Orange Contract help!?

stephbond89

Hi, I have JUST entered into a mobile broadband contract with Orange- it is my husband who uses it not me. The laptop he got with the contract came with a SIM which you plug into the back- so no dongle. He has had the laptop for a month now, we have paid one bill off a 24 month contract- today he has come to use th Orange Internet Everywhere thing, and it wouldn't work. He contacted Orange who went through it all to get it fixed, but nothing- they said he had to download something when he gets home from work, and if that still didnt work, he would have to go to Asus, the laptops maker to solve the problem.

The laptop has one years warranty, but I know what these warranty's are like...and they will try their hardest to worm their way out of it. And then he will be stuck with a useless contract, with it not been a dongle he can't even buy a cheap laptop to use the dongle with as it has to be specially adpated to hold the SIM card! Reading about cancelling contracts with Orange, you have to pay the full amount left on the contract! Which would be over £600 for us, as it is £30 a month and he has 22 months left- but I dont want to be stuck paying £30 a month for somehting which isn't been used! We have two phones with Orange too, so I can't even just say "get lost I'm not paying it" as then the other two mobile phones I have with them will be cut off too! I don't mind paying £30 a month for something which is in use, but not for something which is broken and can't be used!!!

Does anybody have any ideas what I can do if Asus won't fix the laptop claiming it is against the Warrenty?????? (If it has a virus I know they won't fix it as the warranty clearly says that in it!!!). Has anybody else had this problem with an Asus EEE netbook where it won't connect to the mobile internet?????

OneADay

Sounds like hardware/software issue and not really a problem that Orange can sort out for you - you could try using different hardware (probably means new laptop). Or get a dongle from Orange.

in_the_Cotswolds

From what I understand, you have a contract with Orange so Orange have to fix the problem. Somebody with more knowledge may help but it's to do with the Sale of Goods Act.

As the laptop has one years warranty it's up to Orange to sort the problem as the supplier of the goods.

OneADay

mechanic wrote: »

From what I understand, you have a contract with Orange so Orange have to fix the problem. Somebody with more knowledge may help but it's to do with the Sale of Goods Act.

As the laptop has one years warranty it's up to Orange to sort the problem as the supplier of the goods.

Me bad - if laptop comes with the service, its down to Orange to sort out I guess.

drbesty

If its a hardware fault with the laptop you would have to go back to the laptop manufacturor to get it sorted

macman

Reading about cancelling contracts with Orange, you have to pay the full amount left on the contract!

Why does this apparently come as a surprise to so many people?

If the hardware is supplied by Orange, then your contract is with them, not with Asus. However it's obvious in this case that Asus will provide tech support for their own product. If the hardware is faulty then you ultimately have a claim on Orange under the SOGA.
What makes you think you have a virus on a 1 month old laptop that presumably has an up to to date AV program running?

stephbond89

No nothing really makes me think its a virus as such, but if for some reason it was a virus, I know they wouldnt fix that! I have had hundreds of dealings with warranties which don't cover things. My mum had a phone which she sent back, and they claimed it had water damage when the phone had been nowhere near water, but because they said it had, they wouldn't fix it or replace it. Its just the way I see these companies working...!

And well the fact that I have had the contract 2 months...and the only reason I'd be needing to cancel the contract would be because it no longer functioned but they would not fix it...I don't really see why on earth a cancellation fee should be the WHOLE amoutn you would have paid should you have kept it...you may as well keep it open and pay it monthly!!! With car insurance, even thoguh they have technically lent you the money, if you want to cancel it is usually one months premium plus a month in advance to cancel. Not the WHOLE of the premium left over! That to me seems silly, it isn't as though you have lent the money from them, and i would be taking out another contract anyway once it was cancelled to replace the one which wasn't working. Which I cpouldn't do if I had to cancel the one I had paying £660 to do so.

Thanks for the help, it looks like the 3G on the laptop has gone kaput, which to me is a technical fault, and not something we have done, so they should in theory fix it, and if not, I guess I will have to reason with Orange to give me a new laptop considering it is only 2 months old...! Or if we DO have to pay to have it fixed, hopefully it wouldn't be too much money to fix!!!!! Anybody any idea what the SOGA says about this though? Would Orange be under obligation to replace the laptop if Asus wouldnt fix it under warranty, but we still had a useless contract?? Or would they tell us to go hang. lol, I know when I dropped a phone into water (entirely my own fault)- they wouldn't give me a new phone, or upgrade the phone, and we had to continue paying the contract- but I suppose that is different in that a new phone can be £10 for a basic one, whereas a special 3G laptop with the SIM card holder is at least £200.

I'm just a little confused, worried, upset about it all! I bought the contract as a gift for my husband for his birthday present, and now 2 months on, it's broken. Not even 2 months in fact it was around the 25th April we got the laptop!!! And I have dealt with these types of company before and know they have clauses all over the place so they dont have to fix things!!!!

macman

If the laptop has 3G built in then Orange have to make it work under the SOGA, as your contract is with them. But you don't seem to have established yet whether there is a hardware fault or a software fault. Obviuously if you have a virus then that's hardly their responsibility, but that doesn't really sounds like a likely cause based on the info you have given.
As for the contract, it appears you don't understand the term. If you break a contract, then the other party is entitled to be put back in the original position that they would have been in had you run the full term. Your laptop is not 'free', it's been supplied upfront in return for an overpriced monthly contract lasting 2 years. If you break the contract after 2 months, so you not think they'll want to recover the £350 or so that the laptop was worth new?
PS: You say in your original post that Orange advised you to download an update-so have you tried doing this to see if it fixes the problem?

stephbond89

It is my husbands laptop and he is in work at the moment which is where he uses his 3G internet- there is no wireless so he is going to have to ry that when he gets home, reallY I just wanted to know where we stand with it, if it is a hardware problem, i.e. the 3G has died, but they refuse to fix it for some reason, I wanna know where we stand on the contract front, yes of course I understand that they want the money back for the laptop, which is fair enough, but if we sent back the laptop and the sim and said hey look this isnt working, and I am paying £30 a month for something which doesnt work. I do understand though if we broke the laptop, that that is our own fault and something we need to deal with, but to be fair we'd still be paying for something which no longer was in use but they wouldn't fix. And I know Asus charge huge fees for fxing laptops if it isnt under warranty...! But yes I see where you're coming from with that though!

Basically, he turns on the laptop and clicks the button to connect to the Orange internet, and it says something along the lines of plug in internet device. As though it isnt reading the sim card- which my hubby who knows more about computers, said sounds like the 3G is broken!

We will see what happens when he downloads this thing when he gets home

macman

You can't return it until you have established what the fault is and worked through the possible solutions with Orange/Asus. First thing to try would be a SIM swap.

stephbond89

Hi I thought that about a SIM swap, but would putting a normal Sim into the computer work?? Or does it have to be a special one?! Im terrible with technology!!! lol!!

All I know is that Error code 43 is coming up, I have tried searching for this but its useless there is nothing on the web about it which is helpful at all. Though it does say about installing drivers which could be what the man on the phone was talking about, so he will try that when he gets home! Im just hoping it works, we can't afford to buy a new laptop or to pay off the whole contract. But though it does sound now like a hardware issue...which I am supopsing they have to fix...!