Orange - Multimedia Sub £3.40?

ALJAY

I have just spent the last 7 days contacting a variety of orange customer service representatives trying to claim back £36.00. This is some 9 months of alleged subscription charges for traffic tvat £4.00 p/m. Having told Orange of the impossibility of my using this service, i couldn't, wouldn't, didn't and so on I was eventually offered a full refund of the charges and recieved a text confirming the cancellation of traffic tv. However orange insisted that this subscription could only have come from my phone and the refund of charges would only be in the form of credit to my pay as you go account. I pointed out that these charges should be returned to my bank account and not to my orange phone but this got me nowhere. Any refund was merely a "goodwill gesture" on their part as they claimed no resposibility for this service. I declined their offer and voted with my feet. I told the rep its the last money orange would get out of me and as an orange customer of 11 years, on principal I have taken my business to another provider.

ALJAY

all hail to the dedicated non thinkers

dazzaofdagenham

I normally just gt a summary bill via the post and not an itemised.

Thought i'd log in and see what i was using.

I'd been subscived to a £7.50 Orange maps professional service via my HD Desire...

Cancelled that....So hopefully my bill will be reduced

darren

Ruchef

Hi Guys

Orange do not accept any ownership to the issue of cancelling Traffic TV subscription as it is a 3rd party supplier that you have the option of trialing and unwittingly subscribing to.
I have tried to cancel Traffic TV in the past via Orange support and not got any success. I have now been a number for MxData (the parent company).
The process is quite simple and painless. Dial 01625525599 and you are given several options. Select Traffic TV, you are then asked if you wish to unsubscribe, you are than asked to key in your mobile no. for the account to which Traffic TV is subscribed against.
You are then informed that this will be processed within the next 2 days. Unforunately I have to wait a month to see if Trafficc TV will again appear on my bill, although I feel confident that this will finally be sorted

Smiffy64_2

I have just continued my subscription with Orange today and upgraded my Blackberry Bold to the HTC Desire. As you do with a new phone, I checked through the installed applications. Obviously I was just opening them up to see what they were.
I stopped at Traffic TV though as there was a 'Bad smell'. No confirmation message, no warning that I was going to be subscribing to a paid for service. Just a message to say that the first month is free and that it will be £4 thereafter and to cancel I just had to 'manage my account'. I must say that the 'alarm bells' were ringing at this point. I did as I was asked, but found that I couldn't manage my account because it was still in a trial period. WWHHAATTT!
So in effect I would at least be paying for 1 month. I discussed this with my son saying to him that this program looked a bit suspicious. So him having the Desire HD, he knew where to look at the program settings for this app. It was not looking very good for Orange at this point. Incidentally, his Desire HD bought 2 weeks ago from Orange did not have this app or any of the other unwanted and uninstallable crap.

The program manager says that the settings for the app are:
Seeing my location
Knows my personal information.
Has full internet access.
Has services that cost me money.
Prevents my system from sleeping.

After seeing this I became very angry especially since I was blocked from making any adjustments to these settings.
Orange listen up...you won't like me when I am angry.
My fears have now been justified after finding this post.

So in effect then, through no fault of my own, I have subscribed to a service I will never use just because I opened up an application with no confirmation.
The only difference from any other email or phone call scam is that there was absolutley no interaction from me other than opening the app. Scary!

For me, after discovering that this is even possible to do this to a monthly phone account that can be exploited outwith the users knowledge has undermined the whole concept of having a phone on contract. My phone is now a dangerous liability as even when the subscription is cancelled, this 'give us even more money' button still exists on my phone that can be very easily clicked on again, especially with the sensitivity of touch screen phones.
More worrying, what else is there?
What Orange are doing is tantamount to criminal behaviour and as such they should be held into account. For this reason I am sure that I and anyone else would be justified in cancelling their direct debit. We will see what happens as that that is exactly what I am going to do. I suspect that they will NOT take it to court.

Orange are you listening....You are a disgrace and you should be ashamed of yourself.

I also do not like being dictated to as to what I have installed on my phone with no way of choosing to uninstall it. Orange have obviously had a lot of discussions with their lawyers to see what they can get away with.
If there is one thing I can't stand it's a big corporation cynically treating its customers like cattle, read prey.
The scam is that hardly anybody will notice the extra costs until it is too late. If we make even one payment then their scam has been a success.
Orange should realise that they are only 'shooting themselves in the foot' in the long run as I and everyone who gets effected by this will walk.

Some one needs to remind them of the saying 'Never bite the hand that feeds'

There will be even less customers if this ever gets on Watchdog.

OK...rant over.

Orange_Company_Representative

Hi Smiffy64,

You should be able to unsubscribe from the Traffic TV service before it starts to charge. My advice would be to contact Customer Services on 150 from your phone and request they remove it from your account before your free month is up. Alternatively you could contact one of my colleagues via our Twitter page by adding @OrangeHelpers. They are online daily between 9:00 and 17:00. They should be able to remove this for you.

Hope this helps.

Steve, Orange Helpers

Twitter: @OrangeHelpers
Facebook: Orange UK

Smiffy64_2

You should be able to unsubscribe from the Traffic TV service before it starts to charge. My advice would be to contact Customer Services on 150 from your phone and request they remove it from your account before your free month is up.

