MSE News: Orange to raise monthly mobile costs

ucbtjsc

soolin wrote: »

I reckon the increase will be applied to the tariff before discounts. I can't get at my paperwork at the moment but I think my tariff was actually £38 in full and reduced down to around £23 by all the various discounts for loyalty etc.

If your discount is applied as a percentage (as mine is) then it makes no difference if the price increase is applied before or after they apply your discount.

e.g. £40 tariff, 10% loyalty discount, 4.34% increase:

Discount applied first:
£40 x 0.9 = £36
£36 x 1.0434 = £37.56

Discount applied after:
£40 x 1.0434 = £41.736
£41.736 x 0.9 = £37.56

Separately though, I spoke to Ofcom today who gave me all the details required to write my letter to Orange:

My Ofcom Reference number
Orange's Address:
[FONT=&quot]Orange Customer Services[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]PO Box 10[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Patchway[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Bristol[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]BS32 4BQ[/FONT]
The relevant section of Ofcom's general conditions:

“Under General Condition 9.6, communications providers must provide customers for whom a change is likely to be of material detriment with one month’s notice of the change.
Customers must also be informed that they are entitled to terminate their contract without penalty if the change is not acceptable to them.”

They said essentially that Orange should have offered customers a way out at the time of the text.

Orange said that the above paragraph is irrelevant as inflation based changes are exempt and that because it is in their T&Cs we have no choice but to accept them.


The only thing they said they could do was to move me onto a lower tariff with fewer minutes to alleviate any "material detriment".


I'll be sending my letter this evening and will have to wait up to 8 weeks before taking things further with CISAS.[FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]

subaur_swift

hi mate

i am 50 \ 50 to tell you the truth but my lady is on o2 so i am looking there now however i am happy with my phone ( nokia n8 ) so i might just have a sim contact.

but what do to & how to cancel right as i have to do it right as my contract ends: 24/02/2013.

& i do not want to owe them any money at all if or when i cancel, but the more i think about it the more i feel like ending it with them.

daleski75

sanchopanza15 wrote: »

Just got off the pohone with Orange, before I could say anything they told me about how the increase is legal I didn't want to get out of my contract, but wasn't happy at the increase and the fact that I was told I would get regular usage reviews but had no such thing in 15 months. The guy on the line was happy to review my contract and gave me a reduction, which was fine for me as I wasn't using even half of my allowance. This may be the way to go as I think they would rather keep customers, and my reduction was a million times better than the increase, that said some people may be using up their whole allowance.

ps Are there no mods on this forum? Having a look through the topic, some users have done nothing but berate people who are unhappy about the increase. Guess it makes them happy in their pants or something

This is what I mentioned a few pages back rather than go through all the hassle of trying to cancel your contract just be polite with Orange CS and see if you can change your tariff to get a reduction off your monthly bill.

I can bet that anyone who does leave will be paying pretty much the same amount on another network so why not beat Orange at their own game and downgrade

Shiggaddi

I don't know if this argument will stick, but I signed up to Orange via E2save, and agreed to have a cheap phone, but the deal was 99p per month (I pay Orange £25, and claim the rest via cashback)

The price increase will mean I'm paying about £1 per month more, which is actually a 100% increase, not a 4.34% increase. Since I entered into the contract with E2save to pay 99p per month, I think an e-mail to them to ask for extra cashback to cover the Orange price increase is called for, even if they say no.

DUTR

grumbler wrote: »

With my thousands I don't understand either and don't see anything hidden.

The only real question I see if this term is fair/legal/...
IMHO it is fair and legal, and the only problem is the OFCOM's regulation that is not a law, but muddies the water (like many other ambiguous regulations that they produce, but are incapable of enforcing).

ETA: I am on Orange too 12/24.

Guys_Dad wrote: »

Glad I am not the only one. :beer:

Make that the only two or three :cool:

Pilks

Is Martin Lewis investigating this!!

Every time someone rings Orange they get different information. Ofcom and CISAS are also giving out conflicting information.

Come on Martin, please get involved and make Orange answer! Make them explain why they think rules do not apply to them.

We want a definitive answer, is this legal or not and if it is then what is the point of the 9.6 of the communications act 2003!

:money:Try to Get us an Answer, Please, us little people are getting nowhere!

Guys_Dad

Pilks wrote: »

Is Martin Lewis investigating this!!

Come on Martin, please get involved and make Orange answer! !

Intelligent post from this newbie. :beer:

We need a MSE update along these lines.

steve237

Refer to my post #287 on page 15 of this thread. 2 minutes on the phone (dial 150 from your orange mobile), be nice, and chances are they'll cut your bill there and then if you're friendly! They dropped me down to £10 a month for 150 mins, 550 texts and 500GB data on an HTC Desire HD. Mid contract, no extension.

Give it a try!

Cessquill

As a very quick aside to anybody of the opinion that this isn't a big deal - very rough calculations...

Average person spends £439/year on mobile phone (source, Billmonitor, April 2011). That equates to £36.58 / month. Orange have increased the bills by 4.3% to eight million customers (sources, original Orange text, news article on This is Money).

4.3% of £36.58 means that people will be paying on average £1.57 per month more. OK, no huge amount. However, in doing this, Orange have potentially netted £12.5m / month from existing customers.

Obviously these are only suggestive calculations, but you get the point. Harks back to everybody giving a little by turning off lights and switching to energy saving bulbs. Only this time, a corporation benefits rather than the environment.

I then got bored and worked out that they would need to lose 329,818 customers for this to cancel out, but that's just silly.

subaur_swift

Pilks wrote: »

Is Martin Lewis investigating this!!

Every time someone rings Orange they get different information. Ofcom and CISAS are also giving out conflicting information.

Come on Martin, please get involved and make Orange answer! Make them explain why they think rules do not apply to them.

We want a definitive answer, is this legal or not and if it is then what is the point of the 9.6 of the communications act 2003!

:money:Try to Get us an Answer, Please, us little people are getting nowhere!

This is the best post on this tread !!!! well done & thanks...... :T