Poor Service From Orange

18.3

Hello,

I am a Pay As You Go customer.

I checked my email (headers only) using my Orange phone this morning.
It cost me 8 pence, which, at the advertised £4 per Megabyte, implies that the 20KBytes were downloaded.

I felt that was excessive for nine email headers, so I examined the headers, and include them below.

They amount to 11,060 characters, which, at 1024 characters a Kilobyte, comes to 10.8KiloBytes.

I realise that there may be some additional communications overhead, but this does not account for the near doubling of data volume I'm seeing.

So, please let me know why the cost for this network transaction was nearly twice what I calculate it ought to be.

Many thanks & Best Wishes,
Chris Wesley <phone numbers provided here>

This drew an automated acknowledgement, which I've included below.

All I really need is "Thanks, we got your email, and we'll get back to you soon".

But - like most large companies, trying to impress without actually doing anything impressive - they can't resist the opportunity to pack these auto-generated emails with corporate crap.

Of particular note in this one:

1. It's HUGE! All the stuff in red is surplus to requirements.

2. They tell you how good they are - like I'll believe them in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. "Orange are really great. No, honestly, we really are.". Oh, please - give it up.

3. Setting expectations by lying Like Barclaycard and many others, they allude to "unusually high demand" and try to give the impression that the low level of service you receive this time is somehow the exception rather than the rule. It's far more likely that they staff their service centres so that these poor service levels are entirely the norm. Why? Well because they already have your money, and you're calling to take more of their time without paying for it. That's why. Invariably, sales centresare staffed for immediate response, because they don't yet have your money - and they want it. Whereas support centres are staffed poorly.

4. They refer me to a alternative way of receiving service - which costs me 50p per minute. That's a tough choice, but... I'm going to decline on this ocassion.

Now we're into the arse-covering:

5. The confidentiality clause. Why is it there? Why can't I share what they wrote to me with whoever I choose? Perhaps to stop articles like this one from being written?

6. The opinions in this email are not necessarily those of Orange?! How unfortunate. I sort of expected that 0 by calling Orange for help - I'd get some Orange opinions. Bummer.

7. We scan for viruses but so should you. Well, you know - if I hadn't have read that, I might not have know. Orange constantly just adding value to the service they provide.

8. Orange is a subsidiary.. yada yaya. Who cares?!?!?!

18.3

Orange strive to supply customers with the highest level of service and we would therefore like to advise that this is an automated response.

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your mail.

We have received your mail and will respond as soon as we can however, we have received a high volume of emails recently which may delay our response. Account specific mails or mails relating to lost, stolen, damaged or faulty phones cannot be answered by email and will not therefore receive a reply. Please call Orange Customer Services on 150 (07973100150 from a landline) for pay monthly or 450 (07973100450) for pay as you go or you may be able to find the answer to your query by going to www.orange.co.uk/helpandsupport.

If you have an Orange phone and you are experiencing difficulties with your online account, you can contact our technical helpdesk by dialling 439 from your Orange phone or 07973100439 from a landline. Please note that callers must be over 18 and calls are charged at 50 pence per minute at all times. For any other queries, our customer services helpdesk will be pleased to assist and can be contacted by calling 450 from a pay as you go phone, or 07973100450 from a landline, or 150 from a pay monthly phone (07973100150 from a landline).

As this is an automated response, do not reply as we are not able to answer replies sent from this acknowledgement.

Kind regards

Orange Customer Services

********************************************************************
Important.
Confidentiality: This communication is intended for the above-named
person(s) and may be confidential and/or legally privileged.
Any opinions expressed in this communication are not necessarily
those of the company. If it has come to you in error you must
take no action based on it, nor must you copy or show it to anyone;
please delete/destroy and inform the sender immediately.

Monitoring/Viruses.
Orange may monitor all incoming and outgoing emails in line with
current legislation. Although we have taken steps to ensure that
this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that
in keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure
they are actually virus free.

Orange Personal Communications Services Limited is a subsidiary of
Orange SA and is registered in England No 2178917,
with its address at St James Court, Great Park Road,
Almondsbury Park, Bradley Stoke, Bristol BS32 4QJ.

Orange Retail Limited is a subsidiary of Orange SA and is registered
in England No 2439104, with its address at St James Court,
Great Park Road, Almondsbury Park, Bradley Stoke, Bristol BS32 4QJ.
********************************************************************

19.3

Dear Chris

Thank you for your mail

I can confirm that there are several components which make up the charging of GPRS in relation to sending and receiving email.

Firstly there is the initial GPRS connection to the network, after this data will be transferred due to the fact that your personal details and handset connect to remote servers. At this point the headers will be retrieved, in doing this data will be both sent and received.

This therefore accounts for the accumulation of data charges you have encountered.

I trust this information is of use and resolves your query.

Kind regards

Charlie
Orange Customer Services

Charlie's response is one day after my enquiry, which is OK.

I don't like the recent trend towards using "I can confirm". Cahoot do it. WHY? It's bizarrely un-natural.

And I don't like the huge corporate crap overhead which came with it. I deleted it this time round.

Anyway, it's an acceptable response for a first crack of the whip. However, it doesn't completely resolve my query. See below.

20.3

Hello Charlie and thanks for your prompt and informative response.

Your literature talks about £4 per Megabyte but I can't find any mention of GPRS connection charges.

Please let me know where they are referred to.

Quite separately, please tell me what they are - presumably, the overhead is identical for each connection made.

I would be extremely surprised if they account for the missing data volume we're looking at here.

Many thanks & Best Wishes,
Chris

21.3

Subject: RE: Case 4919384 Data Costs >=>MNC.ORANGE

********************************************************************
Important.
Confidentiality: This communication is intended for the above-name ...
Standard crap removed.

21.3

Hello,

I think you may have made a mistake.
You sent me the email below, but it has no real content - only your standard blurbs.
Please confirm.

Regards,
Chris

24.3

Please address this for me.

Thanks

[copy of earlier email]

30.3

Please respond to this.

[copy of earlier emails]

Nothing for a further five days. So ...

3.4

Hello.

I didn't see a reply to my email below. Please update me on progress.

Thanks & Regards,
Chris

[Copy of original email]

3.4

Dear Chris

Thank you for your mail.

I'm sorry to learn that you have received an email that contains no content. Unfortunately I am unaware as to why this may be. I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards

Rob
Orange Customer Services.

Oh thanks Rob! I waited 14 days and sent FOUR REMINDERS to receive this response from Rob, which is useless.

It's useless in a very interesting way, though. It responds not to the email I most recently sent, but to the blank email issue which I alluded to earlier in the dialogue.

This tells me that Rob has the entire dialogue available to him, and is CHOOSING not to address the main issue.

What a nice man Rob is.

What excellent standards of personal and professional integrity Orange cultivate.

Perhaps the future is bright and orange afterall.

5.4

Are we having fun yet?

I have sent you SIX emails on this topic, starting 18th March, to get an answer to two simple questions. Those questions are these:

1. Please tell me what the GPRS connection overhead is, and confirm that it is fixed for each connection. Specifically, tell me how many bites are transferred and what the consequential cost to me is.

2. Please tell me where Orange documents this charge. For example, the URL of the webpage, or a page number and document title.

Please reply, being sure to completely address both of these issues so that we don't have to discuss it again.

Now I have a third issue I would like resolving:

3. Please tell me why you have done such an appalling job of fielding this support request. Specifically, why did you point blank ignore 4 emails, and why did you side-step the main issue in your last two responses?

So - please ensure that your single response includes answers to all three of these issues.

Thanks,
Chris

8.4

Dear Mr Wesley

Thank you for your mail.

Please accept my apologies that you feel the experience you have had with Customer Services recently has not been to the standard which you have come to expect from Orange.

The GPRS bundles which are available to our customers are set to cover the majority, if not all the data transfer needed to perform relevant tasks which require the GPRS network.

With regards to the breakdown of the charges incurred when using GPRS, we cannot confirm exactly how many bytes are transferred at any one time. This is due to a number of factors:

1. The amount of bytes needed to transfer the data across the network. For example, when sending an email.

2. The size of the data (E.g email) which is being requested.

I regret to inform you that there is no literature available detailing the breakdown of GPRS charges, however it is through feedback such as yours that we are able to assess the effectiveness of our service.

I understand this has caused you great inconvenience and apologise for this. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to write to us and inform you that all points raised by your email have been noted.

I trust this is of assistance.

Kind regards

Nathalie
Orange Customer Services

8.4

Nathalie,

I am very frustrated to see that - yet again - you have not answered my questions.

Please therefore escalate this to your customer services manager, and tell me who that is, and how I may contact them.

