Orange - what a joke

The last few weeks text messages have been taking an age for them to get to their destination. Put aside the fact that orange SMS's are now 12p on PAYG, all new orange customers get 1.8k texts free a year, and I'm not happy.

Last week i phoned up 450 to top my phone up via my credit card. I was asked quite a few of questions about my address and post code by an electronic machine - which took ages. You also had to confirm everything that you entered.

Now tonight, i go and top up via my card. After a 3min + call, answering various questions (again) i get told "We'll process your transaction and top up you phone soon".
SOON ?!?!

Ive been using this card with this phone since i had it years ago. CC payments have always been instant. If i wanted to wait for my phone to be topped up, i would buy vouchers. What the hecks the point in CC top-up if they are going to take the main reason its used for away ? :rolleyes:

Ive had enough with them, this is the last straw. Im going to get a new SIM for another network, untill next year when i will be getting a new phone + a contact.

Shame on you Orange http://forums.hexus.net/images/icons/icon13.gif

Ive been through the exact same as you mate. Orange just dont care about their customers once they've signed up - be it contract or PAYG.

I've still got my PAYG (for convenience of keeping the same number) and had my cards registered under it for top ups. When I went through the same thing, I was told that I had given my address details wrong. They were the same as they were before, I told them it cant be the wrong frikkin address coz "you've been spamming it enough to know it's not wrong!" That never got sorted.

My mum's on Orange, and that's been nothing but a pain. She must've been on the phone to Orange about once a week or fortnight about things not working (like voice mail not working, or she's not receiving any calls when there's definately reception) for the past year. Then when it came to renewing the contract (or continue it) she kicked up such a fuss that she felt she had been ripped off and put it down to them that they are rip off merchants doing anything to get marketshare and poor after-sales.

Would you believe, we're still both on Orange!! :(

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Originally posted by ACiD303
I've still got my PAYG (for convenience of keeping the same number) and had my cards registered under it for top ups. When I went through the same thing, I was told that I had given my address details wrong. They were the same as they were before, I told them it cant be the wrong frikkin address coz "you've been spamming it enough to know it's not wrong!" That never got sorted.

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now thats very intresting.
The exact same happened to me when i first tried to register the card. They claimed i had a registered the phone with a different address (next door), but all the junk mail i kept getting to my home address :rolleyes:

I was on orange for quite a while and they're customer service is indeed a joke, on t-mobile now n have been for a year without complaint. Calls are pretty cheap in my experience and im very rarely without reception, theres also a distinct lack of the random spam texts that my rents (on o2) recieve daily.

i don't get o2 spam on my old o2 contract, but i do on my new o2 payg sim...

I only get occasional spam on mine (o2), but it doesn't bother me as it's so infrequent.

Calls are pretty cheap for me and I'm on the Online tariff which gives 300 free texts and WAP minutes a month. Can't complain about it really :)

i actually think orange - and in particular their insurance - is very good. they might not deliver texts immediatly (probably network overload) but at least they deliver texts (/me glares @ genie/o2 online)

I've never had one problem with O2, my texts are all delivered instantly. The way it should be..

O2 have always been awful with my family, texts taking ages.

My phone from Orange too 9 working days to arrive, not the 2-5 as stated, and after spending ages filling in the on-line form to register my Sim, it fails, I ring up and they aren't supprised :mad:

Oh, how do you check your credit on Orange?

NS

i've been with btcellnet/genie/o2 and i've never had a problem. I love their free txt tariffs - 500 a month + 500 free o/p mins for £25 a month.

i wouldnt even think about switching.

my 2p worth

I was on Orange. Real clincher for me was their Twyford transmitter station started playing up - and it took them four months to fix it. Repeated phone calls were all met with standard replies (deny somethings wrong, then "It'll be fixed by the end of the month").

Vodafone now costs me about half what Orange was charging too.

It still hasnt gone through to my acount :mad:

453 is the balance checker on orange.

I just bought the T610 on Orange P&G, and didn't see anything about free text messages.... are you talking about contract or something else?

NS

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Originally posted by NightShade737
I just bought the T610 on Orange P&G, and didn't see anything about free text messages.... are you talking about contract or something else?

