Orange let me down!

simplealec

Dear Money Saving Experts,

I recently started a 24-month contract with Orange (coming up to the 3rd month now), and despite a few days of outages (?!) I've been otherwise... content with their service. The 3G is slow but I don't think this is necessarily their fault.

Now, because I knew I was likely to be making a large number of calls to North America this month (October), I decided to see what optional add-ons I could get for my contract to reduce the amount it would cost me (no Orange contract that I'm aware of includes international minutes). This option costs £2.50 for the month, and claims to save me up to (yes, yes, "up to" I know) 30% on the calls charges.

My bill for the last month stated that I had spent as-near-as-makes-no-difference, 1000 minutes on calls to North America, which is true. This alone cost me about £98 before VAT, which works out about 10p/min.

What's got me angry is that for my optional extra (£2.50), applied to those 1000 minutes (or £98), saved me a grand total of... nothing. In fact, the stated figure on my bill says they 'saved' me £2.13 which, as you may have noticed, £0.37 less than what is cost me to have the option in the first place.

I don't think it's acceptable that an optional extra should require you to spend approx. 1,200 minutes on international rate calls before you break even with what the optional extra cost you to begin with. I don't think it's acceptable that a claim of up to 30% saving on £98 turns out to be a cost - not a saving - of £0.37.

Help me, Experts! What can I do to right this wrong?

Hopefully yours,
Alec

DarkConvict

USA & Canada 30% Off
Without With
(£1.10) 77p Calling
(70p) 49p Receiving a Call
(40p) 28p Sending a Text

http://www2.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?c=OUKPage&cid=1044131837837&pagename=PersonalIR#WT

You should have paid, 1000 * £1.10 = £1100 on international calls, but only pay £700 with the package. What surprises me is you only paid £98 for 1000 minutes. At that price you paid about 10p a minute which is good value for even calls to UK Mobiles.