What are my rights? 3rd party upgrade company conned us!

honey_bee1384

I'm so sorry to hear of your troubles. Situations like this are why i totally ignore phone calls from 3rd party companies. When i first signed up with T-mobile i took out an 18month contract after 6 months i got a phone call saying i could upgrade, i told them i was still in my contract, they didnt have a clue. I had quite a few phone calls before my contract expired and i told them where to go.
My bf always goes into the phone store to upgrade his phone, so the last time he went in i asked the sales rep if t-mobile (we were in a genuine store) phoned you when you could upgrade your phone, he told me no they didnt.

So the next time a 3rd party agent called me i told her of mt trip to the t-mobile store and what the rep told me and she wasnt very happy.

Now to upgrade my phone i go into store or use the company website.

newlywed

I had a phone call like that saying my contract had recently expired and I was entitled to an upgrade. When i explained that in fact it was a new orange contract and I'd only had it for one month they offered to call me back in 11 months!

Then another one I had I told them no thanks and please remove me from your database, they asked what phone I had. Why do you need that information to REMOVE me from your database? Erm I need to fill it in was the reply so I said in a very girly way it's a Nokia something. Bye.

Dad nearly got caught with one of these "acting on behalf of Orange" offering him a new phone and new deal. He told them he had a very good and very old deal and that he didn't want a new phone as his ancient brick phone works fine for him. When they couldn't check what type of deal he was on he said I thought you were from Orange???? Then rang Orange to complain.

reehsetin

we get these complaints a lot in store people come in to upgrade and find out that theyve been upgraded,
these companies should say their not from orange, i usually say to people to formal complaint to orange head office, im sure they monitor these complaints and it would hopefully mean orange wont re-new their contracts. as far as im aware orange have not re-newed quite a few 3rd party contracts

peddy

reehsetin wrote:

we get these complaints a lot in store people come in to upgrade and find out that theyve been upgraded,
these companies should say their not from orange, i usually say to people to formal complaint to orange head office, im sure they monitor these complaints and it would hopefully mean orange wont re-new their contracts. as far as im aware orange have not re-newed quite a few 3rd party contracts

Yes they are monitored and we are urged to send feedback off if we get any customers calling in with these complaints. I know of at least 3 of these companies who have had their contracts terminated in the last year alone, and there are probably more I don't know about.

mollymauk

I've had so many phonecalls from these dealers, and by and large they do say "I'm calling from Orange" rather than admitting that they are 3rd party.

I could be wrong, but I think this article (below) explains how they get the info.

http://www.silkmoth.com/article.asp?id=179

I'm sick of it, they've been calling me all year, and they all offer me crap deals!

peddy

mollymauk wrote:

I've had so many phonecalls from these dealers, and by and large they do say "I'm calling from Orange" rather than admitting that they are 3rd party.

I could be wrong, but I think this article (below) explains how they get the info.

http://www.silkmoth.com/article.asp?id=179

I'm sick of it, they've been calling me all year, and they all offer me crap deals!

This system doesn't give the dealer any information, they must already have that. If what they input doesn't match what is on Oranges systems then it rejects the upgrade application straight away. It is simply a tool for them to check if a customer can upgrade. They have to enter personal details i.e. date of birth etc. If they don't have this, they can't check if the customer can upgrade.

johnmoney05

Well, I received this kinds of phone calls endlessly everyday. Now, I just cut off and say goodbye to them. Honestly, if I could, I would say f$ck off.

bairnpunter

The saga has ended....! :beer: :j

A supervisor was meant to phone me yesterday, but with no phone call at 6pm, I was back onto Orange, thankfully I had taken names and extension numbers of the folk I had talked to previously, especially the helpful and very apologetic advisor. Anyway, I got through to the nice advisor, and he phoned me back in 10 mins, and had added my texts back onto my account. I hope his call was recorded, cos I stressed to him, that I'd spoken to a lot of Orange advisors, and he was the only one that understood fully my plight, and tried to resolve the issue rather than fob me off....

Anyway, on the wider issue, its great that Orange are monitoring these companies, is there anything I could do to help? I was going to send a letter to the 3rd party, but maybe I should send it to Orange instead, and tell them about the practices of these companies they employ? They are clearly not following Oranges' business code of conduct. My wife and I were screwed by different companies...

Cheers guys....this forum is magic....

DarkHorse

Where do these companies get our Orange telephone number from? Does Orange sell them?

They cannot be guessing the numbers as how would they know we are with Orange as the number no longer gives away which network you are with!

peddy

DarkHorse wrote:

Where do these companies get our Orange telephone number from? Does Orange sell them?

They cannot be guessing the numbers as how would they know we are with Orange as the number no longer gives away which network you are with!

No Orange don't sell customers numbers and it's actually illegal to do so. Also why would they pay a dealer to upgrade someone when they have their own outbound sales teams who can offer the same upgrade (and normally on a better tarrif) themselves, therefore saving money on commission?

Another thing regarding this. Many people get calls from these companies when they are only say 3 or 4 months into a contract and are unable to upgrade. If The mobile companies passed on their customers details do you think they would waste their time by passing on details of customers who cannot upgrade?

I believe (although I could be wrong) all they do is have lists of prefixes that they know were released about 11 months ago and then randomly generate numbers to call using these prefixes. I've had these calls before on my mobile and I work for Orange. Usually I let them tell me how they are going to give me a better deal than what I'm on. "Oh really" I say "so you can better free line rental with free calls and texts can you". Soon shuts them up alright.