ORANGE plc I need HELP

v32det

Hi guys and thankyou for taking time to read my post. It is regarding both my partners and I Orange phone contract.

In Jan 2011 we noticed a deteriation in signal/service at both our home and work location. Left it a few weeks then phoned Orange. Orange said that they were upgrading their transmitters and some areas could only receive the legacy 2G. They asked me to switch to 2G until the problem was rectified.
Another month past and still no change, even using 2G we couldn’t make or receive most calls. Rang again , they done a check and told me that 5 out of the 6 mast in my county were down due to either vandalism or various faults (we live in a nice area by the way lol). The engineers were working on them so hold tight. I called again the next month as there was still no change. They told me that they were sorry but were still working on the problem. I asked about the mast near my home and they said it was fully working. I tried a 3rd older phone and new sim just to prove it wasn’t our handsets. This made no difference at all. After speaking to friends and neighbors who are/were on Orange, I had the same feedback from them. Many people were suffering the similar problem to myself and my partner. I phone orange yet again and asked to speak to a manager this time. The manager apologized and asked my to do the same things every other Orange employee did. Still no change. At this point I asked to come out of our contract due to loss of serve, but they decline and told me that I would be fined. I explained that since this issue with our service, I have lost money through my job as Iam an on-call telecommunication specialist. No one could get hold of me when they needed me. My Virgin landline bill has risen immensely as I now use it to call other mobiles for work. I get paid per job so this impacted my income greatly. I wasn’t asking for them to pay for this, I just wanted a resolution. They decided to put me through to an alike technician within Orange to discuss the problem and perform diagnostics. This was now May and the issues still not resolved. The engineer tested my home mast and again give it the all clear. Problem is that I have been in the telecommunications industry for over 20 years and I questioned his diagnostics and demanded that this be passed even higher up the command chain. The engineer assigned me my very own incident manager who told me that he would make sure this is resolved and would call me every 4 weeks with an update. I had to give him both my work and home phone number as he also could reach my mobile.
He called as he said he would and told me that some of the mast near my work address were working. He was partly correct as my signal on my phone would fluctuate from full to none and the QOS was terrible. He called me next month with no updates but refunded a month of line rental. Wow a whole £20 for the hasstle.
I kept calling orange and threatening to cancel my direct debit but again they said they would fine me if I did. I then threatened to contact the ombudsman if they didn’t let me out.
I had a call from the assigned incident manager again in October saying that he had good news. He told me that although the system checked the mast near me and reported no faults. An engineer visited the mast to perform in-depth diagnostics and found the fault. He said even though the signal coverage was ok, due to an internal fire alarm sensor failing. The transmitter was in by-pass mode and had been since before my first ever complaint back in January. He said that this is a new fault which no-one noticed and the remote monitoring system never picked up.
I was relieved that they found the fault but you can imagine that I had reached the end of my tether by this point. I again asked to cancel my contract and my partners. They still said no.
What he did suggest was until the mast is repaired , I could try a new phone which uses my home AP to connect to the telephone network they call it signal boost. He said that I would have to install orange broadband and upgrade my phone. He went to check on the availability then told me that I would have to change my broadband service provider and pay more for an updated signal boost phone. I was totally disgusted that they wanted more money to mask their problem and told him I want out now or Iam going to see my solicitor. He told me that he totally understood and wanted to try and help as much as he could. He told me he was going to request that the contract be terminated and would call me back.
I had a call back early November with their decision. They were letting me go and gave me the PUK code to move across. They also let me partner’s contract end early

Still awake
Sorry it was sooooo long, but I like to give the full picture.

My question is that,
Do I have a case to claim back any money through both loss of service, the high home phone bills and not forgetting my loss of earnings

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

PS….We have both switched to Vodaphone and get great signal everywhere we go…:A

Kind Regards
Dave

redfragglebiker

If you feel you have been miss-sold your mobile contract or been given misleading information or promises regarding mobile network coverage then you may be able to complain to one of the two telecoms dispute resolution schemes.
Every mobile operator in the UK must belong to either Cisas or the Communication Ombudsman Service and they have the power to award compensation to you the consumer of up to £5,000 if your complaint is up held.
However, before you take your complaint to either service you will need to have complained directly to your network provider and been through their in house complaints procedure.

(The above has been copied and pasted from a consumer advice group The below is my own input and suggestions)

However it may be worth checking if Orange have any kind of satisfaction or network Guarantee (I know O2 provide one) as you may be able to argue they have breached the terms of that guarantee. Unfortunately there is no legal requirement at the moment for mobile providers to guarantee a signal so it may be that you have to go to the ombudsman to get any kind of result. I would say your first bet is to write a diary of events as accurately as you can remember them and include dates and times. You may also get more luck if you go a bit higher up the chain. You could try sending an email plus your diary of events to the Orange CEO which is [EMAIL="olaf.swantee@orange.co.uk"]olaf.swantee@orange.co.uk[/EMAIL]


Good luck and let us all know how you get on

agrinnall

To expand a bit more on what redfraggle posted, Orange are regulated by Cisas http://www.cisas.org.uk/CustomerInformation-4_e.html

You should make a formal complaint to Orange, asking them for either resolution or a deadlock letter. If you haven't had either after 8 weeks then you can proceed with making a complaint through Cisas I don't have any experience of them but I did get compensation and a letter of apology from BT when their regulator found in my favour.

arcon5

Have you logged dates/times/person you spoke to and/or incident number for your phone calls?

If you can demonstrate you have given them the opportunity to rectify it you potentially have grounds to cancel the contract.

Maybe write them a letter of complaint and see how they respond..

Is the service up and running now or not?

v32det

Thanks guys for your advice.:beer:

As of Nov2011. We are no longer with Orange. Myself and my partner were with them for over 10 years each. This would make it difficult to pursue the route of them mis-selling me a product. It was a rolling contract with no user intervention. As far as the call logs, well there were so many back and too, It became just a blare and seemed to run away with itself. Every month I was sure it would be resolved. If I knew what I know now then I would of kept a better record. On occasions whilst speaking to Orange, they said they always keep a log of all conversation being either written or recorded. With this in mind Iam just hoping that they could resurrect them in the event I pursue legal action.

As Iam not very good with making complaints. Does anyone have a draft letter from which I can adapt to suit my requirements?

Kind Regards
Dave

v32det

As I want to start the ball rolling with Orange. Is there a consumer rights spec letter from which I can cut n paste my rights. I want to include it in my report but want to sound like I know what Iam talking about.

Regards