Orange billing each text twice!

TomUK

Anyone else had this problem? I don't check my pay as you go account too often, but a recent trip to USA seemed to deplete my credit very quickly. I knew that texts from USA to UK were costing me 45p each, but the credit drain seemed excessive. On checking my account online I found that nearly all the texts I had sent were double entered, one after the other. Same date, same time, same number. So I was being charged 90p (45p x2) per text, I thought it may have been a problem with the roaming system, but then I saw that even before the USA trip and using a different (dual band) handset in the UK, many of my UK texts had also been double entered. I could only check back one month so don't know how long this has been happening. The UK problem was not too costly because I receive a certain number of free texts per month, but when my 12p charge kicks in I am charged 24p because of the double entry.
I called Orange and their technician updated my SIM card, credited £5 to my account and gave a month's free calls and texts, which went some way to compensating for the excess charge of £7.20 for the USA texts.
Now here's the irony. Later in the day I received a text from Orange asking me to answer a couple of questions about the service I had received earlier that day. This involved two texts from them to me and two from me to them in reply. Guess what! My two texts to their 249 number were shown as four texts when I checked the account later (although in my phone's SENT box only two appear) - i.e. each text had appeared twice. These texts were free, but obviously the problem persists.
Anyone else encountered this problem? How can I resolve it?

Tony5101

You're not going over the 160 characters by any chance are you?

wantnomoneyworries

Not sure if this is relevant but quite often (though not always) when my friend who is on orange texts me I get 2!! I've told her but I guess because they are in her free allowance she doesn't notice?

TomUK

Not going anywhere near 160 characters. In fact the ones to Orange's 249 survey reply number consisted of (a) 'YES' and (b) the number '6'.

greenyj: Friends who I've asked so far, also got the text twice on their phones, one after the other, although I'd only pressed the SEND button once!

Just to conclude this post: I have checked my texts for the last two days and so far, so good - each text has only appeared once on my account, so hopefully the Orange SIM update by the technical dept. has sorted the problem.