I know full well that the charges are based on the amount of data transferred. Of course. That's obvious.
But your own support people have told me that the data transferred is made up of two components:

1. The amount of user data transferred
2. The GPRS connection overhead

I have asked you - several times - to tell me what size (and what cost) number 2 is. The GPRS connection overhead.
This will be clearly and completely understood by one of your technical experts. This information IS available and I want It, please.
You are obliged to tell your customers how much you charge them, and yet you seem to be deliberately concealing one component of your charges from me and all your customers.

I'm not going to go away no matter how long you stonewall, and you can be sure that I will be publishing the appalling level of service you have provided so far,
along with the final answer when I get it from you.

So please tell me what that is now. And please remember also to escalate this to your customer services manager, and to tell me who that is, and how I can contact them.

Thank you.

IMPORTANT:
My disclaimer trumps yours. I will do whatever I want with this dialogue including posting it on the web as an example of what a great job Orange does for its customers.

12.4

Dear Mr Wesley

Thank you for your mail.

I can confirm that the charges for the transfer of data over the GPRS network are set as £3 per Mb for pay monthly customers and £4 per Mb for pay as you go customers. There is no additional charge applied other than for the amount of data transferred.

There are also bundles available which, depending on your usage, can significantly reduce the cost of data transfer. Please find below details of GPRS charges.

Pay as you use data charges are:

for the first 3 Mb - £3 per Mb,
3-15 Mb - £2 per Mb
15+ Mb - £1 per Mb.

Available bundles

Orange World Access 1 - 1MB for £2
Orange World Access 4 - 4MB for £4
Orange World Access 10 - 10MB for £8
Orange World Access 25 - 25MB for £16
Orange World Access 80 - 80MB for £41.13
Orange World Access 400 - 400 MB for £52.88
Mobile Office Max 05 Fair use (1000MB) for £52.88

If you are a Pay as you go customer GPRS data is charged at £4 per Mb. There is also a 'Browse all day for £1' option available on the Orange World homepage.

I hope this information has clarified the situation.

If you wish to speak to a Supervisor regarding this matter, please could you call our Wirefree Data Services Department on 156 direct from your Orange phone (07973 100156 from any other phone) if you are a pay monthly customer or 450 (07973 100450) if you are a pay as you go customer, where a representative will be pleased to assist you in this matter. Your call can then be escalatedthrough the propper channels.

Kind regards

David
Orange Customer Services

12.4

David,

For maybe the 4th or 5th time you (Orange) have ignored my question.
I can only assume you are doing so deliberately.

Please therefore escalate this to your customer services manager and have them contact me.

Thanks

14.4

Dear Mr Wesley

Thank you for your mail.

I can confirm that the GPRS charges incurred when connecting to your email server include charges for all data transferred.

This includes the data transferred for the verification process which confirms that you have access to the requested mail box. The charge is also dependent on the format of the text downloaded. A complex text format will contain more data than others, therefore data transfer increases. Bad "packets" of data transferred via the GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) network would mean that they will need to be downloaded again for you to receive all of the information requested.

I hope this information has clarified the situation further.

Kind regards

David
Orange Customer Services

This does not resolve the problem.
Because you have not done a thorough job, you force me to waste even further time on this. I believe this will be the 6th or 7th turn of the handle on what ought to be a very simple query.

Please refer back to my original enquiry.

I downloaded the headers on some emails and counted the characters which were downloaded. They accounted for about half of the cost - based on credit calls before and after I downloaded them.

You people said that the extra cost was down to "GPRS connection overhead".
I doubted that - and asked for a clear statement of the volume (# bytes) & cost (pence) of this overhead.

Finally, you are addressing this - but you say that - effectively - there is NO GPRS connection overhead. If you is correct, then your colleague is wrong, and we are still missing 50% of the cost. If you are wrong, which seems far more likely, then this is HUGELY depressing.

I also note that you have ignored my request to have your customer services manager call me. Unless you are the customer services manager - which - frankly - might explain why the service is so incredibly poor.

So, for the Nth time - please sort this out and please ask your customer services manager to contact me.

Thank you.

PS: As usual, my disclaimer trumps yours. I'll do whatever I like with this dialogue.

19.4

Dear Mr Wesley

Thank you for your mail.

After reading through the previous emails, I find that this is a query concerning GPRS charging.

Therefore, as I am unable to involve any access to your account, this matter must be addressed to our Customer Services on 450 for payg Customers.

The customer is billed per event, i.e every time you access a new WAP or internet page you are billed for the volume of data that is downloaded on to your handset/Laptop/PDA device.

PAYG GPRS is charged at £4 per megabyte

1 Megabyte = 1024kilobytes = £4

1 Kilobyte = 1024 bytes = 0.39p

1 Byte = 8 bits
The following information gives an approximate example of costs to provide to the customer:
1 Page word document = 20-30 kb's = 7.8p - 11.7p

1 WAP Page = 600-900 bytes = 0.23p -0.34p

1 average website homepage = 34kb = 13.26p

I trust this information clarifies the situation for you.

Kind regards

Su
Orange Customer Services

Isn't this astonishing?! Isn't it unbelievably stupidly, inanely dreadfully bad?????

Who is the Orange customer services manager? How much does that person earn? How much does that person know about providing good customer service? Who are they sleeping with to hold down their job, given performance of this dismal quality? Who in Orange - ANYWHERE - is monitoring service quality?

I can say very dlearly indeed as an ex-manager of service organisations, that this person needs to be fired, because they have demonstrated beyond any doubt that they are a cretin. And - judging by the front-line people I've spoken to at Orange, most fo them should go as well - they appear not to be remotely interested in helping customers with their Orange-induced problems, and many can't apparently read.

Anyway, just before this email arrived, I was phoned up by Orange technical expert, Chris Harrison. He confirmed that the actual cost of transferring data via Orange's GPRS mobile network is about twice the rate they advertise. The cost to you is not the £4 per megabyte they advertise - it's nearer to £8, because of losses and overheads in the network we Orange customers are charged for - but secretly.

So, I looked Orange up at Companies House, and found that Orange is registered in Bristol. So I sent the email below to Bristol Trading Standards.

19.4

Hello,

I have conducted a lengthy and painful dialogue with Orange - the mobile phone people - during which they tried to avoid talking to me on a touchy subject.

They advertise data costs for pay as you go customers as £4 per megabyte.
But in fact, empirical evidence shows that the real cost is about twice that price.

After being indecently insistent, I finally spoke to their technical expert, Chris Harrison, who confirms that this is the case because, in addition to the customer's data transfer, the following additional (and un-advertised) factors are also paid for by the customer:

1. Negotiation with intermediate servers on the internet
2. GPRS connection overhead
3. Recovery of data lost in the Orange network
4. Protocol overhead associated with managing transmission power

I feel that Orange should not be charging their customers for these internal factors,
and I most certainly feel that Orange should not be allowed to advertise their data charges at about half or what they really are as they currently do.

Orange are registered in Bristol, so I am sending this to you folks, in the hope that you can help me to right this wrong.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks & Best Wishes,
Chris Wesley

With Sky broadband now much happier will never eva have orange again!! awful company.

Looks like you should get the Advertising Standards Authority
involved. Advertising one price when in reality it's actually twice the price!. I say boycott Orange.

I did. They were useless. In my extensive experience, if you try to use the instruments of the state to address issues, you find those instruments are just as flawed as the body you started out complaining about. ANd if you go right up to your MP - still no dice. In short, as a tax-paying citizen of one of the world's leading democracies - you're stuffed, and there's NOTHING you can do about it. In the end, even I get tired and fed up. Without running for prime minister, it's all pointless.

PS They also grossly overcharged me on my mobile account!

I intend to leave as soon as my contract expires.

Be / O2 and others run ADSL2 broadband service on the BT phone lines which for most people is quicker than ADSL, ADSL being the system used by most providers. I said i wasnt happy with the speeds we were getting and wanted to try someone else, they then said the speed was entirely limited by various things such as distance from the exchange etc, yes this is true but i understand (and hoped they would) that ADSL2 is quicker up to a certain distance from the exchange.

I am only 500 metres direct and 2km from the exchange which is relatively good. Be / 02 still said i could expect 12mb from their 24mb service, double what Orange told me i was getting and at least 4 times what most online tests were telling me. Clearly i was speaking to a sales person and they would know its faster than whatever i'm getting at the moment, and they also have to provide more clarity than in the past over speeds, but telling me i'm getting only half the advertised speed before signing up isn't normally the best sales tactic, so i'm still going to switch.

