Hi.
Sorry to take up valuable screen space, but I'm so pissed off I have to let some out or I'll have an accident.
Orange. Ah, Orange. What can I say? That they're the most incompetent, idiotic company on earth, so stupid they'd collectively need a couple of million years evolution to make slime molds stop feeling superior? That would be a start, anyway.
OK, so in October I go the the US for a couple of weeks, and like a prat take my phone with me. This of course, due to the imaginative way roaming and US mobile services both work, ends up costing an enormous amount to make calls and very nearly more to even receive them (Note to US phone providers - charging for INCOMING calls? How twen-cen).
Anyway, a few days after I get home the bill for my mobile turns up. I open it, read it, retrieve my lower jaw from when it has landed at my feet, and read it more carefully. The total of approximately £170 is just a tad more than the average £14 or so I normally have, and after a few moments my lightning-quick wits have spotted that this may be at least partially due to there now being
two phone numbers on the bill, only one of which I recognise.
This mystery number seems to spend most of it's time calling message services, and is on a remarkably expensive tariff. Rack my brains as I might, somehow I can't recall ever asking for someone else's number to be billed to me, so I call and enquire what they're playing at. After some effort I manage to get through to a customer services drone who at first refuses to believe that there is anything wrong. I politely insist she is mistaken, and invite her to (a) check my bill, and (b) look for any evidence of me ever requesting the additional number. This seems to do the trick, and after a long time on hold while she has a chat with the security department and I get to listen to irritating messages stating the obvious ("you are on hold, please wait", yes, thank you, I already realise this), she comes back and says that the mystery handset has been blocked while an investigation is carried out. I am assured that they will contact me when the matter has been resolved, and told that I should not pay the bill until I hear from them (remember this bit, it will be important later). I in turn assure her that I have no intention of paying anything until I find out exactly what is going on, and we part on agreeable terms.
Three weeks later I receive a final demand from Orange, for an amount of £131.94 (a new figure to me), with the helpful advice that if I do not hand over the funds within 7 days, they will cut off my service. The
next day they cut me off. Somewhat perturbed by this, I again call customer services (from a different phone, since my mobile now just gives me insulting messages), and slightly less politely enquire what the hell they think they're up to. They say that the final demand wasn't complied with, and the billing system automatically cut me off. I am also informed that the bill the system is getting narked about is the december one, which as it turns out is a good trick since they haven't issued it yet! I point this out, helpful as ever, and there is much confusion. Preemptive debt collection is, I have to admit, a rather novel method of financing a company. After some sharp words from me, they turn the phone back on and apologise for the inconvenience. The excuse I was given for the strange number was that someone else whose account number differed from mine by only one digit had requested a new phone, and it had been mistakenly assigned to me through finger trouble. They were willing to put this in writing and it sounded vaguely plausible so I made nothing more of it.
Two weeks later, the bill I have been already cut off for not paying turns up, and oddly enough it still has the rogue number on it. Once more I venture into the wilderness that is the Orange customer services system, and rather impolitely enquire whether they need the help of a mentally defective three-year-old to sort out their billing system. Eventually, after nearly three hours on the phone, everything is sorted out to at least an acceptable degree. I ended up talking to someone in customer reclamations, which is the department tasked with bribing dissatisfied victims to stay with orange. They eventually offered me a shiny new phone (6310i) and a new tariff with 120 minutes extra free per month for £15. The total of 150 minutes is actually less than I normally use in any given month, so the cost should in most cases cover everything. It was also alleged that there were now four credits applied to my account totalling approximately £113, which would shoe up in the next bill. I said at the end of the festivities that I wouldn't pay anything until the January bill turned up, as I wanted to be sure that everything was now correct, and they accepted this.
The phone duly turned up along with the new sim, and I immediately unlocked it, transferred my numbers from my old sim to the new one, then put the new phone away as a spare. The new sim worked fine, my old number had been transferred OK, and everything seemed to finally be sorted out.
On monday the January bill turned up. No mystery number this time, but there was still the £131.94 charge from before, along with the last month's legitimate charge of about £24 (higher than normal due to christmas and so on). I spent a couple of days attempting to contact the woman in customer relations with whom I had had such a nice chat the previous month, and eventually got through. She checked, said that there were still the four credits listed, but that they seemed not to have been applied. After some time on hold while she contacted the accounts department, I was told that she had been in error over her understanding of how credits worked, and that these had already been applied to my account. The total of about £156 was real, and I was stuck with it. She offered to send me a full statement of my account so I could check the figures for myself. This arrived yesterday, I checked and could see no real way to wiggle out of it (although I still have a gut feeling that somehow they've managed to screw me), and grudgingly wrote out a cheque and mailed it off.
Today they cut my phone off again.
A bill is sent out (or at least dated) on the third of the month. It arrives over a week later. I contact them within two days and query it. I send payment within 4 days. The envelope has "allow 7 days for delivery" stamped on it, so they're not officially expecting anything for at least a week after I receive the bill in the first place, even assuming I pay it instantly, and in addition they are aware on some level that I have queried it. They cut me off 5 days after receipt of the bill, before by their own implicit admission they could have received the payment.
When I called this time I will admit I wasn't all that polite. I discovered the fact that my phone no longer worked when I tried to use it after spending three hours in a cupboard attempting to beat an old laser printer into submission, without success (God I HATE printers), so I was a little annoyed already. The nasty little message that the phone gave me was the last straw, and when the little prick on the other end of line asked why I wanted to cancel my Orange subscription in a rather aggressive fashion, I told him it was because their billing department was run by incompetent prats. He immediately started shouting at me, I pointed out that I wanted something done immediately, and he got nasty and said that swearing and interrupting him would get me nowhere. I replied that I had not been swearing but issuing a statement of fact, he replied that in his opinion and that of many others I had been swearing, I responded by pointing out that if he wanted swearing I could certainly provide some, then just got tired of the whole affair and hung up.
After a couple of moments of cooling down slightly and wondering why, if he didn't like swearing, he was working in the customer relations department of Orange in the first place, I tried again. This time the fellow on the other end was reasonably pleasant, but not all that helpful. His screen seemed to be showing him that my phone had been cut off for the non-payment of a bill dating back to october. I told him a brief history of the whole sorry affair, but he said that the terminations department was closed until the morning and there was nothing else he could do. He did offer to call me back in the morning personally and sort things out, but by now I am so sick of the whole bloody company I just want to get out and find one which is reputable, assuming that a reputable mobile phone company isn't an oxymoron.
Normally I don't get really angry with people, only things, which after all are doing it deliberately
, but when I got off the phone I was actually quivering with supressed rage. I have never been so annoyed and disgusted with a company before, not even BT or Microsoft! Their incompetence plumbs previously untouched depths of ineptitude. Tomorrow I start shopping around for a new provider, and if Orange get pushy about the new tariff they will live to regret it.
Anyway, I though I should share this with the world at large, possibly thereby putting people off from dealing with the useless idiots.
pca
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