Worth complaing to Orange?

secondevolution

Okay, so I placed an order on Orange's online store for the HTC Wildfire. Anyway, I received an e-mail from Orange saying they will need to call me and verify some details before they can process the order. Sure, fine. I gave them a timeslot to call me, but unfortunately I got sidetracked at work and missed two calls in two days.

So I decided to call up Orange myself and process the order. Got speaking to a representative, who was about to process it, when he says my card has been declined. I'm utterly flabbergasted, and lo and behold, a large sum of money has vanished from my 'available balance'. I'm at a loss as to where all this money has disappeared to, and I can only assumed it's connected to Orange.

Long story short, it turns out each time Orange tried to process the order (inc. the third time when I called them) the money was reserved out of my bank account. They give you a certain amount of time before cancelling the order, at which point the funds were released back into my account.

All's well that end's well, sure, but I'm appalled that they could have such a monopoly of my account. Say I desperately needed money for something and it wasn't available because Orange kept reserving cash for each order attempt - instead of putting aside one fee and one fee only!?

Do you think it's worth writing a letter of complaint to see if I can get my pound of flesh out of them?

=PS=
I bought the phone on eBay in the end. :P

Techhead_2

I think you've misunderstood. Its the bank that 'reserves' the money. This happens every time you use your card (and an authorisation is sought), its just that the gap between the authorisation hold and the money being claimed is normally so short you don't notice. Because they couldn't contact you to complete the transaction in time , the transaction 'fails' and your bank will eventually remove the hold on your funds.
The only alternative would be for the seller to completely cancel the transaction and ask you to re-order. I guess Orange feel its the lesser of two inconveniences (as I imagine most people contact them very quickly).
Personally, I don't think its worth complaining as part of the cause was you being occupied by work.