My letter to Orange which outlines why I will not be paying for (or using) my Orange phone or broandband any more because they are:-
1. In breach of contract
2. Guilty of mis-selling
3. Unable to probide any sort of customer service provision, or, so it seems, to remedy any problem
I have attempted to sort the broadband problems out over a Three month period. I have now sent a number of letters... 12 in total to various Orange departments. With no response at all after 4 weeks. I have been advised by CISAS that I need to give them another two before they can get involved.
Thursday 28th September 2006
To whom it may concern
Cc:, OFCOM, Guardian Consumer Champion, Office of Fair Trading, CISAS, Orange Executive Office, Watchdog
I am writing to inform you that due to the lack of any broadband service in the evening for the last Three months, and a complete lack of service for the last week, I am withdrawing from my contract with Orange and will not pay any further line rental on the account for either of my phone handsets. Additionally I expect Orange to issue me a formal apology immediately and to volunteer reasonable compensation for the costs I have incurred through your negligence, incompetence and dishonesty. The combined lack of service and will to rectify the problem places Orange in clear breach of contract. I am simply not prepared to pay for a service that has not been delivered.
I have been a customer of Orange on various contracts for the last five years. I have been a customer of Wanadoo for the last approx 2 years. My average monthly phone bill for the last 3 years has been a minimum of 150 pounds sometimes rising to over 500. I have also recommended a number of friends to join Orange in the past. In short I am a high value customer. I dread to think how you treat those you considered less ‘valuable’.
As a long-standing Orange customer, I feel utterly failed by your inability to rectify the problems that I have with my broadband. Your customer service staff and procedures seem designed to cause maximum frustration and waste my time whilst deliberately avoiding responsibility for the real reason behind the lack of service provision. The end result being that you have not fulfilled your side of the contract to provide me with a working broadband service even though I have given you plenty of opportunity and personally invested a significant amount of time and effort on my own part.
In the rest of this letter I will outline the reasons why I have finally chosen to take this course of action. I should add that I will not change my mind on this matter and will be prepared to go to court to state my case, and also give Orange’s total failure and dysfunctional culture of customer service maximum publicity amongst the consumer press, not to mention my entire peer group.
I have 3 key complaints:
1. Dishonest renewal of mobile and broadband contract without my permission.
2. Complete failure to provide a key component of the contracted service
3. Abysmal and ineffectual customer services, that take no proactive role in ensuring the product paid for is provided
1. Orange Wanadoo crossover and dishonest renewal of my contract without permission
I renewed my Wanadoo contract when I moved house in May of this year. Soon after, I heard the news that Wanadoo were being taken over by Orange and I would be entitled to free broadband.
I received a couple of letters telling me to call up and claim my free broadband. I dutifully did this. However, anyone I spoke to seemed to have a massive problem with the idea that I already had broadband from Wanadoo so I just needed them to stop charging me for it, rather than issue a request for a new broadband service.
This went on for quite a long time and over a number of different phone calls. Eventually I got someone to understand and they told me that this would mean I would be signing up for a new contract, which I agreed to. Nobody explained to me that this contract would affect my phone as well as my broadband, so of course, I assumed it was just for my broadband.
Concurrent to this problem I had been having some problems with my N70 phone, so the next call I made that day was to the Orange phone team and asked if there is anything they can do to help me (i.e. provide a new N70 or different phone etc). They opened my account and asked me when I was due for upgrade. I said I didn’t know and then on the off chance queried the conversation I had had with the broadband team regarding the contracts. This person then explained to me that I had renewed my contract for both my phone and broadband so I wouldn’t be able to upgrade my phone for another year. In my view the failure to mention this in the first instance is a serious error. It is not possible to agree a verbal contract if the vendor does not make perfectly clear what the contract involves.
I quickly phoned back the broadband team and explained that I had changed my mind and now didn’t want to renew my contract and I was happy to pay for the broadband, until after I had upgraded my phone. The customer service operative told me that this was fine and that the contract was thereby cancelled. They also told me to ring back once I had sorted out my phone and that at that point they would happily issue a new contract including free broadband service.
Since then I have been working abroad a lot and haven’t had time to pop into an Orange shop and decide which handset I wanted. So I still have the problematic N70.
This brings us to the 23rd of September when I demanded a refund for all the money I have been paying for broadband whilst not receiving the service. The operator then revealed to me that actually I haven’t been paying for broadband. I was okay with this until, in a later call, I was reminded of the fact that when they failed to cancel my request for free broadband I entered into a new contract with Orange and was therefore expected to pay a monthly fee regardless of their lack of service.
I phoned customer retention and got through to James (ext 27185) and informed him that I would be taking my business elsewhere after recounting the whole ugly situation one more time. He had a look at my account and put me on hold for a while – then came back and informed me that as I had renewed my contract four months ago I would not be able to cancel my contract. There was nothing further he would be able to do. I explained that until earlier this morning I believed that I was paying for my broadband and that I have specifically requested to not renew my contract until after the phone upgrades had happened.
His reply to this was that I should have ‘noticed earlier that the request for the contract to be rescinded had not happened’ and there was nothing he could do without my paying off the rest of my contract. He also insinuated that is was my word against theirs that I had requested this – and the contract still stood, so basically it was either tough or I was lying.
In my opinion James (ext 27185) is wrong that it was my ‘responsibility to notice that the contract hadn’t been rescinded’. If my verbal agreement is sufficient to renew a contract, then an Orange employee’s verbal assurance that a contract has been cancelled is equally sufficient. He also seems to think that I should continue paying Orange regardless as to whether Orange delivers the service I am paying for. I would be interested to know about the disciplinary action that Orange will be taking against James (ext 27185).
In the first instance I believe that the renewal of my phone contract was dishonest. However, given that Orange are now maintaining that it was renewed and that the provision of free broadband was the reason for it’s renewal, I believe that your lack of service delivery invalidates the contact you are now trying to hold me to when it comes to payment. You cannot have it both ways. Either the contract was never agreed in which case I am under no obligation to make further payments, or the contract is in place and Orange have broken their side of the agreement through persistent lack of service.
2. Complete failure to provide a key component of the ‘contracted’ service.
As a longstanding Wanadoo customer I chose to renew my contract in May 2006 when I moved to my new address. Since that date I have experienced worsening connections to my broadband line during peak hours and over the last Three months, no connection at all during the evening or at weekends.
This lack of connection is a source of significant frustration to me and my partner who both rely on the Internet to work at home in the evenings.
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