At the time of transfer, they managed to shut down my emails account on Orange.net Under normal circumstances, I would not be too worried, but at the time I was going through divorce and there were a number of important emails on the account between me and my solicitor!!! (More fool me for keeping them on a 3rd party system)

After about 2 months of being palmed-off (we'll sort in within 24 hours, 48 hours, by the weekend, don't know how long it will take we need to recover the server backup), I was informed that the data could be lost when transfering form payg to pay monthly. Great! However, if I'd known that when I was being sold the phone, I wouldn't have bought it!

Anyway, I am now 6 months down the line, Orange have still not managed to recover the email data (they can if a judge tells tehm!), and they refuse to answer my emails. After all, why should I pay 50p a minute to access their technical help line? I have also requested that they send me a reference number/packaging so that I can return their phone - No response.

I have told them that I have stopped my direct debit agreement with the bank - No response.

I have informed them that I have terminated my contract with them, in accordance with their own terms and conditions, for failing to provide a reasonavble service. You guessed it - No response.

I went out and bought a pay and go phone from O2. Let's see where that gets me!!

Needless to say, Orange will never receive any of my business, now or in future.

Thank God I changed - and got a far cheaper package as well.

Orange Mobile customer NON service

I have an orange pay as you go mobile It's years old this week the speaker decided to start failing. As I have 23 still left on my phone (my new phone I had for Christmas isn't Orange) I rang customer services below is the scenario that followed

8.20pm Rang customer services asked for refund said they would get a superviser as they couldn't help - 5 minutes later I hung up

8.30pm rang again once again I was left on hold

8.45pm I rang a third time, I wish to stress I was not rude I just wanted a refund & someone to tell me how to get it.

Is was 9.10pm by now but this time I thought I was getting somewhere & they promised someone would call back.

You will not believe the next bit I didn't.

My Mobile rang it was orange customer services BUT they were'nt calling me they thought they were ringing someone else who lived close by. They asked if they could credit (a complete strangers phone) & could that stranger pop to my house up the road & give me my money in cash!!!!!!

My immidiate response was NO, I AM the person who wants the credit. I did raise my voice a few notches at that point I was so incredulous, but I stress, I was in no way rude. Next I asked the name of the Orange customer services adviser who then told me it was Mark but when I asked again he admited that wasn't his name & they are not to tell customers their names.

Next the advice was to go to an orange mobile shop where they would give me the refund of course I questioned if he was telling me the truth, after everything else how could I trust what I was being told (today I will find out). I tried to ring again so I could speak to a manager but no one would answer the phone.

I now believe I was being kept on hold because they thought I was ringing from my mobile & it would use up my credit so they wouldn't have to pay it back. I was lwas left angry & upset that no one could help me with such a simple question.

Every time I emailed them through their contact address I got a response saying they couldn't respond because it was an account specific query.

a) No, it wasn't. It was a general complaint / point of information about their non functional account section on their website.

b) Account specific queries are mostly what I would WANT to email them about. Clearly they prefer to force customers to talk to the idiots they employ to answer their phones.

I was forced to ring their customer "services" if I wanted to keep my existing number, so I gave it a try. It took over two minutes to get past their "Okay.." robot, then two or three minutes on hold, then I spent a total of two minutes talking to a very polite total moron, followed by 20 minutes on hold, listening to their mind numbingly tedious choice of hold music. I pleaded with him to at least spare me that, but apparently it was beyond his power to do so.

Result? I paid 3.01 (just checked my phone bill) to be pissed about, before I finally hung up.

I now have a differnt phone number.

However this was not the end. they continued to bill me for my contract for an additional two months after the date and then refused to credit my account back with the money till the 17th September and gave the reasons as the system wont let us.

A multi - million pound company that are quick to take money out of your account but slow to pay it back! i will never use Orange again and would encourage others to so the same.

I am just wring a letter to orange now.

I have no network coverage any where at home, no call register. i cannot send or recieve texts.

After stupidly signing up for a 18 month contact i have fullfilled this (£40.00 pm) after being advised that i pay off the 18 months if i didn't require the phone. This was because ACCORDING TO ORANGE the network was fine in my area. OK, come on round and see for yourself you assholes.

I have now asked for this phone to be cut off 3 times, I cannot get another phone as I am getting married in two weeks and cannot change my number at such a vital time so need a PAC code and diconnection.

If i cancel the DD i will end up with bad credit knowing Orange....what to do??!!

I am writing them a lenthy letter but am sure I wll get some automated letter along the lines of We are sorry to learn this....our customers are valued......blah blah!!

I am tempted to sue for stress.....which would be a totaly honest claim!!!

Hi,
Just thought I'd let you know that I've taken Orange to court twice this year and won on both occassions :-)

So far I've taken them for Breach of Contract and breach of the Protection from Harassment Act and won in excess of 2000 :-)

I'm setting up a new website telling my story and hope to help people like me take Orange and other big companies to court. Although my website is still under construction ( http://www.actionorange.co.uk), I will be adding to it regularly over the next month or two.

They said they could do it for 16 per month lol I basically laughted down the phone at them.
After that they then said they could discount the offer to 4 per month. So I said, ok I'll give it a go (big mistake)
Anyway after that I put the Orange sim card into my new Nokia N900 and fired up the web browser, 10 min's later a page loads up.
I try another website, same thing happens, so i try a speedtest.net. 45mins later speedtest completed lol. This confirms my internet access is not 3G. On top of that, I check my account online and it tells me that I bought 4mb's of internet access lol. This works out about 256 times less that what i got on the Three.co.uk network (three.co.uk usage is 1 Gig per month). And just accessing two websites and running a speed test nearly used my whole months allowance.

I was on the phone to them straight away, after a very long wait and after talking to 4 different people, I was finally told that they are going to refund my 4. They told me it would take 2 days for my account to be refunded.
After 5 days I checked my account expecting to see this money refunded. The money had not been credited so I phone them up again.
I was asked to explain what I had called about as they couldn't find any notes. After that they must of found some details and told
me that I was not going to be refunded as the package had been used. I expressed my anger and asked to speak to sombody else, unfortunatly they were just as unhelpful.
Anyway Im wrighting this to express my anger, and warn other people about Orange.co.uk and maybe stop a few people making the same mistake.
Luckly for me Im a pay as you go customer, and didn't sign up for a 24month contract oh and I used my remaining 1.00 credit on contacting customer services and causing them as much aggrovation as possible lol

One last thing if anybody else buys a Nokia N900 and wants to use Three.co.uk just run the Maemo update and Three.co.uk works like a treat. I also changed my number to three.co.uk and received 10.

Paul

I have had similar problems as the rest of you with so called Orange customer services which has effectively cost an arm and a leg in calls to their 450 number and in the end got nowhere. I am of the opinion, their customer service is useless and rather than give myself high blood pressure and worse - a heart attack, I am going to end my relationship with this disgraceful company as soon as my credit runs out.

Disgusted. John.

Orange are a nightmare to deal with. If you need your broadband for work, the kids school home work or anything else important then do not use them. If you need support try going to the disconection department who may help you and offer you the earth to stay.

If you are locked in to a contract then try this site :- http://www.orangeproblems.co.uk/phpBB2/ for support.

This site has 46,000 unhappy Orange customers registered, I wonder why?

Terminate your Contract if we vary its terms, resulting in an excessive increase in the Charges or changes that alter your rights under this Contract to your detriment. In such cases you would need to give us at least 14 days written notice prior to your Billing Date (and within one month of us telling you about the changes).

However this option does not apply if:
4.3.1 we have increased the Charges by an amount equal to or less than the percentage increase in the All Items Index of Retail Prices published by the Central Statistical Office in the Monthly Digest of Statistics in any 12 month period.

I respect your comments, but in future please take the fact that a large amount customer service agents form orange and other companies do provide the very best of customer service and customers can be also be unhelpful and unwilling to be helped.

John

Response: One Wwallow Doesn't make a Summer, John. It's good to know that some of you tried hard to do a good job, but really - look at the feedback above. The overwhelming conclusion seems to be that the Orange Customer Service organisation provides pretty consistently DREADFUL service to its paying customers.

I spoke to a supervisor who promised to call and check I received the email in 2 days - no email, and of course, no phone call from Sam the Supervisor.

I have now been waiting for something for 17 days which should have been with me in 7-10 days.

How dare they open with the phrase ' we provide excellent customer service '.

I am visually impaired/blind and, as such, require an accessible phone.

I was assured by one of the staff, a man named Omar, that the Motorola DEXT would be suitable for my needs. I was informed it has TTS installed. After much effort on my part it became clear that the DEXT is not, in fact, accessible and is completely unsuitable. It does not include any TTS system. My partner was with me at the time and will verify I was told the phone is accessible.

