I received an email at 3:18am on 7th Dec and it clearly says
"Thanks for letting us know that you want to cancel you Orange home broadband service......etc etc"
So I think we can take it that I informed them of my desire to cancel at least no later than the 6th of Dec.
My regular advance payment date was from the 4th Dec to 3rd Jan.
Sadly as you can see I mistimed my calculation by a few days and, after some argument, I felt that I was unfairly forced into paying another months full charge in Jan
(paid on the 9th Jan 2008, I have the bank statement to prove payment was made).
So not only did I pay half of Dec 07's charge for nothing but I also was pushed into paying the whole of Jan 08's payment for no service from them from the 19th of Dec.
I was then contacted again in April to say that I still owed a little more money, £16 they said.
They have claimed it was because of some waffle about notice periods.
I refused to pay this having supposedly made a final payment in Jan of the full month charge of £19.99.
When I phoned up I got the usual run-around by the Asian call-centre, although I was promised someone in UK customer services would contact me the following day at a prearranged time.
Naturally no-one did.
I emailed Orange asking them to provide details of the payment history & the emails that have gone back and forth between us so that I could check that I wasn't missing something and that maybe they were in the right.
I also told them that my time was not free and that I thought it reasonable that I charge them 3 hours at £30 per hour for having me hanging about all afternoon pointlessly.
Naturally there was no response.
Today I got a letter from a debt collection agency (direct legal & collections of Brackley, Nothants) saying that I am being pursued for a debt of £402.05.
I'm kind of happy to let this go to court because I presume at that point they will not be able to deny me access to what I know was written down and sent between us
(happily their emails quote my own so even my not having all of them is no disaster)
and any court could see that I have acted wholly reasonably.
I have also written to my MP to complain at the outrageous & totally arbitrary & disproportionate inflation to the sum owed.
It's scandalous that this is legal.
Sadly I just lost my father to a long illness and my mother is in the same situation.
I could really do without this idiocy & their threats.
How the hell it could possibly be justified that a company can ignore reasonable requests to verify whether a debt does or does not exist and then go ahead and engage a debt collection agency which now sees the original disputed sum balloon from about £16 to £402.05 (the mind boggles at the 5p).
I'm so angry at those b@stards I could spit.
Does anyone have some good suggestions of who else I might complain to and raise a stink about this?
First, your 30 day notice commenced 7 December so your contract expired 5 January.
The debt collection agency are probably charging you a fee on top of what Orange claim you owe them.
It is a legal requirement for you to be supplied with a detailed breakdown of exactly what is owed. This is now the duty of the debt collection agency to supply this. If they don't then it is an illegal demand for money which is common for this type of agency.
They also need a court order to enter your home to remove goods to the value of the debt.
Either speak to a solicitor or visit a CAB office but whatever you decide, you must consult a legal advisor of some sort.
Ha just received a letter claiming i owe them money as £19.99. Pay up by 13th or we tgakle legal action (which according to another thread means we will hand it over to cowboy debt collectors who will bill you £400 for their service).
I was on a year contract that ran out with no 30 day notice requirement. I rang them up and they claim that the transfer was done illegally as they were not informed that the MAC code was applied.
This is just a ploy to get money. I was advised by a BT guy to contact ofcom who could contact BT wholesale. I have little hope of achieving anything
Unfortunately, even if your 12 month contract had expired, (in fact any contract period) it immediately becomes a monthly contract but the 30 day notice period still applies.
Insist to Orange that it is not your contractual responsibility to notify them when the MAC code is used.
General Condition 22, concerning broadband migration, regulates the ISPs not their customers, the end users.
They know that they would lose on this point if it went to law court.
I wrote to the debt collecting firm informing them that I had written to my MP and that I was not prepared to pay £400 for a disputed bill that was originally for just under £16.
Funnily enough within a couple of days I got a letter from them apologising for "a client error" (ie they just blamed Orange), said that I should ignore the £400 demand and that the bill should have been just the original (supposedly) outstanding £15.96.
At this stage my wife got involved.
In Feb I lost my father after a long illness and my mother has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer last month.
My wife advised me that I didn't need this additional stress & worry & that I should pay them off and follow up for the over-payment later with Orange.
So, after a little thought I paid Orange directly (not the debt collector).
I will be following this up with OFCOM, Orange & I think I'll get Martin Lewis' people involved.
Now that they owe me money I wonder what their reaction would be if I got a solicitor to send them a bill of £400 for the overpayment, the inconvenience and pro-longed distress they have caused me, eh?
hiya. really sorry to hear of your probs, both at home and with Orange. i m reliably informed that to get results you should email the ceo of Orange ; TOMALEXANDER@ORANGE.CO.UK. and explain the situation. my wife is having similar probs when her P_A_Y_G account was suspended and Asia informed her that someone had tried to top-up "fraudulently" and to contact the fraud dept in Darlington. they simply returned proof of address etc and the covering letter with no explanation. so, thats where Tom Alexander comes in. if this doesnt work, we are both off back to Virgin. can,t even access the net account as it is suspenede, so no idea who did what and when. good luck and best wishes to yr mom.
I received an email at 3:18am on 7th Dec and it clearly says
"Thanks for letting us know that you want to cancel you Orange home broadband service......etc etc"
So I think we can take it that I informed them of my desire to cancel at least no later than the 6th of Dec.
My regular advance payment date was from the 4th Dec to 3rd Jan.
Sadly as you can see I mistimed my calculation by a few days and, after some argument, I felt that I was unfairly forced into paying another months full charge in Jan
(paid on the 9th Jan 2008, I have the bank statement to prove payment was made).
So not only did I pay half of Dec 07's charge for nothing but I also was pushed into paying the whole of Jan 08's payment for no service from them from the 19th of Dec.
I was then contacted again in April to say that I still owed a little more money, £16 they said.
They have claimed it was because of some waffle about notice periods.
I refused to pay this having supposedly made a final payment in Jan of the full month charge of £19.99.
When I phoned up I got the usual run-around by the Asian call-centre, although I was promised someone in UK customer services would contact me the following day at a prearranged time.
Naturally no-one did.
I emailed Orange asking them to provide details of the payment history & the emails that have gone back and forth between us so that I could check that I wasn't missing something and that maybe they were in the right.
I also told them that my time was not free and that I thought it reasonable that I charge them 3 hours at £30 per hour for having me hanging about all afternoon pointlessly.
Naturally there was no response.
Today I got a letter from a debt collection agency (direct legal & collections of Brackley, Nothants) saying that I am being pursued for a debt of £402.05.
I'm kind of happy to let this go to court because I presume at that point they will not be able to deny me access to what I know was written down and sent between us
(happily their emails quote my own so even my not having all of them is no disaster)
and any court could see that I have acted wholly reasonably.
I have also written to my MP to complain at the outrageous & totally arbitrary & disproportionate inflation to the sum owed.
It's scandalous that this is legal.
Sadly I just lost my father to a long illness and my mother is in the same situation.
I could really do without this idiocy & their threats.
How the hell it could possibly be justified that a company can ignore reasonable requests to verify whether a debt does or does not exist and then go ahead and engage a debt collection agency which now sees the original disputed sum balloon from about £16 to £402.05 (the mind boggles at the 5p).
I'm so angry at those b@stards I could spit.
Does anyone have some good suggestions of who else I might complain to and raise a stink about this?
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