£6600 ORANGE bill :( help!

greyster

alnsv1000s wrote: »

I had a customer who had an £800 bill for data with TMobile. She called me in a panic and I spoke to custo er services, explained she hadnt realised the cost, and as a goodwill, they added the webnwalk plus bolt on to her account and reduced the charge to £12.50. she was extremely happy with that, and i was impressed with TMobiles attitude. Mistakes happen.

Yup T-Mobile are very likely to wipe your debt on the first mistake as a good will gesture. Shame about orange if this is not the case.

baldelectrician

Orange will have a hard time enforcing this in court

Charges have to be fair and reasonable.

I suggest you threaten to go to court over the matter- there is such a thing as unfair terms and conditions. The contract is mainly irrelevent for this part as you can prove other networks (like 3 , with a less substantial infrastructure) charge significantly less for the same service.

Tell them you want a stalemate letter and to put your bill on 'hold' until ofcom investigate.

They really will not want your bad publicity as it is a direct result of a piece of their own equipment (mobile dongle) becoming faulty

Orange have a 'company representative' on here. Look him or her up and ask for their help.

Many people taking out contracts look here prior to commiting themselves

epz_2

drbesty wrote: »

Ofcom would have nothing to say about this, they probably hear 100 similar stories a day, Orange cant police peoples account for them, and to spend six thousand pounds in a month is certainly not unusual for some businesses

the point is orange offer you no way to police your account, would you have a credit card that had no limit and if it was nicked you were still liable.

baldelectrician

epz wrote: »

the point is orange offer you no way to police your account, would you have a credit card that had no limit and if it was nicked you were still liable.

You are only liable for the first £50 on a credit card (unless you have been negligant)


Orange also have a duty of care to their customers - they should have systems in place to prevent fraud and unusual transactions. This should have been noticed early on

ps Asda mobile (on PAYG, which is usually more costly than contract) charge £0.20 per MB of data

S3quence

baldelectrician wrote: »

I suggest you threaten to go to court over the matter- there is such a thing as unfair terms and conditions. The contract is mainly irrelevent for this part as you can prove other networks (like 3 , with a less substantial infrastructure) charge significantly less for the same service.

They really will not want your bad publicity as it is a direct result of a piece of their own equipment (mobile dongle) becoming faulty

Im pretty sure 3 will charge similar for this service. This isnt "Mobile Broadband" this is using your mobile as a modem which is against any mobile contracts fair usage allowance. The fact is Orange are well within their rights to charge for this, the costs are highly publicised the same as you know calling from abroad costs you more money. The directors stupidity doesnt even come into it. Would the arguement be the same if he exceeded the minutes included in the package and racked up £6k of phone calls? "I didnt realise" is no excuse!

As for not wanting bad publicity for their own faulty equiptment I havent read anything yet in this post to suggest this is the case. The original poster put...

"however... a few weeks back, one of the directors modem died so he used his mobile, he downloaded about 2 gigabytes and for that Orange are charging us six thousand pounds..."

The modem assuming it is a "mobile Dongle" could be from any network and could be faulty for any number of reasons, snapped the USB connection, dropped it in water etc etc... not necessarily their own faulty equiptment.

Also in the OP comment they say "a few weeks back" using this mobile daily for a few weeks could easily rack up 2GB. I work as an IT contractor and have used 300MB in one day from my mobile broadband its not too difficult to do. He only needs a few software downloads to set this on its way. So for the comments regarding Orange flagging this. How many accounts do they deal with? How unlikely is it that a business racks up £6k of charges in, if individuals can rack up hundereds of pounds of phone call charges in a month then 6k for a business with multiple users is hardly unimaginable. Was the data downloaded over 2 billing periods? Making it further unlikely they would have flagged it.

Its a horrible situation for the OP to be in but best they can do is plead with Orange for some kind of discount and its a lesson learned on the part of the director. If he has any sort of concience he should at least offer to fork out a good proportion of the final settled cost.

Personally I would avoid taking them to court as others have suggested as I dont think you would stand a chance and only further increase the costs

Hope you get it sorted

Michael

S3quence

baldelectrician wrote: »

ps Asda mobile (on PAYG, which is usually more costly than contract) charge £0.20 per MB of data

Again irrelevant as this is accessing the data on your mobile not using your mobile as a modem.

Go on any of the mobile operators websites and review the price plan im pretty sure every one will state that you cant use the phone as a modem.

For Example: http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/Link_Document?content_aid=1214305748126

Bear in mind over a few weeks 2GB is about 100MB a day not much really.
Now explain how orange can flag up ALL customers who exceed this limit?

chattychappy

withabix wrote: »

As he's a Director, it can come out of his dividends. That way he will feel like he's just paying proper income tax like the rest of us....

Oh yes yawn.... he's a company director, so he must be rich and dodging tax.

DarkConvict

Good posts S3quence

From the document

Add Internet Max (Contract Term)
With Add Internet Max you get unlimited internet
access (subject to 1GB fair use limit) to surf the
web, unlimited email (ISP, Microsoft Exchange,
Lotus Domino) and unlimited Skype. Plus, you
can also use some of your favourite applications,
including Yahoo!, eBay and Windows Live™
Messenger depending on your handset capability
at no extra cost. Phone browsing only; Your
data does not include using your phone as a
modem. Exceeding the fair use limit may result
in suspension of service for the remainder of the
month. This add-on lasts the term of your price
plan contract and early termination fees apply.

Now explain how orange can flag up ALL customers who exceed this limit?

Shouldn't be too difficult, i would presume they update there bills nightly. A simple SQL query on the database to see the current outstanding credit balance (anything over allowances) and then filter by those who either have exceed a threshold like £100 or a regular limit. Databases are fairly quick so even on a few million records it shouldn't take to long to do, even if it is done only every 3 days.

iwanttosave_2

OK so you're a business, how would it go if a customer used 6 grand of your products/services while you have posters everywhere saying how much your service is and then refuses to pay?

People think that because they are a big faceless company then they shouldn't have to pay the clearly advertised price, a contract was taken out with you accepting those prices, if you wasn't happy with the prices then the contract shouldn't have been taken out and cheaper prices should have been sought.

2GB is a fair bit to use but it isn't said over what period this has been used. Baring in mind it can take up to 48 hours for networks to get charges through for GPRS, if it was done in 1 day then they wouldn't have been able to stop it. Also I don't know how Orange work, but the only accounts that tend to be highly monitored are ones that come back with a bad credit score or ones they feel need monitored do with some networks.

chattychappy

The OP should check his insurance. Many firms have legal expenses insurance and as part of the deal can get a limited amount of qualified legal advice as part of the deal.

Just because something is written in a contract doesn't make it enforceable, especially if the terms are particular onerous. Given the amount involved, it would be well worth getting a qualified legal opinion.