The Fraud that is costing us telephone charges whilst hanging on for service...

peterbaker

We are currently experiencing very high call volumes ... please hang on and we will be with you as soon as possible (I may be paraphrasing).

I have just been listening to that for 20 minutes solid on Orange Customer Services 07973100450 usuing bundled minutes from my O2 Contract.

Why am I calling Orange? Because my kids have Orange PAYG SIMs and yet again, Orange's website has fallen over and I can't top up and otherwise manage the account online.

I consider it a fraud to set up a voicemail system that does not put me through immediately and indeed spouts insincere lies at me while I wait for 20 minutes and then hang up.

Yes Orange, you may be doing what 1.000,001 other companies do everyday now in this sh*tty UK "consumers are dumb so treat them that way" climate, but I consider you've had my money or money's worth by deception again this evening, and despite the other recorded message that kept telling me that you take Customer Service very seriously, I know that was a lie too.

We must be dumb in the UK for it to be tolerated. There are other European countries where it isn't (yet).

Why don't we complain more about it ? Is it because half the country works for such companies and these deceptions pay the wages perhaps?

uktim29

peterbaker wrote: »

We must be dumb in the UK for it to be tolerated. There are other European countries where it isn't (yet).

Which ones? Are you sure the grass isn't greener on the other side?

ianian99

peterbaker wrote: »

We must be dumb in the UK for it to be tolerated. There are other European countries where it isn't (yet).

Why don't we complain more about it ? Is it because half the country works for such companies and these deceptions pay the wages perhaps?

I'd say anyone that sits on the phone for 20 mins must be dumb so..........

Kyss

Very frustrating. There was one company which I kept calling and always got a message saying that they had an 'unprecedented' number of calls. I'd hang on for up to 40 minutes at a time and not get through. It didn't seem to matter when I called - they yet again had an 'unprecedented' number of calls. What again? Even more then the number of calls yesterday and the day before?

hollydays

yep its a rip -off and I am sure Martin will have endorsed that somewhere on this site.

peterbaker

uktim29 - Parts of Scandinavia still retain proper respect for customers. It is so good that for some globalised products I have called the support line there instead of UK. They often speak better English than UK Customer Services too!

ianian - well Ian Ian, what can I say? Your imagination on this occasion only allowed you think of me 100% engaged in a failed telephone call, did it? Like most people I have a speaker phone which is enough for me to monitor the call while I get on with something else. I think you miss the point entirely. Are you a call centre manager??

We have unprecedented levels of fraud in UK society today. There is so much that we allow it to wash over us like water of ducks backs. Does everyone agree with me that this never-answered or slow-answered customer service line problem is indeed fraud by the companies concerned?

Voyager2002

Personally, I do not tolerate this kind of treatment. That is why I use the site saynoto0870 in order to obtain geographic numbers for these companies, and if that fails I take my business elsewhere.

OP, surely your children could have managed without their toys until the website was working again? And in fairness, a large number of people must have been in your position, so their website failure would have resulted in far more calls than normal, and hence longer waits. Perhaps you should invoice them for the cost of the call?

Honeydog

Vote with your feet - it is the only way these big companies will ever learn.

We have to stop being such WIMPS!!!

peterbaker

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Personally, I do not tolerate this kind of treatment. That is why I use the site saynoto0870 in order to obtain geographic numbers for these companies, and if that fails I take my business elsewhere.

Say No to 0870 is a narrow view of the problem. I have in the last 12 hours spent nearly 50 minutes calling an Orange mobile number 07973100450 which is their customer service line. As I have been suckered in (by their marketing tactics) to provide my two children with Orange mobile phones I don't have a choice if I don't actually have those phones in my hand to make the call. I am not sure it would be free even then.

The "website down" analysis is also narrow. It is almost certainly an embedded website programming error. It won't get fixed unless someone has the drains up. I am pretty certain their online servicing application code trips over on zero balance accounts. Probably a divide by zero error in the code.

The moment Orange use a different application from their call centre in India to alter the balance on my daughters account in the database, the online application I am using via their website works again (quite literally in an instant). Things don't just start "working again" without intervention. That's a lesson which far too many people in the UK have never learned.

At the lowest level, Orange have credited my daughters account for my time, and are now looking into the likely coding error. I don't expect it to get fixed any time soon, but I have given it another push, and I have got my money back this time too.

We should all push a bit more when we spot things that are wrong. Walking away on the other side is not going to improve things.

JohalaReewi

Weren't Orange the ones that came 'top' in the recent watchdog survey?

bees_2

I completely agree with you peterbaker, there is no other viable option to ringing customer services and they always seem to have an unusually high number of calls to deal with.

I wonder what the other options are though? say no to 0870 is a good idea but it's not enough. I wonder if Martin can take this up? He did pretty well spreading the word of unlawful bank charges!