Orange mis sold contract - advice needed please!

rabidbun

Hi,

Having a major problem with Orange and need some help with this one as it keeps getting worse!

Just downgraded my mobile phone contract with orange from £25 per month to £10 a month with an extra £5 off per month with loyalty upgrade. This happened two months ago and the first bill was wrong so I assumed it was a changeover bill with added call charges or something left over from the previous contract. The second bill was the same, so phoned and was told that I was paying extra for both paperless billing and for photo messages that I had been asked if I needed at the end of the call. I had assumed that the photo messages were part of the quoted cost as they had not said that they cost extra nor advised me of the additional charge for paper billing, which had near doubled the monthly bill. After a long upselling attempt phonecall they removed both of these (though did not give me a refund for their error), and put me back to what they had quoted initially of £5 per month.

On the internet (new internet account) I clicked on my account and while looking through the options decided to find out what phones the contract allowed for free. We were listed 40 or so on the contract so researched and phoned to ask about a delivery issue with the one we wanted. At this stage we were told that our contract did not allow for upgrades despite the internet saying otherwise. We were also told that if I tried to order it (the order went right through to the end page with the order button, all showing free) that the site would throw up an error and we would be told to call CS where we would be told otherwise. They said that they were also not aware of any website error and that the website was right. Kinda confusing.

I was also never told that the new contract was not one that allowed upgrades and thus hugely different from my old one. I have also since found out that the £5 loyalty reduction per month is Not for the whole 18 months and runs out in August.

Sorry this is so long - how Orange can have made so many errors with one contract is beyond me tbh. :mad:

Where do I stand on cancelling this and/or reclaiming the money that they took by majorly mis selling the contract? Are there any places that we could take our complaint to? I'm still waiting on a CS reply but no luck so far.

MisterBrico

If they told you the loyalty discount was for the whole contract they have to honour that.

In terms of the picture messages and paper billing, well paper billing they should have said.

But if over the phone they had to list every single charge outside of the contracts allowance, you would die of old age haha

drbesty

So did you start a new contract two months ago? If so why would you be entitled to a new phone now? Which phone did you try and order?

rabidbun

For the loyalty price and the two add ons they didn't say about any of them; I would have expected add ons that doubled the price of that originally stated to have been mentioned in passing at least. They also didnt say anything as far as details regarding the loyalty price - but just said we could downgrade to the specific new contract to reduce our minutes and messages and that we would be eligible for the loyalty bonus which would reduce our monthly price to a fiver. Did not specifically ask if they meant it... Wish I had though.

The old contract allowed us to get a new phone (contract time extended depending on the phone)- I didn't even know that you could get contracts that didn't allow phone upgrades. I've only ever had two phones in ten years (battered but still working for the oldest) so upgraded part way through a contract last time. Asked to reduce cost of contract as we were considering payg, which is how they said we could get a reduction in costs by cutting our minutes and messages down - probably foolish to assume that would be a similar contract with less messages and minutes without grilling them thoroughly to see what they were leaving out and assuming they were omitting all the important details. Just feeling somewhat naive tbh, plus stuck with a pointless contract for another year and four months that will double in price come August.

Orange_Company_Representative

Hi rabidbun

Sorry to read about your recent experiences. It certainly does sound a little confusing, but without looking into your account I'm unable to be sure what has been done.

I'm unable to take your account details via this forum, but if you'd like to get in touch with us through Twitter or Facebook, using the information on our Profile page, we'd be happy to look into this for you.

I hope we can help.

Darren from Orange Helpers