NS

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http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/offer/cheaper_calls

You should have the option of either one of those.

Im waiting for the T630 to come out just after christmas and get that, so im holding off the T610 at the moment - although its the best looking phone on the market imo, and simply superb.

I have an O2 contract phone, and I have never ever had any problems with them, and I have been with them for years. Only reason I stay with them is becuase my family are on O2 and I don't want them to incur extra charges!

Guys don't you understand that this is all down to numbers - its like cars, ford and vauxhall never get top marks in service due to the fact that the make much larger number of cars therefore by shear weight of numbers they get more complaints, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are a bad company.

Orange is number 1 for a reason, they spent a lot of money on there network, and I believe that they do have the best signal coverage of the uk, (remember my day job is dealing with network operators on a technical level - i understand what they are struggling with) - my work phone is still on Orange contract, and my personal phone on Orange PAYG, i've never had any problems with either.

The whole point of having the number of different networks we have is so you've got a choice, you get a bad experience with one of them then move.

My personal experience with t-mobile is appaling, couldn't get any wap working for about 3 weeks, then the phone just stopped accepting incoming calls.

I was lucky it was a work phone but hampered the development of an IVR and WAP site for t-mobile immensly.

But I do agree that Customer Services of all of them are usually crap, this is due to the type of person working there, pissed off, in a really crappy call centre, where they are not allowed to breathe without asking. Put yourself in their situation and ask if yourself if you could truely give good service all day with all the petty complaints and idiots you will have to put up with phoning up.

Sure you may say its there job but on say 12K a year for the hassle they get who blames them....

TiG

Just saw it, it wasn't there when I ordered (only last week). It was something different. Though no big loss, it is only for a year...

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Because you have chosen a phone that's £99.99 or more, you can now choose text saver or talk saver for free for a year.

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NS

Damm dont talk to me about orange its the worst phone phone service provided around.

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Originally posted by TiG
Guys don't you understand that this is all down to numbers - its like cars, ford and vauxhall never get top marks in service due to the fact that the make much larger number of cars therefore by shear weight of numbers they get more complaints, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are a bad company.

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Indeed TiG - but it doesnt help when your one of those "numbers" ;) :)

From my experience at work (o2 shop) far more people are moving from orange than any other network. Most of the people i talk to are unhappy with the pricing or the customer service. I would never of expected this giving my own experience from the past but something must be wrong to warrant this shift in customers, most of which are contact users.

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Orange is number 1 for a reason, they spent a lot of money on there network, and I believe that they do have the best signal coverage of the uk, (remember my day job is dealing with network operators on a technical level - i understand what they are struggling with) - my work phone is still on Orange contract, and my personal phone on Orange PAYG, i've never had any problems with either.

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I would not argue that their coverage is the best (around here anyway) - it was the 2nd reason why I chose Orange, the first being most of my phoned numbers were Orange too. But, for most of the reasons already mentioned, most people have either changed to O2 or (believe it or not) Virgin Mobile.

It's not just Orange UK I have complaints with. Orange HK is just as bad. Before leaving for HK, we asked if we could use the Orange contract mobile there - no problem they said, they have an Orange Network there & Orange shops to help us if we need any help. Well, get to HK, we get a TXT msg Welcoming you to the network - except it wasnt Orange. It was some other network. And we got these "Welcome to" TXTs from different networks about 3-4 times a day while we were there, so the phone was constantly changing networks. Going to the Orange shop to maybe shed some light as to why this is happening, or maybe even perhaps use just Orange network (what we're paying for), we were dismissed with "We have no idea, we dont know." And when we come back, we were charged for Foreign Network exchange or something like that!!! That was dispickable!!!

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But I do agree that Customer Services of all of them are usually crap, this is due to the type of person working there, pissed off, in a really crappy call centre, where they are not allowed to breathe without asking. Put yourself in their situation and ask if yourself if you could truely give good service all day with all the petty complaints and idiots you will have to put up with phoning up.

