that it was actually BT that had the problem with the line and I should call them. She also said the letter I received had been an automated message and that actually no body had even looked into my problem, at what point anyone at orange was going to let me know that they couldn’t actually clear the account god only knows!

Now, and I hope you are still with me! As I can only phone orange customer care, for free via 150, during my drive home, and as I live in an area where the signal is poor, I usually explain to the person who first answers the phone that if I get cut off its because of my signal, and could they please phone me back. However, due to lack of communication or something, the person who had answered my call initially, had failed to pass on the situation regarding my signal to the person who was now helping me. As a result, and just as I felt I was getting somewhere I lost my signal, and no-one phoned me back. I tried 150 again but of course I ended up at a different call centre and no-one knew anything of my trouble, clearly no-one had made any notes regarding my problems on the database or whatever is used.

A few days later I tried again, this time not to resolve the problem but hopefully to try and get some sort of compensation. I spent two hours on the phone, eventually talked to someone who said they held a position of enough responsibility to help me, I was encouraged by this. I spent 15minutes explaining everything, at which point he left me on hold. He came back sometime later to tell me that there is a poor signal in my area and that this situation was not going to change soon and that yes, I did have to call BT to clear the account on my line. I told the gentleman that I knew this already and asked could he resolve this or offer me some form of compensation, he replied that he was not in a position to me able to do this, another two hours wasted!

I then asked to be transferred to his boss, which after some persuasion, he did. Then I spent a further 15-20 minutes explaining the case to this new person. He said that he would have to look into the problem and that he would call me back that day. I left him with my orange number and my home number. I have yet to hear from him.

Finally and most recently I spoke to someone, again claiming to be able to help me yesterday, (14th Nov). As I was driving home I lost my signal, to my delight she phoned me back. I said to her that it may be better to call me on my landline in 20 minutes, she agreed and I left the number, I did not hear from her.

And that brings me to now, sitting at my computer with no internet, an orange bill for over £40, and yet having only used 100 of my 500 minutes and 11 of my unlimited text messages, and a throat that is sore from having to explain this over and over again.

What I would like now is for some kind of monetary compensation, not just for the lack of broadband and phone signal, but for my many hours spent talking to people, for the very upsetting way that no-one wishes to help and do not even care enough to phone me back, and for the frankly disgusting service I have received.

If I do not get somewhere with this then I will be taking advice from my solicitor, will be withholding any further payments to orange and will be setting up a web site to see if any one else has had similar problems to myself and seeing if orange customer care is as bad as my experience has been."

Another Orange customer's experience

My wife recently took out an 18 month contract with Orange, we were also with Orange broadband (might i add though not our own choice as we were originally with Wanadoo when orange took them over). When my wife took the contract out the customer service adviser told her that we would be able to take advantage of half price broadband too! The Broadband was in my name and my wife was taking out the mobile contract in her name, this was explained to the sales adviser but he assured her that that wouldn't make any difference as it was the home address that needed to be the same! However after receiving the first months Broadband bill it was still at the full price. I contacted Orange Broadband, they told me that it will show up on the next months bill. Next months bill was also full price!! Another phone call to Orange then revealled that it was the person s name that determined whether you got half price Broadband, So we changed the Broadband account name into my wifes name and then called Orange to tell them that the names on both the Mobile and Braodband account were now the same..........only to be told that it needed to be done at the start of the phone contract. But if they could start the 18 month Contract again so that we could take advantage of the half price Broadband!!!!! My wife declined that VERY generous offer. A couple of months later Orange were doing a free Laptop if you signed up to a new 12 month Broadband Contract at a PC world shop. Great we thought we aren't tied in on our current Broadband package with Orange, we will pop along to the PC world take out a new 12 month Broadband contract at half the price we were currently paying and also get a free Laptop in the bargin. Not so unfortunately. After getting there the sales advisor assured us it was okay for a current Orange Broadband customer who WASN'T tied in a contract to be able to take advantage of this offer. To cut a very long story short YOU CAN'T and all we got out of it was another 12 months Broadband with Orange!!!!! I didn't cancell it as i just couldn't be bothered to talk to Orange anymore as every time i did i ended up using the most obscene language, and i'm sure that Indians do know the meaning of "Go forth and multiply", they don't give two hoots about current or loyal customers, quite frankly i wouldn't touch them with someone elses barge pole. But like most corporate giants they are only out for themselves. "The futures Bright but the future most certainly ISN'T Orange