I attempted to raise this matter with the shop, and was told there was nothing they could do to help.

After emailing customer services I have been told to go back to the manager of the shop and that they cannot help me.

I went into a shop in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow recently. They contacted the shop in Edinburgh. Omar at first claimed he could not remember me, and then insisted he told me to contact Customer Services for advice.

I then phone Customer Services again by phone. They were rude and insisted there was nothing they could do.

It has become clear that I was misled regarding this phone, presumably in an effort to get me to renew my contract. Nobody in your company is now prepared to do anything about this.

I regard this as illegal mis-selling.

This is the second time Orange has erred with an upgrade. On the previous occasion I rang Customer Services upgrades department and explained I needed a phone running either a Symbian or Windows Mobile operating system. They told me the LG Viewty was accessible and on Windows Mobile. When I received the phone it was quite clear this was not true. I returned the phone and eventually upgraded to an SPV-650 which, when speech was eventually installed, ran very slowly and actually worked, after a fashion, despite regular firmware crashes.

I am currently having to use a Nokia N73 that I purchased privately, as the DEXT is unusable.

Maria

I ended up wasting over an hour of my life with an indian call center explaining about orange products and website to someone who didnt know or care.

Our family has four mobile contracts and we also had a second orange home line and internet. I can not put into words how utterly rubbish Orange's customer services are!

We have had so many problems I just can't list them all! Even though they work out the far cheaper option for us we have recently moved and cancelled the home line and will not be getting it back. Once our mobile contracts finish we will be leaving them too. I have never come across such a bad company and to make matters worse over the last few months the mobile reception has become neigh on unusable! What is going on with Orange????

The most recent thing is I rang to cancel our home line account due to moving giving them 16 days notice, but they could not cut us off in 16 days it had to be 14 so I was advised to ring back two days later! I said no, just cut us off two days before we move I just couldn't handle dealing with orange again so they said ok!

We now find having moved that they should have disconnected and stopped our line on 25th September but now it is 8th October and the line is still running and we are being charged for the new owners calls! They did not disconnect the line on 25th they just started charging us for all calls that previously were free!

So now I have to face sorting out yet another problem with orange having no land line yet having just moved and no orange reception! Just sums Orange up really!

Would never, never, never, never recommend them to anybody! :(

I work for orange and your so called bad customer service site makes me laugh. For somebody who doesn't know what I have to do to help you guys . Our job is very hard , and to sit here and let you slag my colleagues off is unforgivable. These customer forums are terrible , people like you don't give orange the chance to give that wow customer service , day in day out. So to put us all under one hat is very petty.

===< Our Response >====

Thanks for having the bottle to include your email address.

But look what you're saying:

"We try really hard and so none of these customers who hate our service is worth listening to".

We have not filtered the feedback we get at all - we just put it online. No one has written in praise or defence of Orange so far. Now you do - and you're responsible in part for the bad service - so no surprises there, then.

THAT makes ME laugh - or maybe cry.

And FYI, we always give everyone the chance to respond. This is yours, and I will post it to the article, though frankly - it does Orange no favours whatsoever. Your email goes a long way to illuminate the culture of un-professional denial which must be dominant at Orange Customer Services.

We have been Orange customers for over 4 years but at the end of this contract we will not be carrying on with them.

I find it undelievable how difficult it is to talk to a real person and the expression "if you pay peanuts you get monkeys" sums up the customer service staff i think.

Keeping our original contact numbers we were informed by one of the sale personnel that it would take up-to 24 hours for the details to be updated by Orange and our new phones and their new SIM cards would then be activated !

On Sunday morning 21st. NOV. at approx 10:00am. My wifes phone became activated, mine however did not !

On Sunday and Monday I phoned Orange customer service numerous times, some calls were dropped, other calls, the lines were very poor in quality and Orange operators did not understand the problem.

When I did manage to speck to someone with regard to the none connection / activation of my new phone that did seem to understand, took all the details relating to the new phone i.e.: ...........?

This happened three times, all with the promise from various operators that it would be sorted and that with-in 24 hours my phone and new SIM would be activated, it was not !!!

On Tuesday 23rd. Nov. I returned to the Newcastle-under- Lyme Orange retail store, explaining that both the problems with my new Nokia phone and Customer service to the store personnel, they also took all the details, phoned Orange, and assured me that both phone and SIM card would be activated within the next 24 hours, it was not !!!

On Thursday 25th. Nov. 10:15am I again returned to the Newcastle-under- Lyme Orange retail store explaining again my dissatisfaction with the Orange service, the store manager and staff made numerous calls to Orange, another SIM card was also used, finally at approx. 11:45am. (one and half hours) I was told by the manager that it would all be sorted within 72 hours (Monday 29th. NOV.) and my new phone together with its new SIM card would activated, I am not convinced.

This new phone has my old SIM card inserted by the manager from my old phone, with the recommendation that when the service is changed I should replace the old SIM card with the new one,

Ps. This new phone now bleeps ever 2-3 minutes, and states no connection available even though I can still use the phone to make

My 2 week old orange phone died yesterday, 30th November.

While calling thier customer service number, in addition to their usual disclaimer of 'we are ecxperiencing a high volume of calls' there was an additional one saying 'due to adverse weather conditions around our call centres, we are experiencing delays, please call back later unless your call is urgent' or words to that effect.

When I finally spoke to someone (he was actually quite pleasant)I asked him where he was and how bad the weather was. It was hot, because he was in India.....

I have just spent a week trying to get an Orange account to work.

2 chips later hours and hours on the phone, including statments such as "we have no record of a call from you today". After another day of frustration and speaking to another 10 people told to ring the same numbers etc. I was advised.

Pehaps we should just cancel this contract and start again. AGAIN!

We've tried that! It didn't work. I'll just take the cancel bit and forget about the try again.

Now it appears no one has the authority to cancel this non working account. However they tell me I will have to pay!

Another round tomorrow to try and rid Orange from my life.

How does an organisation become so incompetent?

M Greig

I registered for an orange account when I switched phone networks (lured in by the promise of orange wednesdays) and everything was great til I decided to change to a monthly contract.

I discovered that I was being charged £12 a month (rather than £10) just to receive a paper bill, so I asked them to do it online. But lo and behold, my online account locks me out!

I have done everything I can to access my online account. The goons in the shop tell me that it's out of their hands and give me endless numbers to call, as does the orange website. I have called their support number multiple times only to be given shpeel about "large volume of calls" when it's 9.30 on a Monday morning.

Have emailed them detailing the problem so far and I will let you know what crap they try and pull!

Grrrrr Orange make me so mad.

I am on the dolphin plan which includes 500mb of data. After receiving my first bill I nearly had a heart attack! I can truly say that I only use Facebook and the web in moderation and retrieve my emails daily which I was told would be well within the limits of my allowance. So I was shocked to receive a text stating that I had nearly used my allowance but not to worry I won't be charged but my speeds would be slowed down, I was a little bit shocked that I had but thought their text was fair enough.

Well, I received my bill and noticed they had whacked a whopping 20 quid on my bill for data usage! I rang customer service to explain the txt they had sent but coincidentaly they denied all knowledge ( I would of shown them the txt but my Crap HTC had to be exchanged and I list the text, sods law) then they proceeded to lecture me on how I use my phone and accuse me of blatantly lying. She even went as far as using her own data activities as an example.

Feeling very patronised I ended the call with my tail between my legs. I have since stopped all data sync on my phone and I'm still being charged between 10 - 15 quid extra each month. It just doesn't make sense and I'm tied into this for another twenty months. What a mistake!

I now have an HTC desire that's useless and a network that's Crap with hardly any signal!

I had an interesting thing with Orange when I first set up my PAYG with them.

I was requested to set up a security code (fair enough) and did so. Not, as you might expect, typing the number in on the keypad, but saying the number to a person on the other end of a poor quality line who spoke such terrible English it boggled my mind that she was even employed.

Anyway, I spoke the number very clearly to the woman, she confirmed it correctly etc. I then received a text message from Orange with my phone number and the security code. NOT the code I actually gave! So, this code is required for when you want to turn off age restrictions and other such things, which I attempted the minute I turned 18.

Neither of the codes work, and the customer support team were less than helpful for the hours I tried to explain this to them. Now, I have a smart-phone which gets wi-fi, so I don't need to deal with that sort of thing any more. But it still annoys me, because if I'm in an area with no wi-fi signal, I can't access forums. Or help sites. Or anything with open discussion. For some reason these are deemed as "adult" and therefore, I, at 20 can't access them. Something quite wrong there. They know how old I am. I had to give them my D.O.B when I joined.

