Orange

[greasemonkey]

Well something is up with VOD, and my post are not coming up, so I'll post it here for posterity.

Had  little top blowing exercise.

Sometime late in 2009, I signed a two year dongle contract with Orange. I got soundly ripped, it hardly worked. Then, around six months from the end of the contract, it stopped altogether.

Nothing could be done about it, so the operator reduced the monthly charge from whatever it was, maybe £15 a month, down to £4.99 a month.
Soon as the contract finishes, thats it.

Not so. Since then, they have taken £4.99 a month out of my account, every month.
I had one go last year at stopping them, they told me it would stop, it didn't.

So I gave them another call today, and let fly.
Three operators later, and it looks like I may have got somewhere.
There is a 30 day cancellation period, so looks like they will be having another £4.99.

They really are some hateful idiots. I wasn't even bothering to be polite in the end. Multiple threats to spread the story all over the internet, and if they don't pull their fingers out, they'll be dealing with a solicitor. Feel a bit sorry for the operators who got the earful, but needs must.

I want the money back, and it looks like I may get it. I did force the point home that this wont look very good online. Their story is, that even though I have no contract, and they never honoured it in the first place, they can still take the money as "line rental", until I cancel the line.
I know I was told it was cancelled the last time I rang them.
I also know that there must be recordings of the phone calls I made to them about it.
I think I might have got them on the run.
Prats.....

[kamaangir]

I have had dealings with all one them and they all operate (bit like banks and other big business) in the same money grabbing way. They rely on having massive call centres and your call/enquiry getting lost in the system to fuck you about and keep your money.

You need to send them a data protection release request to get all the data they hold about you. Then using that you can take them to a small claims court to get your money back. Everything you send them must be recorded/signed for post. Do email people don't submit anything online as "it gets lost" email if it doesn't bounce back has been delivered with a time and date stamp.

Best of luck.... they are a bunch of crude vaginas

[greasemonkey]

Data release request sound like a good idea.
So much for me saying I'll spread it all over the internet, it'll be a drop in the ocean.
Thanks for the advise. Being as I'm on the case, I may as well let them have it for mis selling in the first place.
There never was any hope of it working in this area.

[photoman290]

i had a similar problem with the orange shop my contract had finished so got a shiny new phone. worked great in the shop. they offered to migrate my address book from my old sony Ericsson phone to the htc  wildfire i had brought. opps  we have lost the links to your address book. the numbers are there but not the names. great i could have done that myself. got it home discovered the coverage was terrible and i couldn't tether my  internet via bluetooth like i did before. phoned them up and explained this. was told i had 30 days to change the phone. went back to the shop was told i couldn't change it. argued with some dumb aggressive blond teenager who had never heard of tethering and insisted i was  old and mad. said the only way i could change this £500 contract was if the shop manager ok'ed it. of course every time i went in he was "not available" or "in a meeting"  never again will i buy a phone form a  orange shop. now have a sim only deal and a £10 tesco's phone.

[therecklessengineer]

I also had a bad experience with orange. A customer of some 10 years and they completely buggered me around on a broadband deal and an upgrade to my phone.

So bad in fact that I cancelled everything, went out and dropped nearly £500 on the phone that I wanted and went sim only from giffgaff.

This approach paid for itself in 18 months, it's now 2.5 years on and I continue to use the same phone. I figure I'll take it to a minimum of 3 years before I look at upgrading.