Orange anti-competitive roaming

peterbaker

I am very annoyed with Orange.

I have been abroad this weekend and found that my kids could not use a data connection to send cheap text because out of four operators in the foreign country, access was only provided by Orange to one out of the four, and that one provided no data facilities.

Orange charge 40p to send a text from abroad on their standard PAYG rates. That is a total RIP-OFF.

I am not interested in their other RIP-OFF deals for sending SMS from abroad. Thats why I advised my kids they could stay in touch using data and SMS sending java applications like Vyke.

But Orange have barred it.

They even had the cheek to reply in a Customer Service email along the lines of "We cannot be held responsible for shortcomings of the foreign networks".

Yeah, right.

If you need to send cheap SMS or data from abroad, I would not recommend Orange....

redux

peterbaker wrote: »

They even had the cheek to reply in a Customer Service email along the lines of "We cannot be held responsible for shortcomings of the foreign networks".

This misdirecting excuse really is a bit cheap and complacent.

Orange now have the most expensive roaming for calls as well. I told them this 3 years ago, but their staff were trained to claim they were cheapest.

I won't guess which country, and I'm surprised there is one where Orange have a roaming agreement with only one in four networks, or did you just mean no signal where you were?

You might try a couple of other SIMs. Virgin has the same data rate abroad as here, at 0.5p/kB, and can be post-paid by direct debit if you want to avoid messing about with top-ups. If it's somewhere you travel to quite a bit, maybe get a local card, but comparing the data tariffs could be tricky.

With Vyke, you can actually change the SIM but still send with your original number as ID, but this could mean 2 phones or swapping SIM to get answers. Or you could get another account and PIN from Vyke (though I remember you had a problem about that before; did that get resolved?)

If you are somewhere near contract renewal and are upset enough, you might look at O2. Inclusive texts can be used abroad, at 4 for 1, and so far my 100k inclusive data has been usable abroad, rather than separately charged at a roaming rate.

peterbaker

Hi redux

Actually Orange say on their website that they have agreements with all four networks in the country concerned and that is where I learned that one doesn't offer data services. Anyway, three were serviceable in my particular foreign location including the one that didn't offer data, and I was able to manually select all of them on my O2 Contract phone. On Orange I was not allowed access to two out of three, leaving me with the most restrictive service.

Yes, regarding my earlier problem on Vyke I was able to resolve the problem by talking to a very kind lady manning the phones in Oslo. She apologised for no response to emails but explained that they were in the process of moving their Customer Services centre to Malaysia....

Most people wouldn't have thought of calling the parent company in Oslo ( I only did so because I knew enough Norsk to ask if we could speak English, and in return, the polite Norwegians would always offer first class service and likely speak excellent English!).

At the moment therefore, I am very grateful for the Norwegian connection, but still can't recommend Vyke even though I use it myself.

Back to the original gripe however, it is pleasing to see that the BBC are highlighting rip off roaming charges today.