Orange warning/heads up!!

malid

My husband has two Sim only business contract with Orange. Sold to him last January as a 'good deal' for personal use. He and our son use them with their iphones. All great up until now when my son's phone has tacked up a £300 bill in one month instead of £10 - over used his 750mb data by 500mb. We queried this to be told it was all used over a 5 day period - streaming and downloading.

He accepts he does this but always on wifi which we believe as the usage has never gone over. We tried querying it with several different people at Orange - no luck. One actually said - he may think he's on wifi but it always defaults to the network!! Asked why we weren't alerted to this - well we cap it at £300 for businesses. Anyway, got nowhere so have asked for the print out of all network connection. We have been charged 80p per mg over 750.

Now the next bit is important. When I checked Business Sim only t & s on the Orange site I find this:


out of bundle charges on Business SIM Only
UK mobile data£5 per 250MB. Usage beyond 1GB a month charged at 80p per MB

Contact Orange again, speak to 3 different people to be told - it doesn't apply to you cos you started your contract in Jan 2012. This is for new customers!! However, as you've rung up, you can now have it!!. I tried arguing that loyal customers were being penalised and why weren't we told - we happened to find out because of a huge bill. Response - not their job to update us on offers - They wouldn't have any of it. I asked to speak to Complaints Dept. Same response. Asked to speak with a superviser to be told no one was available and I would be contacted within 31 days. If I complained, they have 8 weeks to respond. Great.


Not happy and will complain - somehow. So be warned and if you don't ask you don't get - but you have to know in the first place. Crazy.

malid

And you chose to be so rude because??

Anyway, if my post alerts even one MSE with a Business SIM only contract to contactOrange to go on the new terms, it will be a good job.

pullenuk

Am I right that you are sharing the terms of the contract with two phones, so bascially you got 750mb shared between the two?

If so.... that is pretty silly. 750mb is barely enough for one smartphone instead of two, especially if the apps requests data away from a wifi network.

I would suggest you upgrade the data part of the contract in line what you are actually using. I know you can get add-ons to increase your limits.

While it does seem unfair to you, but if Orange are charging you for what you are using then you cannot blame them. You should make sure you are using wifi when streaming and downloading. Also are you SURE your son is telling you the truth, he might be letting you on that he using wifi to stay out of trouble when in fact he decided to watch youtube outside of home?

Have a search if you can find bandwidth monitors for your iphones. Androids have them and my partner and I phones automatically shut off mobile data when we reached our limits. I'm not an Apple person but I'm sure there must be something similar.

Bingolingo

pullenuk wrote: »

Am I right that you are sharing the terms of the contract with two phones, so bascially you got 750mb shared between the two?

If so.... that is pretty silly. 750mb is barely enough for one smartphone instead of two, especially if the apps requests data away from a wifi network.

I would suggest you upgrade the data part of the contract in line what you are actually using. I know you can get add-ons to increase your limits.

While it does seem unfair to you, but if Orange are charging you for what you are using then you cannot blame them. You should make sure you are using wifi when streaming and downloading. Also are you SURE your son is telling you the truth, he might be letting you on that he using wifi to stay out of trouble when in fact he decided to watch youtube outside of home?

Have a search if you can find bandwidth monitors for your iphones. Androids have them and my partner and I phones automatically shut off mobile data when we reached our limits. I'm not an Apple person but I'm sure there must be something similar.

I think it sounds more like 2 separate but identical contracts rather than a shared tariff. And seeing as the usual bill of £10 for the son has, apparently, been the norm since Jan I think it's safe to say he knows the difference between wi-fi and cell data but suggesting he's a liar is going too far.

It's a sad but all too common sight on these forums to have replies like yours and the previous one. Replies which lack emapthy and talk down to the OP. It's quite disgusting really.

I see you've put a little bit of helpful advice in your post but what use is that when the majority of your post is so bloody condescending and rude.

Dear OP, thanks for the heads up about those particular contracts and the small.print re. data charges - I hope there's a better resolution for you soon.

malid

Bingolingo wrote: »

I think it sounds more like 2 separate but identical contracts rather than a shared tariff. And seeing as the usual bill of £10 for the son has, apparently, been the norm since Jan I think it's safe to say he knows the difference between wi-fi and cell data but suggesting he's a liar is going too far.

It's a sad but all too common sight on these forums to have replies like yours and the previous one. Replies which lack emapthy and talk down to the OP. It's quite disgusting really.

I see you've put a little bit of helpful advice in your post but what use is that when the majority of your post is so bloody condescending and rude.

Dear OP, thanks for the heads up about those particular contracts and the small.print re. data charges - I hope there's a better resolution for you soon.

Bingolingo, thank you for your post.
It is reassuring that some MSE users genuinely want to helpand are empathetic. It appears that some posters have nothing better to do than be abusive and try to be ‘clever’. It isn’t nice but as you say, sadly it does happen on here.

You are right, these are two separate contracts each with750mb per month. My son is sensible andhas been using an iphone for the last 2 years or so. He has never gone over the allowance; infact, has never gone anywhere near using it all. This is strange and we are trying to establish how this happened.

I suspect that Orange will not be moved but my main aims are to ensure that it doesn’t happen again and to advise others to periodically check contracts’ their provider is offering given that in this instance, Orange claim that it just needed a phone call from my husband to ‘get him’ the new usage allowance.

Once again, thank you and the THANKS button (so often not used by members) duly pressed.

pullenuk

A little bit helpful? The lack of full information on the issue I was just suggesting the options. Clearly if its not the case, then its simply dismissed.

Don't tell me I'm rude, I been more than helpful even so the help I tried to give this time isn't helpful or have been already considered.

Also based on my experience with many friends and family with young people using smartphones (here it doesn't say how old the son is so how am I meant to know if this son have been good with his phone) many kids will do things like youtube away from home and then when realised their parents got a huge bill try to hide it.

I would be firm with Orange and ask for a full breakdown of how you managed these costs.

Its also possible that the iphone saw the wifi network but internet connection might've gone down during the time he was using it and the phone switched to 3g. This happens very easy and you often don't know. My network on wifi is usually pretty good, but if the broadband drops for whatever reason while I'm using it my phone switches to 3g but still maintains the wifi network so it looks like both are going but you don't know which one. Usually you start to notice it running slower than usual but if you already have a slower broadband speed you might not notice at all.

Also in the past with Orange with some phones I had from them some apps refuses to work with wifi and only works with 3g. (due to the software they put on it!) I don't think this might apply to iphones but it might be worth checking.

Have you got dropbox installed on the iphone?

grumbler

malid wrote: »

...This is strange and we are trying to establish how this happened....

Glitches resulting in data billing errors at Orange are pretty common.

Orange russian roaming fake charges
Orange bill for £500 - help
...

malid

Update:

• My husband did not receive the breakdown of alleged data streaming - asked for on the 23rd September.
• He did not receive a response to his complaint within the timescale.
• He contacted Orange again by phone and was told that someone would investigate. He was ready to write to key people to complain if he did not receive a response
• He has been contacted by Orange and the money has been refunded NOT because he claimed that it had not been used but because Orange admitted that they did not uphold their complaints procedure

We still deny this useage however, given the money has been refunded, job done.

As reported in initial post UK mobile data£5 per 250MB. Usage beyond 1GB a month charged at 80p per MB now applied to the account.

Good luck to everyone in the same position