Is the OVP (Orange Value Promise) dead?

Roger1

Thanks, DonnyDave and others for useful info.

I've done the deed and got a PAC for our two mobile numbers and given 30 days' notice to cancel my £5 monthly data plan. The Orange CS person offered me a £7 monthly plan offering useful minutes and texts (more than enough) and 250mb but with a 12 month contract that I didn't want.

I've not fully decided whether to go for Ovivo, giffgaff or Toggle for our permanent numbers. I've ordered an Ovivo SIM so I still have time to decide. I'm thinking I'll probably opt for Ovivo with Toggle in a separate phone for travelling.

I have a couple of questions to help us decide. We still have our original 07973 and 07970 Orange numbers which we would like to retain.

• will future calls TO these numbers be treated as to Orange or to Ovivo/Lyca/whatever?
• we currently use Dial-a-code prefixes http://www.dialacode.com/ for cheap international calls. The service is available with O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Three lines (but not Vodafone, it seems). Will this be available on MVNOs using O2, Orange, T-Mobile or Three?
• will our old Orange numbers still qualify for Orange Wednesdays after we change?

Thanks very much for any insight you are able to offer.

NFH

Roger1 wrote: »

will our old Orange numbers still qualify for Orange Wednesdays after we change?

You have to be joking! This is only for Orange customers.

Stuart_W

Roger1 wrote: »

Will future calls TO these numbers be treated as to Orange or to Ovivo/Lyca/whatever?

Orange will recognise the number as a non-Orange mobile number from the minute it is ported out. Any other Orange user that has the number as a magic number will receive a text as soon as it is ported out, advising that is has been removed as a magic number.

We currently use Dial-a-code prefixes http://www.dialacode.com/ for cheap international calls. The service is available with O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Three lines (but not Vodafone, it seems). Will this be available on MVNOs using O2, Orange, T-Mobile or Three?

I can only answer as a Phone Co-op customer, who are an Orange MVNO. Short code numbers like for example dialacode 290329 do not work in my instance.

Will our old Orange numbers still qualify for Orange Wednesdays after we change?

When you attempt to text FILM to 241 from a non Orange number, it will either fail to send or return an error. Pick up a free Orange SIM just to keep for this purpose if you want to benefit from Orange Wednesdays.

Hope that is useful!

DonnyDave

Roger1 wrote: »

I have a couple of questions to help us decide. We still have our original 07973 and 07970 Orange numbers which we would like to retain.

• will future calls TO these numbers be treated as to Orange or to Ovivo/Lyca/whatever?

In my posting, I assume that Ovivo recognises numbers that have been ported in as being on-net calls (another Ovivo number) rather than off-net ones (other operator), as is usual in the industry.


It works as follows:

• Calls from the new operator (Ovivo in this example) are charged as per calls to that operator.
• Calls from the old operator (Orange in this example) are charged as per calls to the new operator (Ovivo).
• Calls from all other operators are charged as per a call to an Orange mobile.

If you were to port the number from Ovivo to another operator (for example, O2), the "old operator" (in the sentence above) would still be Orange as it remains the donor operator.

NFH

My father spoke to Orange's retentions department and the best they could offer was a £7/month contract before applying a 10% loyalty discount. He said no and got the PAC code during the same call, which he has used to port to Toggle. The Orange representative even said that she'd do the same in my father's position. It seems that Orange is trying to get rid of Virgin OVP customers.

simax

NFH wrote: »

It seems that Orange is trying to get rid of Virgin OVP customers.

That is exactly what they're trying to do.

redux

NFH wrote: »

Lycamobile (and Toggle) do use normal UK mobile numbers. They used to run as a virtual network on T-Mobile, but I understand that when they switched to running on Vodafone, they took a huge block of phone numbers with them which caused a dispute with T-Mobile. Because of this historic dispute, EE customers on T-Mobile branded tariffs continue to be surcharged for calling this block of numbers.

Lycamobile UK and Toggle use numbers allocated to Lycamobile UK.

Lycamobile UK used to operate on Orange with Orange allocated numbers, and now operates on O2, When they launched on O2 it was called Lycamobile Plus to distinguish it, and only used the new Lycamobile numbers. I don't know whether everyone was eventually upgraded to being on O2 or whether some remain on the Orange MVNO.

The dispute you are on about, wrongly seeming to describe it as in the UK, was in fact in the Netherlands. Nobody knows for certain if the T-mobile UK sanctions were related to this or not, so it's just a plausible surmise really.

redux

Stuart_W wrote: »

I also need call divert as a couple of locations I tend to be in occasionally have no mobile signal at all (any networks) but I do have access to a landline. Very few PAYG services offer this option (I think familymobile was the last one I knew of to offer this, but that may have changed, too).

I'm aware of Three, giffgaff and Family Mobile doing call divert on PAYG.

I'm not sure if that's all Three PAYG customers, or just that mine is left over from a contract about 8 years ago. Unfortunately they've cut off more recent SIMs I could have used to test.

NFH

simax wrote: »

That is exactly what they're trying to do.

So where is the "promise" in Orange Value Promise? Moving the goal posts is hardly a promise.

Orange have been foolish. By increasing the charges from 15p to 25p per minute, it has caused customers to look at the competition who are charging only 3p per minute. If Orange had continued with the status quo, they would have retained revenue at a high price per minute that they have now lost.

redux

NFH wrote: »

So where is the "promise" in Orange Value Promise? Moving the goal posts is hardly a promise.

Orange gave up offering new Value Promise price match tariffs quite a while ago.

So most customers on ordinary tariffs will have moved in the last few years, and perhaps the Virgin equivalent were the main ones left.

On top of that, as mentioned above (though I think Dave may have it wrong as the Virgin site says 40p for the DD funded version) Virgin itself abandonned its original tariff, not only no longer offering it as a new deal, but also putting up the tariff for the people already on it.

Orange also kept freephone calls free on this for some time longer than on its other tariffs

Some people have had a couple of free upgrade phones which was never intended, typically perhaps a Nokia 3120 and 6070, and some will have had a reduced rate landline broadband deal for a couple of years or so, even though the terms specifically mentioned this tariff as being excluded from the offer.

So it's certainly a shame they are ditching it, but it's gone on a long time.

But is it actually closing down? Some people are talking as though it is, but I assume they are the ones still using it as their main phone. Someone who only spends on it occasionally could probably keep going, I'm assuming unless someone says no they're all being disconnected