Why must I go through all this?

I stumbled upon your website today while idly searching google for "why is the orange website rubbish".

Your efforts are an inspiration to all of us who have been through a similar experience but have lacked your resolve and tenacity to stick at it.

Thanks (it also made me laugh in a darkly comic way).

Mark

LOL, I just tried to register an account for a PAYG phone and this is what I got after typing in the phone number and Captcha Code at

https://services.orange.co.uk/sam/sam (note their email address and a second error mentioned):

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, you@your.address and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

IBM_HTTP_Server Server at services.orange.co.uk Port 80

I work for orange also , it's hard to admit that these are some true facts.

With this in mind we have heard some terrible story's about our service level from our offshore call centre . However this site has been put together and has theoretically put every member of staff under one hat .

Me and my team have spent long hours perfecting your dream of what customer service should be . At the end of the day , this site is nothing but opinions , and strictly no facts .

Individuals are credited for there above the line service . I have seen comments like "who are they sleeping with to be a manager" , why Iam happily engaged .

Can you see what this site is , you are upsetting a lot of "innocent" agents if you like . From the replies I have seen on this site , iam expecting nothing but sarcasm.

REPLY FROM LFB:

It may be hard for you to accept that some of these terrible stories are true, but there is no reason to think otherwise, is there? These comments have been coming in over MANY YEARS; people are so utterly sick of you, that they searched online for "orange customer service", found the article and bothered to send their own feedback. And for every one that did all of that, there will be HUNDREDS MORE that couldn't be bothered but were also abused by you people.

Yes, they are "nothing but opinions", but then every human utterance is an opinion - what's your point? Your opinion seems to be that you're all wonderful and we're all wrong. I know which side my opinion falls.

This site may be "upsetting a lot of innocent agents", but clearly, no manager is upset enough to sort your ABYSMAL operation out. They just keep taking the money, wearing the suits, driving the company cars, and abusing their paying customers.

You and your team may well have spent long hours perfectly our dream (what the hell does that mean? Corporate drivel!) but clearly, your long hours have been fruitless, because you still stink mightily.

I suggest you stop denying the validity of honest customer feedback, and wake up to the facts which seem to be that you people are treating your customers dreadfully and you've been doing so for a very long time.

Then, when you see the light, I hope you'll start fixing it.

Orange customer service is a misnoma;

I have spent 40 minutes today just trying to get a PAC code. The reason for the delay - the data protection act!!!! THEY copied down my date of birth incorrectly and, despite all the other information being correct, needed verification of every aspect of my life including the make and model of phone I bought from them (it broke after 9 months) and the exact amount of my last bill - who carries phone bills around.

Shocking case of 'jobsworth'!!!

how on earth do these people get away with it. surely there are organisations that monitor companies such as orange. as far as i can see they are not doing their job either.

i have had a default set against me by orange may i add unfairly. when i contacted orange to inform them that i had no signal for a laptop and dongle i had purchased. they just seemed to act like common criminals from the outset.

i was informed that i did have signal and to just keep paying the contract. on asking if someone could come out to check that there was in fact no signal i was told that is not a service we provide. in other words just keep paying and shut up. they left me with no option but to hand in the laptop and dongle and cancel the dd.

from my experience with orange i have learned one thing. their customer services people must be told to get the money no matter what because they just are not interested in listening to reason. i tried on many occasions through emails and phone calls to resolve this matter and was met with the same drivel every time. just pay up and shut up.they even deny having any records of the phone calls as i stupidly made them from an orange phone. was that a mistake or what.

they have ruined my life to the extent my girlfriend and i will never be able to buy a house together as i am 45 and too old to get the mortgage i need after this year.the default remains for six years.

i hate orange with every bone in my body and if i can ever help anyone teach them a lesson then i will gladly do so. they obviously have no consideration for anyone bar themselves.

if you get yourself tied into an orange contract then you are in it till the end no matter what. these people are the scum of the earth stay well away from them.

I am currently having major problems with these cowboys. Worst provider I have ever been with, would strongly advise people to steer clear.

Examples of the correspondence I am having with them below:

I eventually found the CEO and his e-mail address (tom.alexander@orange.co.uk, please feel free to e-mail him direct and pass on my regards)and e-mailed him direct as I was getting nowhere with the clowns in customer service:

Dear Mr Alexander,

Please forgive the e-mail directed to you but I feel I have exhausted every other avenue open to me.

I would like to draw your attention to the above account.

In December 2010 I purchased an I-phone 4 from one of your outlets in Manchester. This handset was bought outright as a Christmas present for my Son. As he is a minor we put him on a pay-as-you-go contract. After a couple of months we realised that this was not working out for him as more internet usage was required. Myself and my wife returned to where we purchased the handset and discussed this with a member of staff in the shop. We told them we had noticed another provider who could provide the package we were looking for and asked if Orange could match this. Unfortunatlely Orange couldn't, so we thanked him for his honesty and discussed how we go about getting the phone unlocked so we could go with another provider.

This was in February this year when we made the initial enquiry. Today is the 6th June and it has finally been completed today. My son finally has a phone he can use again.

I feel I must point out to you some of the disgaceful examples of customer services I have experience over the last four months. I will attempt to keep them brief although it may prove to be a little difficult.

* On one telephone conversation with my Wife when she was enquiring why, after the 14-15 days it would take to receive the unlocking code from Apple and it had still not turned up, he laughed at her.

* On two seperate occasions we have had customer service agents hang up on us. Once on my wife when she asked to speak to a supervisor as he was raising his voice to her. The second time was last week when I had phoned to ask why, for a third time, we had stll not received the unlocking information that had been paid for twice, by this time. I was put on hold for a while, only for him to come back and say he would transfer me to a technician, he didn't, he hung up on me.

* I had a phone call from customer services? on Friday 3rd of June and spoke to a lady by the name of either Blanca or Bianca. I got the feeling she had phoned up just for an argument. I had to remind her of her role within that conversation as the customer services agent and me the disgruntled customer. Continually talking over me and interrupting me. At one point whilst trying to explain that Orange were registered in Bristol with Companies House and that I intended to raise a complaint with Bristol Trading Standards, she sarcasticly repied 'all Companies are registered with Companies House'. I made several requests to speak to her supervisor/line manager. Unsurprisingly, without success. I then requested to speak to the customer operations Director Scott Anderson, again without success. At the end of that conversation I was told her supervisor would contact me on Monday 6th June. No such call arrived,

*during this conversation, your customer service agent went to great lengths to tell me that Orange had only received two calls from me to enquire about having the phone unlocked. The first in February which she said was just a general enquiry about how it would be done. Then an official request on the 15th May. This is untrue. I have three Porting Authority Codes (PAC) sent to me by Orange. As I am sure you are aware these are sent out when an unlocking request is made and £20 has been paid onto the account to pay for the unlocking code.

I feel as though I have been deliberatley kept waiting for this to try to stop me moving to a different service provider. I had three phones on the Orange network. My son's has now gone, my daughters will be gone mid June. Unfortunately, I am Tied to you in a 24 month contract. This contract ceases in December 2011. This date cannot come quick enough.

I think your organisations customer services are disgraceful. I have never had the misfortune to deal with anyone as bad as Orange.

I intend to raise these issues with Trading Standards and OFCOM.

[EDITOR'S NOTE - GOOD LUCK - IN MY EXPERIENCE OFCOM ARE ENTIRELY WORTHLESS, COMPLACENT AND INCOMPETENT]

I am hoping you have a bit more moral fibre about you than your customer services Director and agents. We shall see. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Regards

I received this reply: On 7 June 2011 08:03, Executive, Office <executive.office@orange.co.uk> wrote:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your email addressed to Mr Tom Alexander, Chief Executive Officer, Everything Everywhere Ltd.

Please be assured that your correspondence is important to Tom, it has been logged and your case has been allocated to an Executive Assistant who is empowered to act on behalf of Tom. We will endeavour to contact you within the next 48 hours excluding Saturday and Sunday’s, however please do not be alarmed if it takes a little longer as the time frame can be dependant upon the complexity of the investigation involved.

Our aim is provide you with an excellent standard of service at all times.

Kind Regards
Orange Executive Office

My reply to them:

I think you are missing the point. I have gone directly to Tom Alexander because of the way I have been treated and spoken to by your customer service agents, the last one worked in the excecutive office (or so she said). I want Mr Alexander to explain himself as to why your customers can be treated in the way I have mentioned.

I can assure you that I am not going away until I have had contact with him personally. The e-mail was addressed to him personally, Why has he not responded personally?

