Orange Double charged me for a year!

jellyang

I upgraded my dial-up to Broadband in August 2005. Everything fine . I was told I had to have a new e-mail address which was a bit of a pain but not the end of the world.

Fast foward 12 months & after sorting through some paperwork (yes I know I shouldn't leave it so long) I realised that Orange had taken money for Broadband & Dial up service.

I called them & they said oh yes we will refund that put it in writing. Wrote a letter with the details, reply said no refund you didn't cancel dial-up (it was an upgrade)

After a while I contacted Cisas the internet arbitration service. Another three months wasted as they contradict themselves all the time.
Now Orange & Cisas are both telling me different things about deadlock letters & I am stuck in the middle :mad:

Now I think I will just do a CCJ online against Orange & take my chances.
I have no way of proving my side of the story but neither do they.
I did ask them if they had a recording of the conversation as they like to tell you that all the time, they didn't think they did have. Well they wouldn't would they because they would clearly hear me ask for an upgrade & to cancel my dial -up.

I think this is what as known as Sharp practice & I will fight them all the way!

Anyone else had similar experiences?


Jelly

Lorian

Sounds to me like you re-signed up rather than upgraded.

Quentin

This seems a case of "I've double paid", not they've "double charged"

Didn't you get any invoices?

jellyang

Never had an invoice from them ever.

Which is a very good point , if like they are claiming , i requested to keep both accounts then should have had invoices for both accounts.

I upgraded from a mailshot advert.
After all why would you want a dial-up & a broadband from the same phone line ??

I suppose I can prove that I never used the dial-up number after I went to broadband.

Yes its my fault I didn't check my paperwork more often.



Jelly

Quentin

Did they take the money by direct debit?

If so, you can show the amounts being taken for dial up alone (prior to your upgrade) followed by the double amounts to your Bank and get them to refund you through the Direct Debit Guarantee. They should refund you immediately.

The Bank will then take it from Orange's account and it will be up to Orange to prove they were authorised to get this money.

jellyang

No they were taken by credit card.
When I upgraded my original card was declined (thought that was strange at the time) so I used a different credit card. Another reason why I didn't pick up on the double payments earlierm as I had it set up to do minimum payment & didn't always check the statements.

Can I claim payments back this way?

Jelly

Quentin

Don't think it will be straightforward as you gave Orange the card number, so that looks as though you intended them to take the money.

jellyang

Thanks Quentin for your advice,

I will probably take my chances on CCJ route.
I have done similar before , as I can insist it is then heard local to me, the hotel bill for their people would be more than they have to pay me so they often back down or are at least prepared to negotiate.


Jelly