Orange Phone Contract Help

cresentmoon

Hello all,

I am hoping that i might be able to get some advice as to the situtation my husband is in with Orange. I will try and give all the information i can but please feel free to ask any questions.

In June 2008 my husband took out an 18 month contract with Orange and had a Blackberry so that he could receive his emails. All was fine, coverage fine at home and at his place of work, all in all very happy.

In August this year, 3 months before the end of his contract he was able to upgrade his handset free of charge if he took out another 12 month contract plus the 3 months remaining (so a 15 month contract). We were quite happy to do this as we were pleased with the service and i had since taken out an orange contract myself, so it made sense to stay on the same network and get free calls between each other.

My husband chose the HTC Hero as his new handset, when it arrived it looked like the phone had been dropped and there were some signal issues i.e my husband couldnt get a signal no matter where he was. Orange agreed to replace the phone and so we took delivery of handset number 2.
The signal issues have not gone away, in fact they are much worse. The handset looses its signal randomly and it can be anywhere and at anytime and on occasion it has been "lost" for almost 1 hour before my husband has had to manually reconnect the phone to the network. My husband has been onto Orange for over a week now trying to sort this out, as quite frankly what is the use of a mobile phone if you can't make telephone calls on it.

I feel he is being fobbed off by the mystical 2nd level techinical support (we haven't actually spoken to someone in that department despite 1 weeks worth of requested call backs). And they don't seem to listen when we tell them that i can be standing next to him with my phone (different make and model) and i have full signal! We have tried swapping the sim card into different phones and they work fine, he is able to gain full signal (we have tried an LG Cookie, LGKS360, a Samsung and his old Blackberry with no problems). It seems to point towards there being a problem with the actual handset itself, and after a quick google i have found that there are a few other people with the HTC Hero on Orange having the same problems.

So, if you have got this far thank you and i hope i have given you enough information. My question is, do we have any rights in either getting a replacement handset of a different make or are we able to cancel our contract?

Here is the relevant part of the contract, if anyone has any advice i would be most grateful.

Terminating your contract because Orange is no longer able to provide access to the network
4.4 if for reasons beyond our control, we are no longer able to provide Network Services, we will at our discretion offer:
4.4.1 make arrangements for you to be supplied with equivalent services by another network at no extra cost to you or
4.4.2 accept written notice from you that you wish to terminate your contract. in such cases we will refund any pre paid charges that have not been used up.

OneADay

The fault is with the phone - not the network.

Get it repaired (should be under warranty if its not been damaged by you), they might offer you replacement even at some point. But you cant cancel the contract.

4810510

I think you should contact the Executive Office and explain that you are an existing long standing customer who has always been happy until this problem started with this phone. "I don't want to leave Orange but I'm unhappy with the level of support I've received to deal with this problem." is the route I would suggest. Doesn't make sense for them to lose a customer over a silly little issue like this.

cresentmoon

Thank you both for taking the time to reply.
After another phone call this morning where the adviser just kept repeating "its a signal issue" i asked my husband to ring back and actually ask them what they were going to do about "the signal issue". Quite surprisingly he spoke to someone who actually wanted to keep him happy (and therefore an orange customer), and we are sending the handset back and its being swapped for a different make and a nice credit on his account as well.

So a happy ending over here. Many Thanks.