Right to Cancel Orange Mobile contract?

Flip77

Hi

Was hoping for a bit of advice.

I was with O2 on an iphone contract. When it came to an end i signed up to orage as they had more free minutes, more Data allowance and Free Orange Maps (normal value approx £5 a month)

I phoned to cancel with O2 and they matched everything, except orange maps (for obvious reasons)

I thought Orange Maps would be useful, and hey it's an extra perk to the contract woth a fier a month.

However, the Iphone app never works, it jus shuts down on me. there are numerous reviews and i am not the only person with this problem.

numerous phonecalls and complaints later I decided to mail the CEO of Orange, and the next day i had a phone call from a woman from the CEO office. she told me they would look into it. for the first week i was being kept up to date, it went to level 1 tech support, then level 2. Now it is at Level 3 and has been for about 3 or 4 weeks and no one has called me.

I contacted Orange today who put me through to tech support 1 again, who tried the same things that already have been tried and nothing.

He has now said he will push level 3 to speed things up.

my question is this.

I have had the contract for 6 months and they have not been able to provide part of my bundle that i signed up to. The orange maps was what tipped me to try another mobile company and sign the contract.

Are they in breach of the contract, or is there small print that i am missing?

I believe they have had ample opportunity to fix the fault.

Thanks

Phil

Notmyrealname

They are not in breach of contract. If you actually read an Orange contract it basically says as long as they can provide calls, even if only on 2G, then they're not in breach. They have lots of exclusions for not being able to provide services such as data etc.

grumbler

Notmyrealname wrote: »

They are not in breach of contract. If you actually read an Orange contract it basically says as long as they can provide calls, even if only on 2G, then they're not in breach. They have lots of exclusions for not being able to provide services such as data etc.

:huh: Really? So, if I buy an expensive contact with thousands of text and a big data allowance, but am unable to send texts and get 3g signal anywhere, it is OK?
In fact, all 'exclusions' can be only temporary, not permanent:

...the quality and availability of Services may sometimes be affected...
Services may sometimes be affected by maintenance and upgrading
...These may result in some or all of the Services becoming temporarily unavailable. In such cases, we'll do everything we can to keep the period of non-availability to a minimum. However, some interruption may be inevitable.

In fact at the very start of the T&C they give a definition of the Service Plan:

a number of products which shall include but not be limited to bundles of airtime, text, and/or Orange Additional Services and/or additional discounts offered by Orange for an agreed monthly or other periodic payment.

Then they say:

4.4 If, for reasons beyond our control, we are no longer able to provide the Services, we will at our discretion either:
4.4.1 make arrangements for you to be supplied with equivalent Services by another network at no extra cost to you, or
4.4.2 accept written notice from you that you wish to terminate your Contract. In such cases we will refund any pre-paid Charges that have not been used up.

They do "reserve the right to change, suspend or withdraw part or all of any Orange Additional Service on giving reasonable notice", but I think that the Additional Services are the ones that are not included into the Service Plan.

NFH

Notmyrealname wrote: »

They are not in breach of contract. If you actually read an Orange contract it basically says as long as they can provide calls, even if only on 2G, then they're not in breach. They have lots of exclusions for not being able to provide services such as data etc.

Not true. Orange are liable to provide any service that they promised, e.g. through advertising, that would be included in the service. Any contractual term to exclude their obligations would fall foul of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 and would consequently be unenforceable.

You might also like to include the BT Openzone fault in your complaint to Orange, given that they show little interest in fixing it.

Flip77

ok, so correct me if i'm wrong but it looks like i may ave grounds to terminate the contract?

They have tried to imply it is only me and my phone which has the problems but i swiftly pointed out there 2 star review on the app as loads of people have the same problem.

I was even told at the start of my complaint that orange are not putting any more money into the app as it had so many problems and they are designing a new service. Although when i mentioed this in my letter to the CEO they denied everything i said i was told!

NFH

I think what Orange will probably offer is to compensate you for each of the services that you're missing, e.g. £5/month for maps, £7/month for BT Openzone (e.g. based on buying an alternative like the Cloud) and anything else that you mention. They will probably do this in one lump sum covering all months until the end of the contract. Demanding a cancellation of the contract will be harder unless you can cite more problems.

Flip77

Have again emailed the CEO of orange. I have given them 14 days to rectify my problem otherwise the contract should cease and no financial cost to myself. I have also threatened them with Ofcom and CISAS.

Will wait and see!

udydudy

Which email did you use for complaint to the CEO?

Flip77

udydudy wrote: »

Which email did you use for complaint to the CEO?

Hi

Check out this website. It's very helpful and will have oranges CEO Email on.

http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!/

I am not by the pc I used to email the CEO but the email address is on this website

Flip77

Www. CEOemail .c o m

Without spaces

drbesty

Flip77 wrote: »

Have again emailed the CEO of orange. I have given them 14 days to rectify my problem otherwise the contract should cease and no financial cost to myself. I have also threatened them with Ofcom and CISAS.

Will wait and see!

What good is a threat to OFCOM? They regulate the industry they don't deal with individual cases. CISAS will only look at your case once you've exhausted the complaints procedure with Orange, and even then only when 8 weeks has passed.

It's no wonder people arent getting timely replys from the CEOs office if everyone is flooding them with emails