Screw You!: Orange Customer Service & Policies

Why are companies with the word Orange in them so rubbish?! (I had previously complained about my ex-web hosts, A Small Orange – amazingly enough the post seems to have disappeared?!)

But back to Orange, the UK Phone network. Orange is one of the biggest networks in the UK, which is strange because they are quite hitler-eque in the way they run their company. They ALWAYS block their phones. O2 and Vodaphone do not – after all, when you have paid for the damn thing, why should it be locked?

I am only just getting started…All the damn phone companies now force people to get into 18 month, or even a ridiculous 24 months. That’s TWO years of being committed, plus these days not all contracts will allow you to change (not on Orange anyway) to a lower priced tarriff.

Anyway, I have still, stupidly been with them for 5 years. Quite a good customer, may I add. I’ve decided to open up to mobile blogging but my current blackberry doesn’t have camera facilites – so I coax the boyf, who is also with Orange into getting an upgrade to a Blackberry Bold phone, which does have a camera.

All was well – he ordered it (and paid £80 on TOP of signing a new contract – phone companies make their money back from your line rental so you are essentially paying back the cost of your phone so charging a fee on top of that is pretty cheeky). Everything was sorted, and we swapped simcards, which they had said, because are BOTH on Orange and BOTH have Blackberries is not a problem.

Wrong. My damn sim card would not work – only letting me make emergency calls. I had a search in the net and the problem that became clear to me was some kind of incompatibility with the sim card. As I had got my phone 6 months earlier, perhaps there was an issue with my phone using GPRS (web browsing) and not 3G (faster web browsing – I’m explaining this all in a basic way…)

Fret not, says the boyfriend, any company with a brain would sort it out, seeing as we are both loyal and good customers.

Readers – it too NINE long calls to Orange over the space of a day for them to tell me what I already know.

Orange call centres are PURE lottery. Sometimes you will get someone on the ball, 99% someone is just making it up. So you go back to the beginning and call again, trying to get someone competent.

Call One, AM. Mood: Tired

Me: Hi. I am trying to get my simcard to work in a Blackberry mobile. This is my boyfriends, it’s his upgrade mobile from Orange.

CS: Where did you get this phone from?

Me: It’s my boyfriends

CS: Did you buy it?

Me: No.

CS: Then where did you get it?

Me: It’s an upgrade my boyfriend got

CS: When?

Me: Yesterday

CS: I see. And you want to put your sim card in it.

Me: Yes. It’s an orange sim card too.

CS: Is it an Orange sim card.

Me: Yes

CS: Eeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr………….it’s just not compatible?

Me: Are you sure.

CS: Yes definately

Me: Oh. Ok.

So now I’m a little irritated but not surprised. I tell the boyf who says he’ll call…

Call number 2 – Lady from Black berry dept says it can be done.

Boyf calls me back and I call orange. I have the same conversation with some dude as in conversation one. I shout at boyfriend using aggressive symbols:

+{!!!&$£!@&$*£&

Call 4 is made by boyf. Man from Blackberry dept says once again it is possible I need to call back again.

Call 5 is me. I have the same conversation again – a waste of time!

Call 6 is boyf, once again a woman says its possible and all we need to is register the phone with me. I can do this on the Blackberry website…

WRONG! I can’t.

Call 7 is me. This is after work as I am starting to pull my hair out.

Call Seven, PM. Mood: Pissed off

Me: *explains everything from before*

CS does a pointless diagnostic check – do you have reception (no, that’s why I managed to call you), is the phone on? etc.

CS: Ok I’ll call the tech dept and ring you back in half an hour.

Two hours later

Call Eight, PM. Mood: Suicidal

Boyf: *explains everything, mentions sim card error*

CS: Yes thats fine, it could be a sim card error maybe we can send you a new one.

*HURRAH!*

CS: Let me transfer you…

*uh ho*

New CS man: Sorry but we can’t send you a new sim card even though this would solve the problem. Whatever sim card we issue you is the one you have to keep. The sim card you have is 2G and you need a 3G for that phone. That’s all.

Uh-Ho.

Orange have now sunk into the very depths of moronism for me.

Firstly, it took ALL DAY and 8 hours for them to confirm what I had read on some stupid mobile phone blog. If it wasn’t for the fact we mentioned the sim card issue, they STILL wouldn’t have reached that conclusion.

Plus, since when did Orange have the right to dictate what phone you use anyway? They should be please I am still using a damn orange phone and not doing what every other sane person in the world does and buy an unblocked phone from 02!

Next – other networks like Virgin and Vodafone, I believe, issued 3G cards out years ago. 02 and T-Mobile WILL give you a new 3G card if you ask. Not Orange. Orange take the high and mighty god like stance, where they can give you a sh*t sim card and make you use it for the duration of the contract (remember this if you are thinking of taking out one for 24 months!!!!) even though sim cards probably cost them about £0.02p to make. This isn’t about money! It’s about CONTROL. And Orange must control your soul.

Then the customer service is not what it used to me. Staff don’t know what they are talking about – if in doubt, they don’t say, please let me refer you, please let me check – they just do the ‘computer says no’ trick. Hence, each time I called the responses varied widely.

Imagine behaving like that in other call centre environments?

Woman: So does the insurance cover my life?

Man: Er. Yes. No. Probably.

Other networks are nicking all the best phones anyway – Vodafone have the sexy Blackberry Storm and 02 have the blessed iphone.

Orange are super lame. My contract ends in September them I’m out. But you know, this is a sign. The Blackberry bold wasn’t supposed to be mind. The iphone on pay as you go however….