WARNING - for Orange customers

golffan

2 different "mistakes" have appeared in my bill and my wife's bill in the last few months. Both just happen to create additional revenues for Orange, so i'd like to hear if anyone else has noticed these anomalies or is it just a coincidence it happened to the two of us.

Firstly, my bill. Can anyone spot the cunning plan here?

10/07/13 18:34 Talk 00000402969 00:03:14 0.000
10/07/13 19:28 Text 00003557678 00:00:00 0.000
16/06/13 18:00 Talk 00000744149 00:03:38 0.000
16/06/13 19:05 Talk 00000 852101 00:33:24 0.000
17/06/13 12:02 Talk 00000203996 00:00:18 0.000
09/07/13 09:59 Talk 00000744149 00:08:49 0.000
09/07/13 10:29 Talk 00000611582 00:00:45 0.000

They are sneaking in, (accidentally or deliberately) calls from the previous month. and 33 minute calls at that. My bills start on the 5th, so this takes a healthy chunk out of my allowance. Anyone else had this issue? If you haven't checked recently, i advise you to do so. If it's a computer error, i doubt i'm the only victim.

Secondly, my wife's bill. we have the same phone, same contract, same start date.
In January 2013, the mischievous Orange computer halved my wife's minutes from 600 to 300. no explanation, no reduced charge, no request from us. We didn't notice as my wife never used up the allowance. however, we stopped using the landline in May and you guessed it, big bills. This we noticed!
To their credit, Orange immediately admitted the error, apologised and promised us all of our excess charges would be refunded. And as a gesture of goodwill, my wife would get extra minutes from now until the end of our contract. Fair enough.
A month passed, no refund, no extra minutes. huge bill.
2nd call to Orange, same response. huge apologies, "how has this not been dealt with" they cried. same promise, refund plus increased minutes plus inquiry as to why the previous member of staff hasn't sorted it, plus promise of all the above in writing.
We are now at 2 months later. Still no refund, another big bill, no extra minutes and no email or letter to back up their promises. another call elicited the same response as before, more apologies, more promises, still nothing.
1 - Do we go down the small claims court route on this one? how do you proceed when the company admits they've made an error but doesn't keep their promises to refund us.
2 - Can fellow Orange customers please check their bills for anachronous items and unsolicited reductions in call allowances.
It's difficult to believe these errors have only happened to 2 people who happen to live in the same house!

I hope by taking the time to post this, some of you will be able to reclaim some money. (Plus altruism aside, it was nice to vent!)

golffan

Just got off the phone after looking up the complaints procedure (something i should've done prior to posting my rant really).

called and asked for a "customer service manager" as advised by their complaints procedure. This time i advised the person i was recording the call and that i would be posting it online along with any further calls it took until our monies were refunded.

We have again been promised a refund (and i genuinely believe we will get one this time) but no explanation as to why both errors occurred.

Error 1
"Sometimes items can be duplicated or delayed if the calls were made abroad. have you been abroad last month?"
"no"
"oh yes, i can see the calls were made in the UK. Then i don't know why this has happened"

Error 2
"why was my wife's call allowance halved"
"I don't know why that's happened. I can see it's changed but there's no notes on the system saying you've asked for the reduction or we've instigated the change. There's no reduction in price either which would normally accompany a reduction in call plan features. So I honestly don't know"

That's reassuring then.

I must add, i'm not anti-Orange. I've been a customer for years and the only other issue i had was Broadband related and that's been resolved now and all works fine.
I've encouraged family and friends to switch to them and they've had no issues.
I've had no previous billing issues in all the previous years of patronage.
So if nobody else posts they've had either of the 2 issues, maybe it really was just bad luck?