Regards

Followed by:

I had hoped that you would contact me personally. Perhaps being a mere customer I am not worthy of being contacted by you. The Customer Service (executive team) are the same team who contacted me on Friday 3rd June and blatantly lied to me. Why would I want to deal with them?

I will re-state the question Mr Alexander 'do you have a bit more moral fibre about you than your customer services Director and agents'? It's not looking promising is it?

Regards

I got this today:

Please respond to executive.office@orange.co.uk

Dear Mr Rutter,

Thank you for your email dated, 6 June 2011, addressed to Tom Alexander,
Chief Executive Office, Everything Everywhere Ltd. As I am Blanca's Team
Manager your email has been forwarded to me for response.

Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to you. I had
initially tried to contact you on Monday afternoon but I was unsuccessful.
Your comments about the standard of service you have received are fully
acknowledged and I am sorry that you feel the level of service you, your wife
and your son has received from Orange has been disgraceful.

On reviewing the issues you have raised I can assure you that Blanca's
priority was to resolve the issues that were raised about your son's
unlocking code. During your conversation with Blanca I understand that you
requested to be released from your own contract free of charge. While, I
fully appreciate that you are unhappy with our service I cannot find any
justification to authorise this request.

I am sorry that this response may not be the one you hope for but I assure
you that I fully considered your case before reaching my decision.

Yours sincerely

My reply to them:

As expected you have not answered any of my questions. I said in the original E-mail that I dd not want to deal with anyone from your office and you have just added weight to my reason for that. None of the issues I raised have been addressed. This does not surprise me. The fact that you 'were unsuccessful when trying to contact me on Monday', does not surprise me, although I am sure you tried very hard. I had my phone on me and switched on all day and was working in an area with excellent reception too. Odd that eh?

Now I would like Tom Alexander to have eyes on this e-mail and respond to me personally. I am very persistant and will not go away until I have spoke to him.

Regards

Nightmare. Will never use them again or T mobile.

This phone number will get you through to the executive office. Please use it to register you complaints with them and please feel free to tell them you got the number from me.
08708700862.

Good luck

Regards
Frank

I got a new phone for my daughter and went to register the account so she would know how many minutes / data she would have left.

On registering we found a complete strangers name attached to the telephone number. Not only did we have his name, but also his address and home and business telephone numbers.

On this page we were told to phone 150 if the details did not agree...we did. After 14 minutes we were told to take the phone back to the shop, a mere 10 mile round trip.

On hanging up we found 14 minutes of the inclusive minutes had been used, leaving 3 minutes odd over the next 5 days after which the full inclusive quantities are given in full.

My daughter is now back with my ExWife without her new phone, needless to say more than a little upset.

I have emailed the phone shop (who are not to blame so won't even bother saying who they are) and am hoping they will have a bit more luck than we have.

Reading through all the postings here, I think the best bet is to cancel the contract and go somewhere else.

My Daughter (15 years) has an iphone, which she saved to get. She is with Orange and is allowed £10.00 credit as her pocket money.

I asked her do you have enough credit on your phone and she said, "I have none, and I haven't been on the internet, I don't know how it's gone.

logged on to my Orange account and noticed a lot of GPRS in the middle of the night when my daughter was asleep, rang Orange and aske why all these charges and would they give her back her credit.

The[y] told me she should not have an Iphone because it contacts the internet when your asleep !!!.

asked them to switch off her connection to the internet and they cut her phone off completely...

Orange have just lost 4 more customers ... trying to get all our pac codes at the minute it's like pulling elephants teeth.

Never again.

Orange are a pain.

I bought a payasyougo phone from phones4y with a 20 pound top up which was not credited to my phone.

When I contacted orange they actually hung up on me.

Phoned them again they refused to credit my phone with 20 pound which i had paid for the top up they told me to go in to the phones4u store one of the customer services people from the store.

Phoned Orange and they refused to credit my phone and asked to speak to me. When they did they asked me the same question about 5 times: "are you in the store?" - I said yes. The orange person said all he could do was register my swipe card again. I told him I wanted the 20 quid credited to my phone.

After a lot of arguing with phones4u orange and myself, Orange eventually credited me with 20 pound.

As soon as the credit has gone on the sim back to o2. Glad my phone is unlocked to any network.

Orange are totally useless.

Just found out that my 400 free minutes do not include picking up my messages from ansewring service.

My bill is therefore £8 higher than it should have been.

Orange have also overcharged me by 3 each months for the last 12 months and despite my calls and their promises the money still has not been refunded.

yes yes agree with everyone about Orange.

I was invited to send my phone back for refund as it didnt work abroad - sent it recorded, they admit they have it but it takes 28 days to raise a cheque, then another 28 days,etc etc.

Then in the end I have asked for my phone back as they obviously have no intention of honoring their promise to refund.

As I am without a phone wrote to Tom Alexander chief exec to have my phone returned immediately. Someone from hisoffice has emailed this am (after 20 emails to them and no one dealing with my calls).

They no longer have my phone but they are having trouble issuing cheques, cant get my money or my phone, have been told to contact OFCOM

LFB RESPONSE: This one beggars belief! "Having trouble raising cheques"? The Mighty Organge are HAVING PROBLEMS RAISING CHEQUES?! I would ring them up again. Tell them you are recording the call as you'd like to place on record that they cannot raise cheques. Tell you them you plan to publish that call on the LFB website. We'd LOVE to postg it here.

High Street Crooks. And the institutions which we finance to kill off this kind of evil are almost all, entirely worthless - they talke he money and use it to block real people and maintain a stinking status quo. And then we die.

On 08-08-10 I started a contract with Orange for a dongle for 18 months, at £35 per mth.

When I started using it I discovered it to be all but disfunctional,and returned to the shop to ask their advice, and was informed my computer was not set up correctly.

I took my computer to a local expert who informed that the dongle was not working properly, cost £25.

I returned to the shop and told them the dongle was proven to be faulty, the shop told me it was because too many people were using phones while I was attempting to use it and that at night would be the best time to try it. Having done so between 2am and 7am the dongle did not fare any better.

I again returned to the shop where they told me I must contact Orange Cust Services. I informed him I had tried this on numerous occasions at unbelievable expense and had no reply. He then gave me a number to contact which I have tried but there is no answer. I am now unemployed and am still paying £35 a mth for a dongle I cannot use even for job searching, all told the dongle has cost me about £680 to date but I have been unable to improve on a download speed of about 3.6kps, which is a fraction of what I was told it would work at when I began the contract,about 6mps-7mps.

I will be changing to BT when the Orange contract runs out in Nov but it is a long and frustrating wait knowing that Orange are being paid a small fortune for pathetic service, reprehensible attitude and a customer service system that is very obviously designed to be there only as a figment of the customers mind, and does not actually exist.

Is there anything I can do to hold Orange accountable for theft or breach of contract or something, as it is clearly beyond them to provide a network service, or customer service?

I have taken great pleasure of ensuring that none of my family or friends will use Orange again, by asking them to contact their customer services, to no avail of course, realising then that if they had a problem they too would be out on a limb.

I am hoping that near the end of the contract Orange will contact me and attempt to con me into renewing it, and that I may get the opportunity to have my say, however this will not compensate for the costs I have incurred.

HELP!!

Joseph

LFB RESPONSE: Joseph, Of course, our Great British society provides trading standards, and so on, but in our experience, virtually all publicly-funded bodies like this are useless. You might try our complaint letter writing service.

I have been with Orange for many years on a pretty duff tariff now compared with what's out there. I also had my broadband and home phone with them.

About 3 months ago, I experienced dodgy internet connections. When I contacted Orange to try and sort it out, it took many long phone calls and promises that I would be called back when the relevant team was available - they never called. I had to speak to a supervisor before they agreed to send me a new router.

This router rattled internally on arrival, clearly broken! Several phone calls later, another router was sent out which seemed to finally fix the internet .. but now my so-called free phone line which was through the wireless router (and already therefore out of action during the time the internet was) developed a delightful fault whereby I could hear every third word or so. Thus rendering it useless.

Orange had no concept of compensation. I barely got one month's refund on my broadband charges. On top of which, my mobile phone bill more than doubled as I was having to use it to make phone calls that I would have made for free with my internet home phone. They actually laughed at me when I put it to them that they might like to compensate me for this.

I got nowhere with their customer service except to get a massive headache. So I decided to switch to O2. Now my latest problem is that since I switched, they refuse to unlock my handset even though on their website this should not be a problem (although it's claimed to take 30 days, in which case you may as well as get a new phone anyway!) I've been told the website is out of date and they have a new policy since the last month. And they cannot contact me since I don't have a working mobile. How convenient for them!!

