Cancelling Orange Contract

Leighn79

Hi Guys

I'm just looking for some advice?

My contract with Orange finished in March this year, on the 20th of February I called them to give my notice of cancellation (they require 30 days).

At the same time I also requested a new pay as you go sim to be sent out as I was giving the handset to my friend and they would require their own sim/number etc.

Yesterday, Orange took another payment from my bank account. When I called them up to find out why they had taken this, plus a payment in April, I was advised that my contract hadn't been cancelled.

They have advised that because the new pay as you go sim was not activated correctly, against the original phone number that my contract has continued to run. They have stated that I should have called up when activating the new sim and registered it against my existing account to make sure the cancellation process was completed.

I posted the sim to my friend and they just activated it in their own name, not against my own account.

My query is, as I called to give them notice, surely it shouldn't matter if I was activating a new sim or not. I wasn't keeping my original number so my contract should simply have been cancelled as per the 30 days notice.

Can anyone shed some light on this, or give any advice it would be really appreciated!

grumbler

It's a pretty unusual situation.
If they say that "the new pay as you go sim was not activated correctly", ask them to show you any instructions for a correct activation and to explain why you were not told about this. I am sure they will be unable to do both.

If they refuse to refund the money, complain in writing.

Sponge

I'm not sure, but it sounds like they were 'converting' your account to a PAYG one. The PAYG SIM had to be activated to complete the process. As it wasn't, the account closure wasn't finalised in the system. They haven't processed the closure of one account and the provision of a new one (the PAYG SIM) as two separate transactions, which is what you wanted.

Did they tell you anything like this during the conversion?

custardy

when you requested the PAYG sim it was part of your contract cancellation
you(the contract holder) would need to call up and activate the PAYG sim in your phone and get the sim updates to close your contract account

Jon_01

Asking for a payg sim would cancel the cancellation request (if you follow) as you'd be pretty p'd off if you forgot to register it and lost your number.

You can't cancel AND ask for payg sim, the two are exclusive.

Did you tell the CSR that you had no intention of using the payg sim for your acc? As I can't see that they'd send you one out in the first place if you did, they only do this so you can keep your number.

grumbler

custardy wrote: »

when you requested the PAYG sim it was part of your contract cancellation

How do you know this? I don't think it's normal to request a new sim when switching a contract to PAYG. Normally it's being done with the same sim. And a free PAYG sim can be requested independently, although through a different channel normally.

I think very few (if any) customers want to change the number after switching to PAYG. Probably this was a unique request that had to be dealt with accordingly, i.e. with all the necessary instructions and explanations given.

Guys_Dad

Ok. What I read is that you wanted a 2nd unassociated contract on a PAYG basis to run in parallel with your contract till your contract expired, and not convert your contract to PAYG, retaining your existing number.

Seems that there was some confusion here - in hindsight, you should have ordered the PAYG sim in another call - but you should request that Orange dig out the tape of the call to verify your story.

Get back on to CS and explain that the CS rep had amalgamated your 2 separate requests incorrectly. If that fails, ask for a manager. If that fails, write a shore email to head office explaining the mix up and requesting your refund.

Should not be a problem to them to oblige.

Jon_01

grumbler wrote: »

How do you know this? I don't think it's normal to request a new sim when switching a contract to PAYG. Normally it's being done with the same sim. And a free PAYG sim can be requested independently to a contract, although through a different channel normally.

I think very few (if any) customers want to change the number after switching to PAYG. Probably this was a unique request that had to be dealt with accordingly, i.e. with all the necessary instructions given.

No, mate your wrong on that one (unusually for you?).
Contract and payg sims are on different sim number ranges, if you swap from contract to payg or vis versa you'll always get a new sim and have your number moved to it. (at least it always been that way when I was in CS).

custardy

grumbler wrote: »

How do you know this? I don't think it's normal to request a new sim when switching a contract to PAYG. Normally it's being done with the same sim. And a free PAYG sim can be requested independently, although through a different channel normally.

I think very few (if any) customers want to change the number after switching to PAYG. Probably this was a unique request that had to be dealt with accordingly, i.e. with all the necessary instructions and explanations given.

with Orange you can cancel your contract and change to a PAYG whilst retaining your number
this is done by getting a sim sent out and following the included instructions to call and activate the sim
this then cancels your contract

grumbler

Jon_01 wrote: »

No, mate your wrong on that one (unusually for you?).
Contract and payg sims are on different sim number ranges, if you swap from contract to payg or vis versa you'll always get a new sim and have your number moved to it. (at least it always been that why when I was in CS).

Personally, I have never done this and don't know if it is network-specific, but for t-mobile it was very simple:

shadowspy24 wrote: »

...I didn't give any notice, just phoned them up and asked to cancel. They said you can either turn the sim into a pay as you go which is instant or wait 30 days and the sim will cancel. I chose to turn it into a pay as you go and they said it would be done in a few hours and they wouldn't charge me anymore money.

Leighn79

Thanks for all the replies and advice, this has been more help than Orange Customer Services.

I think the issue has definately been confused when I requested the additional sim card. I'm going to get back on to them and see where I get!