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From that point of view I can understand, I used to work for Telewest Call Centre (so you can imagine the amount of obnoxious calls I get - you were probably one of them!). But when doing that job, I always did my best because if I made one unhappy customer happy, it made the difference to my day. Sure it's a hit and miss as to who you get and what mood their in, but it really doesnt help when it seems EVERYONE who calls in seems to get the same jist.

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Originally posted by furbs
From my experience at work (o2 shop) far more people are moving from orange than any other network. Most of the people i talk to are unhappy with the pricing or the customer service. I would never of expected this giving my own experience from the past but something must be wrong to warrant this shift in customers, most of which are contact users.

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Again thats what i'm saying, if Orange is number 1 in consumer numbers, it will likely appear that more people are moving from Orange, yet the Percentages may show another story and of course on the other foot the same amount of o2 customers may just be wandering into the orange shop and doing exactly the same thing.

Its called Churn and Mobile COMPANIES HATE IT :)

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From that point of view I can understand, I used to work for Telewest Call Centre (so you can imagine the amount of obnoxious calls I get - you were probably one of them!).

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from Acid303.

Sadly i used to work in a call centre too, only if i get talked to crap by the call centre agent do i cause any fuss. I realise that asking nicely works the best by far :)


TiG

THEY ARE HAVING A LAUGH

I just phoned up 450 to speak to the help desk - the voice recorded machine told me to phone 451.
So i dial 451 to talk to them, The voice kicks in and tells me that I'm being charged for this call. Just after that, my credit runs out.

So now, I'm stuck with a phone, with no way to speak to the help desk because i have no credit. The earliest ill will be able to get to a shop to buy a voucher is Thursday at best. Even then, i only want to put a fiver on it, and not a tenner (they don't do £5 vouchers anymore).

I guess i could phone them from the house phone, but i don't even want to think how much thats going to cost.

So........ anyone know how to unlock an Orange T610? :rolleyes:

NS

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Originally posted by NightShade737
I just bought the T610 on Orange P&G, and didn't see anything about free text messages.... are you talking about contract or something else?

NS

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The free texts thing has been going agez! You used to buy a pack for £20 which was called "Orange Out Here" which was really aimed at students! It came in a box with and swimbag with the orange logo on it ??? It was a one off payment and you added it to your account using a pay as you go like voucher. it also had this reserve call thingy, that if you ran out of credit you were allowed 2 30 second calls.

This deal was stopped, they decided to charge £19.99 a year and dropped the number of texts to 3 a day. (I guess it was too good a deal!). Lot's of people complained so they bumped the messages back up to 5 and made it so that people that got the "Orange Out Here" deal didn't even have to pay the yearly subscription! :)

I've been with Orange for 4 years now, starting with the Motorola m3788e (BRICK!), Nokia 3210, Ericson T20s, Nokia 3330, SE T68i and a week ago I got the SE T610. Orange have been good most of the time, texts seem to go through straight away... Never had any problems with reception where i live (Reading).

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I just phoned up 450 to speak to the help desk - the voice recorded machine told me to phone 451.
So i dial 451 to talk to them, The voice kicks in and tells me that I'm being charged for this call. Just after that, my credit runs out.

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I fell for this trap too when I first got PAYG (wanted to complain about something in my first week!). They should have an advance warning on that 450 . . . whats another 10 seconds to make such a simple and informative statement other than the 2 minutes of nonsense that number drivels out.

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Even then, i only want to put a fiver on it, and not a tenner (they don't do £5 vouchers anymore).

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Why dont you get the swipe card? You can put a £5er on that (minimum) and it goes straight through (alot of places do them, all my local cornershops do at least). Tho I would advise you get a receipt each time you do this coz Ive been done over a couple of times.

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I guess i could phone them from the house phone, but i don't even want to think how much thats going to cost.

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It's an 079 number . . . 07979100100 (I think, cant remember) - but will be charged at mobile rates Id assume.

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Originally posted by ACiD303
Why dont you get the swipe card? You can put a £5er on that (minimum) and it goes straight through (alot of places do them, all my local cornershops do at least). Tho I would advise you get a receipt each time you do this coz Ive been done over a couple of times

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I have one, but i still have to get to a shop to get it topped up - which isnt going to be easy for me (time) - hence why i have it linked to my CC :(