I find it so depressing to ring them. After being on hold for nearly 45 mins, they cannot get past their script. It is impossible to speak to a supervisor, and if you do get passed through, they only tell you more of the same. I emailed them as well, and several days later, got some crappy letter saying if I wanted to stay they would offer me the same deals they are offering new customers.

Their customer service has definitely gone way way downhill since a few years ago, and isn't really a customer service at all any more. Plus they don't seem to have their act together technically.

So I would not touch them with a barge pole again either. Am debating how to get sufficient compensation for the poor/lack of service I have experienced.

The Customer Annoyance Director is doing a fine job!

I won't bore you with the details of my experiences. Suffice to say they are much in the same vein as those already expressed.

Orange are DREADFUL.

Phoned to renew my contract, was quoted a price that included data..guess what..(alas, previous bad service under my belt..should have known better!!)..first bill, £30 charge for data.

Ughh.

Luckily my contract is 12 months, I will NEVER EVER use orange again. If someone robbed me like that on the street, I could call the police..Orange are muggers, of the corporate kind!!

Hi - Glad it isn't just me I have been trying to get money back from Orange (alsmost £80) for over a week.

I have sent 3 emails, made 4 phone calls and still nothing. I haven't even had an acknowledgement of my emails. Apparently they made a payment to me then decided to stop it for reasons best known to themselves.

They are the worst organisation I have ever had to deal with. I'm now being told that will take them another week to get the money back to me - any suggestions anyone?

Just bought a San francisco smartphone as it had good reviews. Branded by Orange and came with a £10 PAYG top up.

The phone set itself up doing various system downloads. I set up links to my email accounts and downloaded a handful of emails.Checked a couple of webpages.

Most of the time I had connected to my home wireless so presumably it was using that to access the internet.

The last thing I tried was to dial a call- all I got was a message that I had no call credit left!

I am now unlocking the phone and will use another provider- from what I can see most offer better deals. I use Orange broadband having had it from before it was Orange. Tried to get my MAC code - guess what - can't get through after several tries.

I have just read about orange customer service from someone on this site. I think the person was being quite picky. Why didnt he just go to the cheapest provider instead of spending all his time querying an overhead charge.

RESPONSE: Because I have a burning urge to remove lies and injustice wherever I find them. Moving on, is like walking around the violence on the street, or ignoring dishonesty when you find it, or smiling and accepting p*ss poor service on the High Street. It's the British way, and it stinks.

Our tolerance is why we live the way we do, why we pay the taxes we pay, why we have the governments we have. Standing up and saying "NO I'm not going to stand for this" seems like a good way to fight - to right all the wrongs.

It doesn't really work if very few of us do it, which is why Let's Fix Britain was set up. There are far more of "us" than "them", but unfortunately, most of "us" are lazy, apathetic, over-tolerant and conflict-averse", so - I guess we're stuck with things the way they are.

At least we're not forced to drink from mud puddles and die young from mal-nutrition, but I still find the stench of poor British service, in all it's forms, offensive, and I won't be nice about it and roll over quietly while someone abuses me for their own profit.

I posted earlier- I have Sanfrancisco phone that used up £10 of credit setting itself up. So I paid for another topup on the Dolphin PAYG scheme which claims- top up with £10 and you get some free texts and 'free unlimited internet access' although the small print says 100Mb. Since then some email header access is uncharged but others are charged.

So a phone I use only for email notification when away from home is getting through a fortune in call credit due to 'free unlimited internet access'.There is no information on any extra 'Dolphin charges' on the website or terms and conditions.

A complaint to Orange was answered by an answerphone message giving me some story about needing to spend an amount before the deal kicks in. Have just sent another complaint email detailing dates of top-ups and usage costs. Will see what comes of that.

Have sent for a SIM card from another supplier so will not use Orange whatever.

Following an earlier thread and comment- likewise I am infuriated by the blatant misrepresentation of the 'Dolphin' service by Orange- quite frankly I consider it a fraud.

( Ever tried to use the 'online chat help' facility? It goes straight to a standard Faq page- pathetic)

I had a orange broadband and mobile package.

It has taken many many calls, referrals, cuttings off whilst 'on hold', waiting for them to answer, paying for the call whilst doing so, being charged after the account was closed, being sent a credit bill against my future costs (there were none by then the account was closed), 3 calls to get through, being told on every occasion that there were unexpectedly high volumes, being told there was a problem , put on hold, line dropped, calling back, being told the cheque is in the post (literally told that!). This process started in June.

It is now november, I still dont have money.

I will NEVER pay orange any money again--- I recommend that you dont.

Mike Pegman

Orange are a disgrace and I am happy to say I shall never have to deal with them again.

To cut a long story short, I was a customer for two years, moved house, and had no reception at all in my new area. I decided to change networks.

Orange tried their hardest to make it a complete nightmare to do so. Amongst other things, a customer service agent actually accused me of being a liar! I took great offence and ended giving him a piece of my mind. Out of pure spite, the agent then refused to issue me with a PAC code because of supposed 'security reasons' that didn't exist before the argument.

Orange were operating outside of the law at this point, as it is illegal to refuse to issue a PAC code. I simply could not be bothered with the hassle of taking them to court, so they got away scot-free. As a result I lost a very valuable business phone number which no doubt lost me a lot of business.

I've been busy spreading the word about Orange, and have managed to pursuade a lot of friends and colleagues to switch networks, I suggest you all do the same.

Good luck!

I have an orange email account with a live box. To my extreme annoyance orange are denying me access to my emails unless I agree to sign a new contract for a year. They are continuing to take a monthly charge of £14.99 whilst trying to blackmail customers into staying with them.

Surely this goes against trading standards alone!

I have an orange email account with a live box. To my extreme annoyance orange are denying me access to my emails unless I agree to sign a new contract for a year. They are continuing to take a monthly charge of £14.99 whilst trying to blackmail customers into staying with them.

Surely this goes against trading standards alone!

I phoned orange on 450 to say my google account had been disabled the man I spoke to hung up on me so very rude.

I will be going back with virgin 6 years no problems

ORANGE ARE THE BEST!

You people need to get real! ive had the best customer service today from a UK call centre, replacing my blackberry for me even, though it is now out of warranty and I stupidly believed I wouldn't need insurance.

Im sure some of the comments on here are called for, but I cannot believe some of the stupidity I'm reading.

for me, today, orange have been really great, and once again, have come up trumps....better than the previous vodafone and O2

RESPONSE:

So... the hundreds of people who hate the way Orange have treated them, need to "get real", you think, because you have concluded that ORANGE ARE THE BEST, because you .... had a nice day with them?

If you didn't have the vote, if you didn't drive, this would be amusing. But you're an adult, for Christs's sake. How can you be so utterly stupid?

Orange are indeed rubbish.

I signed a two year contract for 3G phone, only to find I can't actually get 3G coverage in my area. I complained and they more or less told me to like it or lump it. I will be gone asap.

NEVER AGAIN.

Mary D.

RESPONSE: Mary, we are not legally qualified, and so we cannot give legal advice, but you may have a case for breech of contract. If you can prove that the service they offer is not fit for purpose for which you purchased it, then they may be in technical breech of their contract with you, which may free you up to leave it.

In dispute with Orange who have informed me via text message that they are putting the price of my contact up by just under 4.5%.

I phone to complain, basically got told to shut up and put up! The guy I spoke to didn't even know the text messages had been sent out. I e-mailed a complaint, they answered the same day, explaining to me all about the current economic climate. I wrote back informing them I am not a total moron and am aware of what is happening in the world around me. Strangely enough they have not replied since, but I shall send them a reminder today and every day until they do address my concerns.

I am sure they will get fed up of this before I do.

Response:

We've seen several cases of this in recent days.

Don't hold your breath on the out-bothering them thouh! They have all the power. By ignoring you, ignoring your questions, failing to answer your questions, keeping you waiting weeks or monsth between cranks of the handle (due to excessive demandno doubt) losing your correspondence, passing you from pillar to post, and other low tricks, they'll wear you out.

Great Britain's commerce thrives on this kind of dismal treatment. I would not be surprised to learn that there are courses in how to do this.

And the Trading Standards organisations, and the Ombudsmen and the Watchdogs we all fund, are all complicit in maintaining a stinking status quo.

There is a strong incentive to run a customer services department which is dismally inefficient. If you staff it with idiots, and pay them a pittance, then that's what you get anyway.

So you build a low-cost wall of incompetence between your dishonest money-taking activity, and the people whose money you took. The amounts are relatively small, and so you can pretty much rely on customers getting fed up and buggering off eventually, so basically you're immune from consequences.

