advice please?

susi

My son has gone travelling, at the moment he is in some jungle in cambodia. Before he left almost 3 months ago he cancelled everything including his orange contract. His bank statements still come to my address and the last 2 I noticed Orange are still taking direct debits. I can understand last months as its probably from his usage before he went away but there shouldnt be any this month. He tried to go to his online banking but as internet is very limited it kept freezing up on him until i suppose for security reasons its locked him out. i have tried to ring orange on his behalf but they wont speak to me about his account, I have also been to his bank today and the same thing happened there. I cant get hold of my son at the moment as I assume he hasnt internet access (he generally skypes me when he can). Is there anything I can do, if they continue to take money his account is going to be overdrawn. His bank have given me a number for him to ring for telephone banking, its an 0845 number does he still ad 44 and delete the 0 when he can ring from overseas? Is there anything I can do for him regarding contacting orange (is there a free phone number he can use ?) Any advice welcome

OneADay

Sounds like he didn't cancel it properly or wires crossed somewhere.
If you can get hold of him - he could attempt to fax a written signed letter to you which you could post or take to an Orange shop on his behalf.

Or of course - he faxes direct to Orange.

Jon_01

When he cancelled did they send him a payg sim to keep his number?

If he didn't register that sim his contract acc wouldn't have closed. Might be worth checking his mail to be sure.

Mercenary

My son also went travelling for 10 months with only a Wi-Fi iPod Touch 2G. Before he left he cancelled his BB dongle contract with Orange, left the dongle AND his Orange PAYG phone here and skipped merrily away.
I had letters for the next few months from Orange demanding money for usage that was apparently showing after he'd left. I tried phoning Orange and after being cut off and held in a VERY long queue (spending my money while doing so) I finally got through but they refused to discuss anything and kept insisting that he could phone them to sort it out. Repeatedly telling them that he had left the dongle (and his phone) here in the UK and so COULDN'T be using it didn't seem to register with the unhelpful Customer Service person. Theyalso couldn't compute that anyone could be without a phone while abroad.
I had to email my son, hope he checked it and then he had to spend a lot of money holding in the same Orange phone queue from an expensive public phone in Thailand to put me onto his account to sort it all out.
When the threatening letters talking about debt-collecting started turning up I had to phone them again *sigh* and was told to phone the official collecting agency to arrange payment. I ended up paying the 3 months of fees for usage that hadn't happened simply to get rid of Orange.

I was disgusted that they have Customer 'Service' that is SO unhelpful in certain extreme circumstances. I really hope you can sort out your problem with them. Getting your son to contact them by spending a fortune on a public phone or using a friend's mobile is the only way to do anything. I wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole in the future.

susi

Sounds pretty much a similar senario, I have even rung the number my son was using before he left and its disconnected so it cant possibly be in use. The last payment they took from his account was for over £70 so where the hell thats being used on a dissconnected phone I dont know, its so frustrating and the bank wont stop the payments grrrrrrrr