<Orange HOME products ~ Mobile Contract and Free Home Broadband - Big Issues - Scam?
melb
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 3:06 pm
Joined: 10 Jan 2009Posts: 5Location: Northants
On January 9th 2009, I took out a new mobile contract with Orange - £25pm. I'm regretting it already!
In the box with the Nokia 6220 phone was a nice Free Home Broadband offer, valid until 28th February 2009. So, I rang up Orange Sales to take up the offer - they said that I MUST TAKE Orange'S PHONE SERVICE AS WELL! Which is totally unacceptable to me.
There's no mention of this at all in leaflet - copy attached. To me, Orange are doing the the worst kind of come-on. It's surely against Ofcom's and the Advertising Standards Authority's rules to pull this sort of trick.
Has anyone else had this scam and got Orange to honour their offers?
Not liking their terms and conditions on a voluntary offer hardly makes it a scam. You honestly expect absolutely free with no opportunity for Orange to claw back some of the cost of providing the service ? Reality check ?
The Free Broadband offer was made as part of a mobile phone contract. When Orange launched the offer, it was genuinely for broadband only. They are getting 18months at £25pm from me for the mobile contract and the free broadband element was an incentive for me to sign it.
The Orange salesperson told me that, at sometime at the end of 2008, they linked the home phone element to the broadband element, hence the new T&Cs on the website.
My point is that they should honour their offers, which was made to me on January 9th, and which should be still valid up to 28th February.
It's the same as if you as a broadband customer suddenly had your offering changed. ie you had to take a phone contract, or, a PAYG mobile contract to continue with your current package because Orange's marketing team wanted to get more from you with bundles. Obviously, you would want to cancel your contract, which is what I intend to do now - I think this is a scam.
Because they give you free evening & weekend calls it sounds like they switch you to their network for making calls but you continue paying line rental to BT. I had a similar deal on my last ISP. Which is presumably the basis for the scam accusations........
IE the calls work the same as the main phone bit on Home Max, but you don't get second line.
Last edited by pluggy on Mon Jan 12, 2009 7:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
Thanks guys for your help. From your posts it's obviously a confusing message that Orange are putting out - especially when they discontinue in mid-promotion the Free Home Broadband offer that I wanted.
Anyway, the dealer who sold me the phone suggested I try again with Orange Sales and try again to get them to honour their offer.
So, yesterday, I spoke to another Orange salesperson - IMHO she was good and extremely well informed. Instead of cancelling my mobile contract, I'm now paying them even more money! Doh! Good switch selling though.
To summarise:_
Free Home Broadband for mobile customers - No longer available - You may well get a leaflet with your new mobile, it may well say available until Feb 28th, but it's no longer available!
Home Starter - £10pm or free for mobile customers. 10Gb transfer limit. BUT Orange take over your calls, and you pay BT just for line rental. A step too far for me.
Home Select - £20pm or £10pm for mobile customers. No transfer limit. You stay with BT for line rental and calls. Orange provide a Livebox and a VOIP second line with unlimited calls to 01,02... AND free calls to (my) Orange mobile - THIS was the clincher.
Home Max - I didn't get into this package because you say goodbye to BT.
All packages are rated at the same speed - up to 8Mb through BT's LLU.
So, I went for Home Select, hoping that the VOIP is useable over my ADSL line - I've got Vonage VOIP on a virginmedia/ntl line and I couldn't use it as a main line - the time lags make conversation very unnatural and disjointed. Anyway, we'll see what Orange VOIP brings.
Only regret is I didn't do the whole thing online through Quidco - £40 cashback for this deal!
You stay with BT for line rental and calls. Orange provide a Livebox and a VOIP second line with unlimited calls to 01,02... AND free calls to (my) Orange mobile - THIS was the clincher.
Just make as few calls as possible on your BT line and you will easily save money overall. Also it's not just your Orange mobile....it's any Orange mobile
At least you sorted it......it really would have cost you a lot of money if you had cancelled the contract.
Also it's not just your Orange mobile....it's any Orange mobile
True
Borednow wrote:
At least you sorted it......it really would have cost you a lot of money if you had cancelled the contract.
Just for the record. Not true. I could have cancelled in law without penalty within the 7 day period of grace under the United Kingdom's Distance Selling Regulations - I only bought the mobile by mail order last Friday. I would have just had to pay postage back to the dealer. I should know, but, I think this also comes under the Consumer Credit Act, where the customer has a 14 day no penalty period of reflection.
Anyway, I'm going with this deal, so, unless there are anymore surprises, I'm sticking with it. After this experience. I'm on my guard about anything Orange - I don't trust any company that does sharp practices.
I know im a little late on anwering this question, but i thought atleast the info might help future people considering signing up to Orange (god knows why anyone would want to tho).
We moved to the 2meg Home Starteer Package (18 month contract) about a year ago. To start with the whole sign up thing annoyed me because home calls part of the package was net explained well at all and i spent about half a day researcing it so i could understand it and then explain it to my dad.
So he decided he wanted this pacage cos we were paying £17 for a lesser package (that he had signed up for with wannadoo). Well obviously Orange autimatically swich over your calls to them, and from then practically every week BT phoned up trying to get us to join them for calls again (we had never had problems with them before, we only swiched for the BB, we harldy ever use the home phone). We kept explining to them we cant because of the 18 month contract.
Then a couple of months ago my dad got a helpful person from BT ringing up who explained that you ONLY NEED TO STAY ON THE Orange HOME PHONE PACKAGE FOR 1 MONTH to be eligble for Orange's 18 month Broadband Package.
BT were now offering us a cheeper deal and my dad swiched back.
So basically what im saying is to anyone out there who is worried about having to be on the Landline package that Orange are forcing people in to its ok we can switch back before the lethly contract id over... and thank god for BT having people who speak plain English in their call centers (although this dude was Irish and my dad actually couldnt understand him so i had to "translate").
_________________ Hurry Up contract and please run out... o2 (now Sky) BB here i come...
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
....you still pay 
