Getting out of Orange contract early

Hammyman

I want to leave Orange because of their abysmally poor service in my town. Despite having full signal strength on UTMS, I cannot receive and make calls. When people ring me it goes straight to answerphone. When I ring people, 1 out of 5 times it'll actually start ringing - the rest of the time is silence and then a connection error.

I've contacted Orange several times to resolve this and the last time they told me to manually put my phone on GSM which has sorted the call problem but then I can't use mobile broadband without having to go switch back at which point I then don't get calls. :mad:

I pay for mobile broadband as part of my package and the performance in my area is absolutely abysmal. I've been using it this week as I'm waiting for BB on my LL to be activated following a house move. I wait MINUTES to load MSE despite being on a 3G connection with full signal strength. This compares really badly to the backup 3 dongle I have which is managing over 2Mbps and is pretty much like landline broadband.

Bearing in mind I've been trying to resolve this for some time and manually having to switch to GSM isn't really a solution, is there anything I can use to end the contract early?

passatrider

If you moved house and you already had the contract then you have no comeback whatsoever - it's not Orange's fault that you moved areas.
However, if you took out the contract after you moved then you may have a stronger case. Try giving the 'Contract Returns' team a call on 0800 7978000 (free from landline) and explain your situation to them.

NB. Number office hours only

Hammyman

passatrider wrote: »

If you moved house and you already had the contract then you have no comeback whatsoever - it's not Orange's fault that you moved areas.
However, if you took out the contract after you moved then you may have a stronger case. Try giving the 'Contract Returns' team a call on 0800 7978000 (free from landline) and explain your situation to them.

NB. Number office hours only

Sorry, should have explained.

I've moved one street over and 5 houses up. Still on the same cell site - there's only one covering the town. Still exactly the same. In fact, its pretty much the same for much of East Yorks. Improves in Beverley and Hull but the rest of the county is problematic. Get outside of the county and there's usually no issues.

I'll give the Contract Returns team a call.

lozzaman

The problem here isn't coverage but is almost certainly a severely overloaded cell. You should be able to get GPRS on the 2G signal, which sounds like it might be faster than the current 3G. I know this isn't ideal as it is still slow and also will block calls while actively downloading.

3G doesn't seem to fail very gracefully when overloaded. At least with the 2G network you got a "Network busy" message rather than silence followed by "connection failed"
I had the same problem with o2 in Plymouth because 2 years ago they seemed to have one 3G cell up high, covering the city centre. If you let the phone connect to that ~50% of calls would fail and data was unusable 75% of the time. It was probably only ever installed to fob OFCOM off re: 80% coverage.

Accountant_Kerry

have you reigistered so you can pick up the t-mobile network as well as the orange network now?

Jon_01

Have you moved so that more buildings are now between you and the mast ?

drbesty

Lozzaman sounds about right, the serving cell is running over capacity, the strength of the signal itself is irrelevant, what matters is the data throughput on the site, think of it as a motorway, if the motorway is quiet the traffic will flow, once the motorway gets busy it grinds to a halt. As for the contract, if it works on 2g then you won't be able to cancel, the contract is an airtime agreement only, they don't have to provide 3g access, it's seen as an extra

Hammyman

Yeah, I'd kicked the possibility of it being overloaded around. The thing is about the contract is that it has 3g access and bundled internet connectivity in as part of the package so not sure if that makes a difference. Didn't get chance to call them today but I will tomorrow.

As for T-Mobile - I asked them already but still nothing.

No more buildings between me and the mast and in fact, I'm higher up so for UHF and up, I'm better positioned than I was.

spark_deals

Hammyman wrote: »

I want to leave Orange because of .
.
.
.
. is there anything I can use to end the contract early?

Well,
If you want to solve the problem, there might be a solution.
If you want to breach a contract, make sure that you find an irrefuteable ( I think this is the word) reason for them to FORCE you to do so. This would put you in a better position than to ask them to sign out. You sign out and make them agree to it with reason than excuse.
HTH

Hammyman

passatrider wrote: »

Try giving the 'Contract Returns' team a call on 0800 7978000 (free from landline) and explain your situation to them.

NB. Number office hours only

Number is disconnected.

philnicandamy

Hammyman wrote: »

Number is disconnected.

have a trawl through alternative numbers here then


http://www.saynoto0870.com/search.php