New contract but no coverage! What can I do?

nats29

Hi guys, wondered if anyone had any advice for me.

I bought a new phone under a 24month contract on Orange from Phones4U earlier this month. The salesman did a coverage check for the 3 areas I spend most of my time in. The coverage was good-excellent in all 3.

I got my phone home and it worked ok, not brilliantly for the first 5ish days. Now it's barely working at all, I have either 1 bar of signal or no signal at all. I'm on a £39.99 a month contract, and am extremely reluctant to pay that much for 2 very bad phone calls and a few texts each month! I usually use my phone a lot during the day to pick up emails, do work etc so I have had to continue using my old phone, paying for usage on there too!

Is there anything I can do through either Orange or Phones4U? I have since moved house, so cannot go back to the original store I bought it in. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

latecomer

so is the new house in the same areas that were checked? If not then what is the coverage meant to be in your new area? Also is it a problem outside or only inside?

HeadAboveWater

have a wee look at http://search.orange.co.uk/ouk/portal/coveragechecker.html to see what coverage it's meant to be like in the new area

nats29

No, I knew I was moving, so I had the guy check the new area too. My old area showed up as good, the new one as excellent.
That's clearly not the case!

It is everywhere- inside the house, in the garden, out and about. I occasionally get 1 bar, but then it drops out again- usually during a hastily made phone call!

I phoned Phones4u and just missed their cooling off period of 14 days (I'm on day 19!) so have to go through Orange. Have now been in a calling queue for over 40 minutes! Really not impressed at all

Notmyrealname

Phone up the mobile network. It may be a fault on the local cell site. I know in my own town we had issues whilst they upgraded the capacity at the site and Three gave me a partial monthly credit as compensation.

buscape

The coverage checkers aren't 100% accurate, look at ofcom's sitefinder as well, at least you know how far away the nearest base station is.

http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/

thatsean

You need to talk to Orange, explain that the retailer checked coverage and that you are having problems. Orange can allow a return through Phones4u, but it's entirely at Oranges' discretion - and even then P4u would have to agree to the commission clawback as they offer no 14day return on store sales, only web/phone.

prowla

Seems to me like it was mis-sold: customer specifically asks "Will it work at location A and location B?", shop checks and says "Yes, of course it will, Sir!", customer buys it on that say-so.

It doesn't, therefore the specific item that was sold is not fit for purpose.

adamc260

One thing I often find on my phone is... whilst it may show 0 bars of signal on my phone I can still make/receive calls absolutely fine! Dont know if that's a bug with android

nats29

Thank you all for your replies.

I was thinking of going down the route of it being mis-sold if I need to.

I finally got through to Orange, they did a few checks with me over the phone, searching for networks on my mobile etc to no avail. They said it must be a fault with the phone, you need to go through Phones4U.

Then put my sim card in a friend's phone (she also had to change networks when she moved to our town, which I hadn't realised) and it didn't work in there either. So, I'm concluding that it is actually a coverage problem, not a fault with the phone. Will have to phone Orange again tomorrow and let them know!

Adam, I did hope that would be the case, but it doesn't let me make any calls or receive them