Orange mobile phone £590 bill - please help!

danfoster79

I've been a customer with Orange since 1998 and kept the same number throughout. I've never really had any problems, paid my bills on time etc. Last year they offered me an upgrade to the new HTC Desire phone, with unlimited 3g internet, 100 SMS and 500 mins. I started using more texts than allowance so quickly rectified the problem and increased texts to an unlimited bundle. I had to send my first phone back as it was faulty - a second arrived and although not as problematic as the first, it does do unusual things like cutting off calls, locking me in on internet pages and sending me weird text symbols everytime I turn it on - about 2 months ago I reported this to Orange and they told me to always make sure my phone had the latest HTC update.

On 23rd Dec 2011 I went to my parents for Xmas (they live in the north yorks moors and get one bar/no phone signal (depending where you stand, but extremely poor). As always I used my HTC Desire widgets to connect to my mum's wifi and used this over the Xmas period (mainly looking for jobs as I was made redundent at the end of Dec). During this period Orange contacted me with a message to say a new update was ready for my phone and to download it.

I left yorkshire after new year and headed home. I then received a bill from Orange for £596. All my usual costs were in place but they charged me a huge amount for going 200MB over a data allowance of 1GB

I couldn't believe it and called them pleading that there had been some mistake as I was connected to my mums Wifi. They told me it would take 4 days to investigate. I rang everyday after them 4 days as was so worried about the charge and just kept getting told that someone would call me. I told them I was worried about the charge and even increased my data package by 500MB per month for an extra fiver a month.

Nearly 10 days later I get a text today telling me that unless I pay the full amount they will suspend all my services - I need my phone to help look for jobs (and its the only one I have). The girl who was dealing with my call just closed the matter without contacting me to tell me the outcome.

I called them and literally spent hours on the phone trying to agree a fairer price. I told them that my phone was connected to the Wifi and they told me that a 3G connection and not Wifi was used following their investigation, they sent me proof of this and they are right, it does show that I was using data services via the phone and not Wifi as I believed.

I just don't know what happened.

They told me that a Wifi connection can be over-ridden in some cases and I needed to do more than just change the switches over on my widget - I found it really hard to understand what they were talking about and didn't know why anything wasn't said before.

They've agreed to bring the bill down to £480.

I don't know where to turn as I'm on benefits (for hopefully a short time). I can't believe after all these years that they would do this - surely I have some consumer protection or something would have been flagged up to say data charges were coming in at over £450...warn me....do something? I've NEVER gone over my data allowance before...surely their fair using policy must see this??

Can anyone offer me any help or advice? Is there anything I can do? Also, I don't know why but Orange still have me down as a business customer....this was from years ago when I was freelancing....

Thanks

Dan

chalkie99

Sorry, can't really help but would suggest you might get more assistance in another section such as Consumer Rights as this is not a loan question

swifthorn

Watchdog would be your best bet.

I don't know abut HTC but when my iPhone was connected to the internet via my house Wifi it didn't effect my bill. I would press this and contact CAB and watchdog, because honestly I don't believe it's correct.

Orange are evil for doing things like that, My mate went on holiday, sent only a few texts and got a bill for something like £500 :eek: She got it all back after getting CAB involved.

Hax

swifthorn wrote: »

when my iPhone was connected to the internet via my house Wifi it didn't effect my bill.

Browsing the internet over WiFi will NOT affect your bill. If the data has been logged over the GPRS connection then the phone can NOT have been using the WiFi connection.

Orange will have no information about the WiFi connection - only the GPRS connection.

You must have been going some to use up 1.2GB of data in just two weeks of browsing job websites - especially if you had as poor signal level as you say!

I'm not sure where you stand on this as the problem actually lies with your phone not connecting to the WiFi - be that the fault of the phone or the fault of your configuration of the phone is hard to say - but one thing you can be sure of - you did use that data over Orange's GPRS connection.


Do you have anything you can sell to help pay the bill? If possible, it's better to pay it and then contest the charges - that way, you avoid any interruption to your service and, more importantly, you avoid damaging your credit file.

paddyrg

Ouch! That's criminally expensive. Funny, if you were roaming, it would have capped at €50 I gather, but on home soil...

I don't fancy your chances at getting this waived, the mobicos have got this kind of legal mugging down to a tee. T-mo for what its worth don't charge overages - same company as orange now though, so it may change

telboyo

What tariif are you on? if you go here you can download a pdf of orange's old tarrifs- it looks like they have charged you the old payg data rate at £3 per meg.
this should be capped and no where near 600 gbp. Get out your previous bills/contract and see what tarrif you are on.
Don't ring them send them a letter.
Are orange customer services still as bad as they were years ago?

gamez-over

Orange are evil! The way I would proceed is to stop calling them and put everything in writing.

iolanthe07

I'm glad I stick to PAYG.

SurreyBear

Write to your MP - they can be very helpful in these situations

DansMum_2

My HTC HD2 sometimes will turn its 3g on normally when I'm asleep... I then check the phone at a later time to see its been connected for 30 hours or so... Even with my alleged unlimited internet it costs me over my 'limit' .... But £560 is outrageous

thatsean

Don't understand what the op is looking for here, the service was used, and must be paid for. Ask to speak to credit control, and agree a payment plan. They will likely agree to taking it over 3 months.