Orange Upgrade Strangeness

Mista_C

I was eligible for a phone upgrade from Orange in October. Back in September I had a look online to see what was available. After logging in through the "Your Account" section and following the links to upgrade options I was presented with a selection of phones via the Orange Shop. One such phone was the iPhone 5 16GB. Having looked at my options I decided to leave it until today when I again logged in via the "Your Account" section and was presented with the same options.

I currently have the iPhone 4 which I'm more than happy with for my personal use but I'm in the ICT business and like to keep up on the latest releases. Some of my customers have recently upgraded to the iPhone 5 and I'm starting to receive questions about it.

Back to the website I ticked the "Free for you" checkbox to be presented with the iPhone 5 16GB Black, cost to me, free. Excellent, I chose this phone and continued onto checkout. I was offered a new plan so chose the iPhone31 plan. At checkout I noticed Orange were charging me £179.99 for the iPhone.

I started a live chat session to ask what was going on. I spoke to a chap called George who told me the shop was currently under maintenance and he had no access to my account to provide further information. He continued by recommending I call 150 and speak to someone about my upgrade options.

I called 150, explained the situation to be told "Oh, the phone is £179.99 on that plan". I queried about the phone on my current plan, "The phone is £179.99 on your existing plan. You'll need to go to the more expensive plan to qualify for the free upgrade."
I then pointed out that I ticked the "Free for you" checkbox via my account and was presented with the iPhone 5 16GB Black as a free upgrade option, on my current plan. The lady on the other end just repeated that the phone would be £179.99 unless I chose the most expensive plan. She added that she cannot access the web offers to let me know why the contradiction.
To top it off, according to the Orange site, the only phones I'm eligible for a free upgrade with are the iPhone 5 16GB (Black or White) and a Black or White iPhone 4, which I already own.

I told her she could keep the phone as I'm more than happy with my iPhone 4 and was only interested in the iPhone 5 for the sake of keeping my skills up-to-date. If I hadn't noticed the £179.99 appear at the top-right corner I could quite easily have continued with checkout and ended up with an unexpected invoice.