Orange still debiting account for 2 contracts closed over a year ago - can I reclaim?

stuntnuts

Hello all,

I found out yesterday that Orange have been debiting £36/month from my mum's account for her deceased husband's 2 mobile contracts.

In February 2009 my step-father was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. In January 2011 he had a major seizure due to his condition, he never recovered physically or mentally from it and was left bed-ridden until he died in July 2011. When we realised that he was unlikely to recover we started to prepare as best we could.

Shortly after the seizure we contacted Orange to close down his 2 accounts (one for work, one for personal). We told them of his condition and mentioned the power of attorney. They told us to send the POA to them so they could acknowledge it and allow us to ask them to close his accounts down.

We sent the POA to them and a short time later received it back from them. We were then able to request his accounts be closed and thought that that was the end of it.

We've now discovered that they've continued to debit for the line rental since then (at least a year and a half). We haven't received any paper bills from them, which we always used to while the accounts were officially open, so were completely unaware.

We tried 3 times yesterday to discuss this with their customer service. Each time we were put through to a foreign call centre who were unable to understand our situation and kept transferring us to incorrect departments (broadband retentions?). Each time we called we ended up being cut-off/hung-up on; I don't think that was intentional, just inept staff.

Is there anything we can do? Obviously we want the accounts shut down, but we also want the money back. I'm going to go through my mum's mess of documents and see if I can find some sort written proof from Orange that we did this. But if I can't find that, if we ever had it, is there anything else we can do? Were Orange required to keep records of our POA? The fact they stopped sending us paper bills should point to something, right?

It's a horrible situation and trying to explain it to their call centre staff is going nowhere.

Hopefully someone can help advise us with this.

grumbler

Stop dealing with incompetent and useless front-line telephone CS. Follow their standard complaints procedure. Meanwhile search for the proofs and in the worst case scenario sue them via the small claims court (online).

diamonds

http://www1.orange.co.uk/documents/about/Orange-complaints-code-20110118.pdf

gjchester

stuntnuts wrote: »

Is there anything we can do? Obviously we want the accounts shut down, but we also want the money back. I'm going to go through my mum's mess of documents and see if I can find some sort written proof from Orange that we did this.

Orange are known to offer PAYG sim cards to people closing account as a way to let you preserve the number, however if they are not activated the contract continues, that may be the case here, and finding them would probalby be difficult if the paperwork is a mess (or they were thrown out).

It's also possible that POA was queried / rejected later in the process and the paperwork that said this was never recieved, ignored, or thrown away.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's your or your mums fault, it could easily be Orange at fault, but I guess at the time it would be very easy to overlook such details and proving it either way would be very difficult now.

There is also the onus on you (or rather your mum) to check and report issues. Why hasn't anyone realised for 18 months the payments were continuing?
It would be perfectly understandable if the debit wasn't noticed for a few months, deaths are never easy on anyone, but 18 months is leaving it a long time before querying the debit. If for whatever reason your mum choose to not read or check her bank statements then there is some blame on her part there too.

Good Luck, At some point someone will mentioned the Executive Office as a place to try, they may be able to help, but recent reports say until you have been through all avenues of cutomer service (no matter how bad) they'll just re-direct you to customer service.

macman

How did you request termination of the accounts-by phone, email or by letter? Do you have documentary evidence that you did so?
I assume that the DD's were on a joint a/c, as his would have been frozen shortly after his death?

stuntnuts

gjchester wrote: »

Orange are known to offer PAYG sim cards to people closing account as a way to let you preserve the number, however if they are not activated the contract continues, that may be the case here, and finding them would probalby be difficult if the paperwork is a mess (or they were thrown out).

It's also possible that POA was queried / rejected later in the process and the paperwork that said this was never recieved, ignored, or thrown away.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's your or your mums fault, it could easily be Orange at fault, but I guess at the time it would be very easy to overlook such details and proving it either way would be very difficult now.

There is also the onus on you (or rather your mum) to check and report issues. Why hasn't anyone realised for 18 months the payments were continuing?
It would be perfectly understandable if the debit wasn't noticed for a few months, deaths are never easy on anyone, but 18 months is leaving it a long time before querying the debit. If for whatever reason your mum choose to not read or check her bank statements then there is some blame on her part there too.

Good Luck, At some point someone will mentioned the Executive Office as a place to try, they may be able to help, but recent reports say until you have been through all avenues of cutomer service (no matter how bad) they'll just re-direct you to customer service.

No, no PAYG SIM was offered. It obviously wouldn't have been much use to us. Had it been offered we would have rejected it and requested the accounts shut.

I don't see how the POA could have been rejected, even without informing us, because they then allowed us to request the closure of the accounts after returning the POA to us.

I'm sorry it took 18 months to notice these payments still occurring, but when a company like Orange tells you they are going to do something, you take them at their word and assume they'll do it. I don't see how that's anyone's fault but Orange's. At the time we were relieved that it was one less thing to worry about while we were going through the worst thing our family has ever gone through. We're still dealing with the financial fallout of it now (can't afford to keep the house) and a protracted, messy situation with Orange is the last thing we need.

stuntnuts

macman wrote: »

How did you request termination of the accounts-by phone, email or by letter? Do you have documentary evidence that you did so?
I assume that the DD's were on a joint a/c, as his would have been frozen shortly after his death?

After the POA was accepted, I believe we requested the accounts' closure over the phone. Unfortunately for us. Since we stopped receiving paper bills, we naturally assumed that Orange had done what we requested.

You're right, the DD's are on their joint account, hence the payments still being allowed to occur.

gjchester

stuntnuts wrote: »

I'm sorry it took 18 months to notice these payments still occurring, but when a company like Orange tells you they are going to do something, you take them at their word and assume they'll do it. I don't see how that's anyone's fault but Orange's.

You don't need to apologise but look at it from a different prospective.

For some reason, be it on Orange's part or your families the contracts did not get cancelled, why is irrelevent for this aspect. The accounts have been paid for on time and in full for 18 months, why would Orange suspect there was an issue on them.

As I said I can understand why things were ignored for a while, it is a difficult time fopr anyone, but to not notice it for 18 months is differnet to not noticing it for say three months. Orange can only act if issues are reported to them, 18 months later will be hard to pickup what happened, letters will have been discarded and phone conversations forgotten.

Herongull

I think contracts end with the death of one of the parties. Can anyone confirm this?

Therefore even if you cannot find the paperwork, the death of your father should end the contract and therefore you can claim the payments back using the DD guarantee?

stuntnuts

Herongull wrote: »

I think contracts end with the death of one of the parties. Can anyone confirm this?

Therefore even if you cannot find the paperwork, the death of your father should end the contract and therefore you can claim the payments back using the DD guarantee?

I hope that's true. All we would have to do is provide the death certificate and leave it at that.

Tomorrow I'll try following the complaints process outlined in diamonds' post. Hopefully that will get us somewhere...

macman

stuntnuts wrote: »

After the POA was accepted, I believe we requested the accounts' closure over the phone. Unfortunately for us. Since we stopped receiving paper bills, we naturally assumed that Orange had done what we requested.

You're right, the DD's are on their joint account, hence the payments still being allowed to occur.

It would be normal practice to cancel the DD's after the final bill though. These must still be in place.