And these days, you can even keep them waiting in a telephone hold que while you (a) charge them for the privilege and (b) advertise at them.

So the worse your service, and the longer you keep customers waiting, the more passive income you earn. And this is LEGAL!

What a fantastic business model. People get knighted for running such fine Great British enterpise. I personally know of more than one example.

WHY IS IT THIS WAY?

If anyone in government were serious about doing a good job for consumers, then this would not be legal. The steps to take are trivially easy, but they have not been taken.

Ahhh, democracy, and the Great British Way.

AND THEN YOU DIE. Good, innit?

oh my god I am utterly stunned there are soooo many complaints to orange I knew they were crap but not quite this crap !

I havent had any major pprobs with them until recently loosing my phone .... after this I have since recieved a new one and now have found that for the last two months my two bills have been averaging at £300 !!!!!!

I have since been told .... data charges ! I have used no more data than i have before which never went over my 500mb allowance and as i only use facebook I am baffled !

I am following this up at the moment and will be using this site as ammunition ! thank you lfb !!

Ill keep you all posted !

Orange website is the worst for online mobile bill account .

i always try to check my mobile bill online but it never opens its says our site is under development.

its a worst site 02 is better than orange in customer service

Tried to access my account with orange online but it kept crashing.

Eventually got through on phone to customer services to be told they were aware of the problem - it had been ongoing for 2 weeks - and were still trying to fix it.

Advisor was helpful but if this was a long term problem why couldn't orange let it's customers know?

Incidentally phone calls didn't cost me as you can call customer services for free on landline, tel:08000790004. Also has bonus that you go straight through to advisor!

thank god i am not the only one to have had such a nightmare of an experience with orange !

I am a university student so as you may be aware money is always carefully spent but every month without fail orange will overcharge me for things I havent even used.

The last 14 months i have only had 2 bills which are almost correct the rest of them have been from £12 to £68 more, I have no idea how they can warrant this especially as my tariff had everything so i couldnt overspend !

I go into store to complain and all i get told is to call customer service when correct if im wrong but im pretty certain they are customer service. In october i got a new contract with vodafone while my orange one was still running but removed the sim card and sold the hand set so the sim card was loose on my desk.

The last 2 months bills for a sim card that hasnt even been used came to £157.89, they also for some reason deem it acceptable to take the money when they please even after they asked me what date i would want the direct debit to be taken.

All I can really say is im so grateful to be away from orange now and hopefully the shameful excuse for a customer service and company will cease to exist for much longer !

My advice to anyone is go to phones4u they will buy out contracts with your current provider as long as you dont have like 18 months left.

Adam

Have had the same problems with the indian call centres not being able to do anything, and the same with virgin mobile.

The way to get an english call centre is to ring disconnections, if you get the right operator they can sort it, but if you ring from a land line it costs a fortune, from a virgin mobile it should be a fixed rate 10p call.

Dear who ever reads this,

I have had the same crap with orange to. Internet charges data charges, telephone bills over £2000, orange customer services telling me im abroad when i am on the phone to them? off a uk landline??, 8 people promising to ring me back never do, 6 months later of my 24 month contract still no joy.

I have a broken phone also, i pay insurance but wont replace it!

Its sort of makes you wonder which zoo they got their employees from does it not?

I have emailed , I have rang, I have bent over backwards to sort this.

Yet again nothing! oh well keep trying!

Regards

Orange Business Customer, soon to be O2 customer :)

RESPONSE: Well, keep trying is one option, but really some ass kicking might be rather nice.

We very much appreciaet evertyone who has taken the time top report their prioblems with Orange here, but LFB is all about FIXING Britain - not lamenting how broken it is, and with that in mind, please consider reporting Orange to your local trading standards office.

if you are not happy with their service, you should cancel your direct debit with the bank as well as with orange.

Once you cancel it with the bank, they can't take any more payments. don't tell the bank why you want to cancel it though, just say you want it cancelled. good luck peeps.

RESPONSE: We need to notice that cancelling a derict debit may breech your contract with Orange, who may then open legal proceedings against you. If Orange's service is unusable you may have them in technical breech of their contract with you, which might justify your cancelling the DD, but you need tobe aware of the legal implications.

Anyone being persued by Orange in a case like this is very welcome to use our complaint letter writing service. With the vast history of customer misery documented here, I imagine they would likely buckle at the firt hurdle.

Well at least you got an answer from Orange.

You should avoid Orange Luxembourg in case you travel to Luxembourg. They charge (by the way that's the only thing they do). There networks is very bad. You loose coverage very often even in the Capital, Luxembourg-City. They don't answer to e-mails and the helpline is not reachable. They disconnect you after 2 hours waiting time.

The live changes with Orange.

I prefer to eat an Orange, and call with LUXGSM.

CHEATING ORANGE !

I took out a roaming facility with Orange in Feb 2009, an ICON225 with SIM card, for emergency use overseas, in eastern Saudi Arabia. I had experience of being overseas but not of that area of Saudi.

After arriving in Saudi Arabia, on 24/2/09, I tried their unit to email home and it would not connect.

So I phoned them and was told to have it checked locally at an ISP they knew of, I did this some 4 days later, left it with the Saudi ISP and picked it up the next day and was informed that the Sim was corrupt, so I called Orange again to be told that a note would be put on my account.

At that time I stayed in a hotel in Dammam so was able to use their hard wired service.

I moved out of the hotel on 20/3/09 and moved to a PM residence some 60 miles away so I bought a Saudi PAYGO Dongle + SIM system with top up cards, and used it until I left Saudi on 2/5/09 and was home in the UK on 3/5/09. (when in Saudi I could not check my banking online).

When I got home I found that Orange had charged me around £290 during April and up to 1st May.

Thus I wrote them on 4/5/09 asking how this has been charged, I got no reply.

I was then living in Kent, and I went up north to Scotland to visit friends and family returning on 20/5/09 to find another bill from Orange dated 15/5/09 for roaming charges between 7/5/09 and 12/5/09 inclusive,- amounting to £2218.87., thus I wrote Orange again complaining that I was home in UK at the dates of this usage.

Over the next 6 months, I had communication with Orange who kept saying I was liable, I sent them evidence that I left Saudi,-e.g.. my stamped Exit Visa 2/5/09 , flight home details 2-3 /5/09,, a bank statement showing I was at my local ATM on 5/5 and 8/5-09, but they kept saying I must have gone back to Saudi, and that I had put the foreign SIM in their ICON 225 , was steaming videos and thus incurred the charges. It is impossible that I was at my local ATM on 8th May 09, in UK, yet be in Saudi on the 7th. & 8th May , using the internet on roaming facilities, - oh;- unless I was able to travel akin to Doctor Who ! - Orange offered to cut the bill by 50% , I refused as I did not use their system.

I then complained to the Adjudicator - CISAS, however Orange played dirty and failed to give CISAS all my evidence, that being special exhibits such as the foreign system purchase receipt, my Exit Visa, photographs of the two dongle units and SIM cards, plus they made several false and miss-leading statements that swayed the Adjudicator’s decision in their favour in Jan 2010.( they had said they would pass everything).

Following this I endured four Debt Collectors , three backed off on my evidence, such as I had then, however Orange sold the incorrect debt to the fourth Collector, I reckon in July 2011, so they have been pursuing me since August 2011.

I am certain that the SIM was cloned by the Saudi ISP that Orange sent me to in Feb 09, plus I found out that it was through that very ISP that the charges came to Orange, I kept requesting the foreign details,-to date I have never received them.

Orange also said that the usage could be from the month before, I knew this can be, as before in 2005, I had delayed charges, but- the dates of use were as the month before, not as per the month of the UK ISP’s invoice (The usage dates don’t change !). On 26/1/2010 I had the ICON 225 checked in the UK, the result was that it was corrupt.

I also found out by checking again that within the incorrect usage there was also a double charge of £455.91., since then Orange have refused to discuss the matter anymore and now it is Jan 2012.

I have even emailed their Chief Executive officer, who just passed the issue to the Orange EX Office.

However, just after Christmas last year I found a website: - www.unlocked-dongle .co.uk , which shows that an Orange ICON225 is locked,-- meaning that their story of myself using another SIM in their dongle is utterly impossible, as well as being that my personal usage is untrue in any case.

Since July 09 Orange have put an incorrect mark on my Credit file which has seriously affected my financial status and my health, and I still have a fight on my hands to get it cleared and hopefully to sue Orange for 32 months of stress and hardship.-

Customer relations !- Orange have zero !!!!