I have been fighting with Orange for couple of months. They have charged me for calling to Orange Mobiles which was meant to be free.
They said that I had to activate this service and now after I called them its activated.
International calls were activated automatically and I was not charged for that, BUT for Orange mobiles calls I was charged as I was meant to call them to activate it. THEY NEVER TOLD ME THIS. NEVER. its not in their terms and conditions. Everywhere it says that just plug in phone into your livebox and your are ready to make calls.
I had contract with them for 11 months and only started intensively calling calling Orange mobiles cuople of months ago when bills came as a shock over £170 of charges to Orange mobiles for these couple of months. I really cant afford that. Talked to several Orange managers - USELESS. all say automatic stuff as if they cant hear you.
Basically I shoud have activated it and because I did not I was charged. HOW WAS I SUPPOSE TO KNOW THAT I HAD TO ACTIVATE IT? I was never told, they claim it was in welcome pack. DID ANYONE OF YOU RECEIVED IT? the paper where it tells you to activate calls to Orange mobiles?
I am planning to go all the way to get my money back, but having year old baby its not easy.
Please, guys, can anyone help me? what shall I do next? do I stand any chance with alternative despute resolution or smthng like that?
They are unwilling to help and say that OFCOM will do nothing about this for me.
Joined: 16 Dec 2006Posts: 108Location: North Essex
GreenEyes wrote:
They said that I had to activate this service and now after I called them its activated.
Well, I'm getting free calls to Orange mobiles, and I've not activated anything apart from the Talk service - and that was well before I switched to my current contract. If you do complain to OFCOM or anyone else, I'd be happy to confirm that to them.
thanks a lot. I know they are wrong, but they simply ignore me,
They took £75 by DD and then I cancelled DD with my bank so now Orange suspended my account (no internet no calls) for not paying extra £105 for calls to Orange and £5 fee for them being unable to take my £105 on time.
Should I pay it and then try to get it back? or not pay and seat without Internet?
thanks a lot. I know they are wrong, but they simply ignore me,
They took £75 by DD and then I cancelled DD with my bank so now Orange suspended my account (no internet no calls) for not paying extra £105 for calls to Orange and £5 fee for them being unable to take my £105 on time.
Should I pay it and then try to get it back? or not pay and seat without Internet?
The problem is, you should have know what package you were on, you dont exactly buy a service and dont ask "what am i paying for and how do i access or take advantage of these features?"
You have not mentioned what package you are/were on.
If Home Max then yes Orange MOBILES and i repeat ONLY Orange mobiles are free to ring.
If you were on a previous package like Unlimited the the ONLY way you can ring Orange MOBILES for free is if you had a mobile yourself (AN Orange ONE) and you REGISTERED that with the member centre online.
If you dont pay then collections will ring you, retentions will ring you and try take payment. If you want to cancell then you will have to pay cancellation fee and also possilbly settle the outstanding balance. I would ring up and arrange for some sort of solution so you dont have to pay it in one go if possible.
If you do get a call of retentions they may be able to deduct some of the charge, i doubt they would deduct all of it. But £170 is rediculous where were you ringing and how long were you on the phone, you must pratically be glued to it!
If it was a daft £30-50 then yeah no problem they would easily maybe knock all of that or some of that off as there was a misunderstanding. But this is £170.
There is a member centre there for a reason on the Orange homepage, so you can look at you ONLINE STATEMENTS and ITEMISED BILLS for any calls you made. I suggest you take a look at that from now on, you can not say you were not advised or told about that as EVERY NEW CUSTOMER or ones that have regraded get AN EMAIL mentioning the MEMBER CENTRE and its benefits.
Do not really know if OFCOM could help that much in the matter, i took out a telephone contract the other day and advised the sales rep to tell me the T&C and the ins and outs of it, maybe people should start doing the same for broadband when they take out a package with any company
Sorry if i am coming over a bit @$$Y.
If You are infact on the Home Max Package then you may have a leg to stand on as this Package does not and should not require you to activate the service, it may simply be a problem with the servers at Orange, im pretty sure you if you ring customer support or care and explain that to them exactly like i have they will realise this and possilby waiver the fee. Or wait till retentions ring becuase of you DD Cancelation and tell them about it if they havent already rang, if they have and you declined to pay then i would ring customer care and explain the situation to them
I have been with Orange since they were freeserve, I also have my mobile with Orange. In December I received a leaflet through the door telling me about their Home Max package and Nokia 6301 unique phone offer.
£35 a month for the phone for 600 minutes and unlimited text transfer my phone and only pay £15 for the home phone and 8mg broadband so I upgraded.
I did not know that I had to get my second line activated because I had not seen it written down anywhere and may have well have found myself in the same position as you it was only pure luck that I avoided that. I did point out to Orange that if things are written down anywhere then thay have gone out of their way to make it hard to find and they should send out in writting all relevent information when they send the equipment
I also wanted more information about the unique phone which I now know works through my wireless network when I am at home. However, when I called customer support for information about this I was told by the Indian call centre staff that I would have to pay for calls as per normal, obviously they had no idea what they were talking about. In any event I opted for the Nokia 6300.
I also found that once Orange took over my line and gave me the livebox my speed went down from 4.4Kbps to 3.2Kbps and had to spend a lot of time on the phone to them which as we all know is hopeless as there call centre staff are poorly trained and pretty much incompetent.
I decided that I would stop wasting my time phoning the call centre completely and instead wrote to Orange customer care in the UK complaining about all of the above and pointing out that they were in breach of the own Code of practice in particular points 2 and 6..
1. Our code of practice
Our customers are an important part of our business, and making sure you’re happy with our services is at the heart of everything we do. So we’ve put this code of practice together to make sure you have the latest information on our products, services and customer-care policies, including how to contact us if you have any questions.
We’ll follow this code of practice to make sure that we:
• act fairly and reasonably when in contact with you;
• help you to understand how our products and services work;
• deal with any complaints quickly and fairly;
• make sure that all our products and services keep to relevant laws and regulations;
• make copies of this code available on our website and in writing (including in large print, on audio tape and in Braille); and
• train all our staff and contact centre agents to follow this code at all times.
After a couple of letters I received a call from a very helpful and pleasant person who arranged for me to get two months Home max free of charge and got the mobile side of Orange to send me a brand new Nokia 6301.
I also now have a steady download and upload speed and am satisfied and I would suggest to everyone that you take the time to write to Orange here in the UK with your complaints then you may get satisfaction and they may get the message that they need to do something about their appalling call centre service.
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