This is uncanny. You have stated almost word for word what a very patronizing salesman in one of your shops replied to me when I pointed out my complaint. Is this a standard response to any customer who enquires about this? It was almost as if he flicked a switch in his brain to go into 'irate customer complaining about us shafting him' mode.

I also had to point out to him that I would not tolerate him insulting my intelligence.

Therefore there is no point in speaking to you and so this is for everyone else.

What Orange have demonstrated to me is that it is possible for them to 'open the door' to third party applications to dip into my Orange account without my knowledge and with no confirmation. This is even worse than a scam email or phone call because at least you have the chance to block this type of scam as it happens, especially since most of the public are now wise to this.

What Orange are doing is completely different. THIS IS A MULTI BILLION POUND CORPORATION slyly stealing from their customers. A scam is a called a scam because it is designed to take money from the public without their knowledge or say so. If I want and need any kind of service then I will seek it out, weigh up my options and finally pay for the service of my choice.

I obviously do not need a service I did not ask for. To exercise my right to not need it is to 'OPT OUT', as the patronizing salesman in the shop stated that I had to do. What kind of rubbish is this?

In my 46 years of being a consumer I have only ever 'OPTED IN' to anything I wanted. This 'OPT OUT' crap is surely a serious breach of consumer rights. Especially since it is obviously designed to be hidden from us.

So I have to phone up the company to cancel the subscription do I? All I want to do is pay for a phone service without having to take time off work to attempt to sort things at the shop I bought the phone from 2 days before. Or have to waste my time phoning(which could also be a scam by the way) a company who are in collaboration with Orange. Yes collaboration...why else would the application be on the phone by default, all conveniently set up to not allow the user to delete or configure it. It's icon is essentially a button to open up the subscription again that I may or may not notice that I had accidentally pressed, or maybe even somebody else had pressed when they played with the phone. Remember, it is a one button press scam.

ORANGE GUY STEVE...It doesn't matter how many times I phone Traffic TV company to 'OPT OUT'. This button will always be there for me to accidentally press. Have you got that now? Do I have to spell it out any more for you? I think not!

As I have said, my phone is now a liability that I am never going to enjoy using until I tell Orange to 'shove it up their bum' two years from now.
The monkey in the shop tried to convince me that it would be MY fault for not noticing and reading the messages that Traffic TV was telling me about that 'I was subscribing to a service that was going to cost me £4 a month' and that I had to 'maintain my account' to cancel. To maintain my account though, it seems I already need to be in a paid for account. Very cleverly thought out, very cynical and very WRONG.

OK Orange.. you've lit the blue touch paper...so stand back.

A23catwa

Hi

Orange - HTC Desire - Traffic TV

I noticed this today. I suggest you contact Orange through your handset using 150, speak to someone in Billing, explain Traffic TV you have not subscribed to, and ask for a full refund. The chap I spoke to said "This old Chestnut" the minute I mentioned it to him, so I think this has been going for some time. He has refunded me the whole amount with no arguement, so I think Orange must be in-undated with calls regarding "Traffic TV". The next thing log onto the Traffic TV website and send them an email, they replied back to me instantly explaining when I logged on and they sent me texts with regards to charges and unsubscribing blah blah blah, but to be honest I took no notice as I constantly get crap texts and with being over 10 months ago I cant actually remember. Apparantly Traffic TV is a pre-installed App that you cannot delete, so once this is sorted out do not click on it again. It is a Scam in my eyes and it should specifically notify you of charges etc the minute you click on it, and it doesnt. It has took my 10 months to notice as my bills are ebills and are not expensive so to be honest I didnt look at them, but from now on I will scrutiny them, as I think what they do is disgraceful. :mad: Hope this helps you.
When you spoken to Orange and Traffic TV this should be sorted. Like I said before though - DO NOT Click on the APP again.

newbieruthy88

Hi,
My first post but it seems very relevant that someone has had the same trouble i had. i did have an Xperia X10 mini with Orange on contract. i did originally subscribe to Traffic TV but i stopped the service before the 30days was up. i just looked at y bill this afternoon, and i have been charged for 5 months of using a service that i unsubscribed to. i also had a problem with the X10 and because i called Orange so many times to have it sorted they offered me an X8 as an alternative, saying it was much better etc etc the usual stuff. i accepted and everything was fine until today checking through my bill and finding traffic tv on there. i have just phoned Orange on 150 option 2 to query it and explained that while yes i had the service on y old handset i had unsubscribed as i wasnt using it. she accepted this, and when i explained i had the x8 as a replacement, she told me that it had been a re-conditioned handset that had been sent to me that must have been subscribed to the service before i had it!! so basically they hadnt sent me a new handset at all it was someones old one, and i was being charged for a service i didnt even have on the handset. having read the posts on here i decided to double check and there is no sign of it being "embedded" in the handset as she tried to tell me!! however without me having to ask, she has put the full 5 months refund onto my next bill, so they must be used to people complaining aboutthis by now because i didnt have to ask for y money back she just did it!
not sure if this helps anybody else on here, but maybe if you've had a replacement handset or soething, watch out and be careful of this happening to you!!

smnwri

Ok, so i unsubscribed from traffic tv on orangeworld on my phone and wrote a polite email to orange asking for a refund. Both worked sucessfully and I am now in credit on my phone bill to a reasonable amount, my question is can I access this money or is it purely now credit for future phone bills?