I’ve used Orange for my mobile service for something like 10 years. In that time, I suspect they’ve done pretty well out of me.
They just lost me.
In my most recent bill I found a charge of £33 for 13MB of data downloads. Since I have never used more than 3MB a month I challenged this charge. Their customer service claimed that the entire 13MB was downloaded between 6pm one day and 5am the next. So by their own reckoning, I’d have had to download the equivalent of 1300 emails in that time, a neat trick given I’d have been asleep for half of it. I simply don’t use my phone that way.
They were unable “for data protection reasons” to substantiate what exactly I am supposed to have downloaded in that time and the people responsible for “billing integrity” are not a “customer-facing” department.
Orange seem to be unwilling to explain or justify this obvious anomoly. And the person I spoke to said she could “escalate” my complaint but her supervisor would only tell me the same thing. So the “customer-facing” people seem to be given no flexibility or power to make customers happy – it must be a stressful job. This is not a business that I feel comfortable having a direct debit relationship with.
Oh well, when Orange can’t escalate an issue, at least I can.
Faced with this kind of institutional obstinacy, I am out of here. I’ve cancelled the contract when it expires next month. I wonder if this abrupt thump in the tail of the corporate brontosaurus will reach some functioning part of its brain between now and then. Don’t hold your breath.
UPDATE Sept 16th: I’ve now made progress with Orange – see this post.
