A painful experience with Orange
If my experience with Natwest was bad, then the one with Orange is by far the worst. Maybe I shouldn’t say so after getting a £10 off per month as a compromise of my one week long complaining, but I think it’s worthy to share my painful experience.
The story began with the lost of my phone during the New Year’s holiday. I called Orange on the 31st of December and asked them to stop my number for me. While I was asking for a new SIM card, the guy asked if I were interested to upgrade my contract and get a new phone for free. I switched from Vodafone to Orange about 10 months ago and didn’t have any painful experience (yet). After a bit negotiation, I agreed to upgrade, with a £50 early upgrade fee and sign for another 18 months contract. The new contract won’t start until my next billing date, which is the 22nd of January. If I’m not happy with the new service, I could cancel it within 7 days. They sent me a BlackBerry 8100 as I asked for straight away, and I’ve got 30M monthly data allowance, as a guy from their upgrade team promised me. But then, that’s where the nightmare begun.
Just to make it a bit more readable, I will write it as a log.
22nd January 2008 (Tuesday)
I called to activate my blackberry data plan. Because I was told that I can’t activate it until this day, when my new billing month started. Then the guy told me I could actually start anytime I wanted after I got my phone. Anyway, I just need my blackberry to be activated for emails. At the end of the call, I was happy with quick activation process. But just before I hung up the call, I double confirmed with him that I’ve 30M monthly data allowance. He said no, I paid £6, so it’s 6M. ‘That was not what I was told when I upgraded my phone!’ I told him. He tried to explain but didn’t last for long as I was very assured there were some mistakes. He put me on hold for a few minutes and said someone from the upgrade team will call me back at 5:30PM at the same day to give me an explanation.
After 5:30pm, didn’t receive any calls. I gave them a call back around 7pm. Another guy from upgrade them said the person who upgraded my contract left the office. An email was sent to his manager, one of them will give me a call back the next day. I said OK. Well, what else can I say at that point?
24th January 2008 (Thursday)
I didn’t receive a call back on the 23th as they promised. So I called them up again on the 24th. After a lengthy explanation to a guy named Derek (extension 28946) of what’s going on, I was told that the person who did my upgrade was on shift basis and he is not on shift on that day. I would get a call back when he was back to the office.
26th January 2008 (Saturday)
As you may already know, I didn’t receive any call back on the 25th. So I called again on Saturday morning (this started to get annoying but I want to see how far can it go). A very nice guy picked up my call, his name was Ken (extension 29741 and worked in Darlington). After another lengthy explanation of the case, he firstly apologised for the inconvenience. I tried to be nice as well, because I wanted to get more information. And I did. The guy upgraded my phone named Andrew. He was a newbie so didn’t have an extension number. There were an email sent to his manager, Denise Morris, and she was aware of the case. But one thing Ken may regard to tell me was the last shift of Andrew – 24th of January! He was on shift but didn’t call me back! They made promise, and leave it like that assuming most customers won’t be bother to wait for their call back.
At the end of the call, Ken promised me that he sent another email to the manager Denise and she will call me back on Monday. Her shift was 10am to 10pm, so definitely will call me back. At that point I knew she won’t. But since Ken was a nice guy and gave me might be a bit too much information, I didn’t argue with him but wish he had a happy weekend shift.
29th January 2008 (Tuesday)
Yes, I was right, no call back on Monday. They didn’t have any credibility to me anymore, but I still wanted to keep calling. Just to see how terrible they can be.
A guy called Jamie (extension 29802) picked up my call. I spent the entire lunch hour complained to him with the whole thing. I was surprise I could be that patient. Now it’s not about the 6M or 30M issue, I told him that if I could leave Orange I wanted to leave straight away, if not I would just bear for another 18 months and then leave. But I will make sure all my friends and families won’t get even close to Orange. My colleagues paid £10 to O2 for his unlimited blackberry bandwidth and I paid £6 for 6M, is that too ridiculous?! I went on and on, he tried to explain but wasn’t confident and strong enough. Of course, with your colleagues who did an unacceptably terrible job, there was no ground for him to back up his argument.
Guess what I got at the end? He promised another call back the next day. I told him they didn’t have credibility to me anymore, their ‘promise’ count for nothing. But he was very confident and said the previous promises were ‘not from him, if he made a promise, they will definitely call me back’. Was that an overconfident or just an ungrounded get-away excuse? Anyway, I said OK as I didn’t expect any responds, but it’s fun to see how far they can make fun of themselves.
30th January 2008 (Wednesday)
No call back. I called the number 150 again, pressed 1, 4, and 1 as I’ve already remembered those menu by now. A girl answered, I asked for Jamie, she checked and told me he’s on the phone, was there anything she could assist with. I friendly told her that she wouldn’t want to get involve with this, I will just keep holding the call for Jamie.
A few minutes later, got Jamie. I told him I didn’t get any call back, and this time was a promise from him. He said Denise did give me a call back around 8pm yesterday, I didn’t pick up. I told him 8pm last night I was at home, my phone was sat at my desk with full of Orange network cover. There was no miss call, not even a message. If she called and I didn’t get that, should I blame the orange network? Did she call or not, I don’t know, maybe it’s just another lie or excuse. Jamie felt sorry again. So he gave me another call back promise, but this time with a more accurate time, from 5pm to 6pm at the same day, after I finished work. I said OK, and prepare to see another show.
7pm that day, didn’t receive any call back.
31st January 2008 (Thursday)
Spoke to Jamie again. Our conversation was ironically like friends now, I asked how’s the work etc. I didn’t call to complain but to let him know I didn’t get any call back. I didn’t want to ask for another one, I had enough fun. Just need to wait for another 18 months, I already prepared for that sentence from Orange. He sound surprised, and immediately said just for the inconvenience that had caused me, he will give me £10 off each month for 18 months, but he couldn’t do anything with the 6M issue. However if I wanted to add another £8, he can switch my plan to the 30M GPRS per month one. I accepted the offer, but still told him that if O2 can do £10 unlimited and they charged me £14 (£6+£8) for 30M a month, they’ve lost in the competition.
Conclusion
This is my experience of Orange, as painful as it can get. Although I got compromised, but that certainly won’t keep me as a loyal customer. As I said, they don’t have credibility to me anymore. All they have is a legal bound that trapped me at the first place with some fake and confusing terms and condition. I understand Andrew was a newbie, it’s not his fault, it’s the problem with their training. However the failure to simply give me a call back really embarrassed themselves. And the manager Denise, was this person even existed?
The whole experience gave me an impression of a company that doesn’t take their business seriously. Customers’ benefits are only exist before the contract singed. Afterward customers are in a trap anyway, what can they do?! I can only share my experience here and hope others won’t suffer the pain that I had. Think carefully before if you are about to sign a contract with Orange.
