Orange not providing service paid for

Weyoun

Hi all, I hope someone can help.

On the 13th October, my partner bought a new basic mobile phone for me from the Orange website. As a condition of the purchase, £20 of pay as you go credit also had to be bought. She paid for all of this (total approx. £30) using her debit card.

We received the handset promptly, however the £20 credit has not been applied to either of our accounts.

I have spent the last month struggling with Customer Services trying to resolve a range of problems with the phone and the one outstanding issue is the missing £20.

I have spoken to Customer Services seven times, visited three EE shops and have been exchanging Facebook messages with Orange staff trying to get this issue resolved and now I am thoroughly sick of it.

After all of this, I have requested that they just refund the £20 however they're now telling me they're unable to do this. All they claim to be able to do is credit my account, although they still haven't done so and are continuing to give me the runaround.

Do I have any rights when it comes to demanding a refund? Do I have any right to compensation of any kind for being out of pocket by £20 for over a month for services paid for in good faith yet not received?

There was a time when a company would bend over backwards to make its customers happy but these days it looks like they couldn't care less.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

neilmcl

You're not out of pocket, your partner is. She should be contacting Orange and asking for the credit to be put on the account or for a refund.

Weyoun

neilmcl wrote: »

You're not out of pocket, your partner is. She should be contacting Orange and asking for the credit to be put on the account or for a refund.

Thanks for your reply, neilmcl.

Following the advice in the sticky threads I was trying to keep my initial post as brief and relevant as possible, and as a result did not include every last detail of the situation.

My partner is NOT out of pocket because I paid her the £30 she spent buying the handset and credit. It is in fact me who is out of pocket, as stated in my original post.

Also as stated, I have contacted Customer Services seven times, and on each of those occasions made it quite clear to them that my partner bought the phone for me. My partner also accompanied me on the three occasions when I visited an EE shop, and again the situation was explained in full to no avail.

In my messages to Orange via Facebook I have again informed them that my partner bought the phone, and I have given them two different order reference numbers from which they would see that I was not the purchaser.

Not once have I been told by Orange that the reason they cannot help me is because I was not the person who purchased the handset and credit, so I am unsure why you seem to think this is the case.

Perhaps my partner should be the one to push this matter forward, however English is her second language, and considering that I am having tremendous difficulties with this issue, I seriously doubt she would fare any better.

Regardless, someone is out of pocket, and it ain't Orange!

j0nathon2

I had this problem although £10 in my case, and I have to say I gave up because it wasn't worth £10 talking to their incredibly incompetent call centre in some far away land.

In my case they blamed the problem in the fact I didn't use the SIM card that came with the phone but a different one. Why did I do this? Because they told me the SIM card that came with it couldn't be registered and told me I had to use a new one. It infuriated me.

On a more recent issue, I decided to use twitter with the view that I could keep reposting until it was solved (not good for them), however I got UK based staff contact me pretty promptly and they resolved the issue.

earthstorm

Weyoun wrote: »

.
My partner is NOT out of pocket because I paid her the £30 she spent buying the handset and credit. It is in fact me who is out of pocket, as stated in my original post.

That makes no difference, if it was your partner who was the one to place the order and paid for it. then the contract is between Orange and your partner. Its immaterial if after your partner made the purchase you paid them back.

paddyrg

This type of promotion is usually to get new registrations, so they only sell the phone with credit on a new SIM, not the existing SIM. You can still transfer your number from the old SIM, but it is a bit of a fiddle and you need to run down the credit on it before it transfers or it's gone.

EE will do discounts on PAYG replacement handsets to continue using the old SIM and pricing plan, but not as generous as the deals to attract more customers or get people into new tariffs.

Weyoun

earthstorm wrote: »

That makes no difference, if it was your partner who was the one to place the order and paid for it. then the contract is between Orange and your partner. Its immaterial if after your partner made the purchase you paid them back.

I'm sure it is the case that the contract is between Orange and my partner, as opposed to Orange and me, but pointing that out to me isn't particularly helpful.

I've been in almost constant contact with Orange for the past four weeks and have made absolutely no progress in this matter despite repeatedly telling them that my partner bought the handset.

I have already had my old phone number and package (as opposed to my partner's) transferred to the new SIM and handset without any problem at all, so clearly the barrier is not that I am not the contractee. If the problem were that Orange are refusing to help me because I am not the contractee then they would have told me so. All I've had is "yes, we'll look into that for you and get it sorted within the hour", which they don't.

What is immaterial is who calls Customer Services. The end result is that they don't help.

SuperHan

Weyoun wrote: »

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I have already had my old phone number and package (as opposed to my partner's) transferred to the new SIM and handset without any problem at all

You might want to make that clear the next time you speak to Orange as this may be the problem. It is true that the credit is usually to entice new customers, and there is usually a separate 'upgrade' option for existing customers.

As such, credit is usually added to the new number that is being sold with the phone. As said above, this is lost when the number is changed.

You might want to clarify if that has been the case.

earthstorm

SuperHan wrote: »

As such, credit is usually added to the new number that is being sold with the phone.

Not in our local carphonewarehouse or phones4u, they will give you a till voucher, so you can add the credit at your leisure if you order a PAYG phone.

j0nathon2

SuperHan wrote: »

As such, credit is usually added to the new number that is being sold with the phone. As said above, this is lost when the number is changed.

Exactly this.

Orange CS will tell you they will transfer the credit but it will never appear (because they're incompetent liars). I had this 2 or 3 years ago, and it's also the same problem I had above with the replacement SIM card, the credit was on the number/account with the card in the box that you are not using because you've moved your old number/account over to the new SIM. In the end I managed to get the equivalent value of the credit I bought added as "Goodwill"(!) but that meant I lost the benefits of the credit, e.g. free texts and internet.

It's a bit of a scam because most PAYG phones have to be purchased with credit that you may never receive (despite paying for).

earthstorm

j0nathon2 wrote: »

It's a bit of a scam because most PAYG phones have to be purchased with credit that you may never receive (despite paying for).

If you have your own sim card then you can get a PAYG phone with the credit as long as its the same network, but you need the sim with you as they have to check it is active and then link it to the phone.