Orange Charges 1Yr after Contract Termination

RobSurreyUK

Hi,
New here but I've been reading a lot on the forums about Orange (EE) with relation to their Mobile Phone Contracts and thought I might as well sign up and ask the question.

A little background:

Roughly 3 years ago (while at Uni) I decided it was time to change my phone and get myself a Samsung Galaxy S2 however I quickly found that my girlfriend at the time liked it a lot more than I did, so I gave it to her complete with the contract (which I never transferred out of my name, we just changed the direct debit account) However roughly a year later we broke up (a short while after I finished Uni) She kept paying the contract but not long after we split up she started running into money trouble and wasn't able to make the monthly payments, (Which before I had always covered if she didn't have quite enough, although unfortunately usually after getting a letter from Orange saying that a payment had been missed) She then decided that she didn't want to continue "using me" for the phone contract as she couldn't get it put into her name and gave it back to me. I myself still had my own contract with T-Mobile (A carrier that I much prefer to Orange) and decided I'd rather keep my T-Mobile plan rather than take over the Orange one, so I called up Orange and explained the situation and asked them to cancel it. They of course explained that the contract had I think somewhere between 6 and 9 months left on its plan, for which I agreed to pay the outstanding balance and the early termination fee by transferring the direct debit to my own account. (all told I'd guess would have come to a total of about £200-300 (being about a year ago now I don't really remember properly)) Orange sent me a letter saying that the contract had been terminated and I thought that was the end of that.

The problem:

Now comes my problem, about 3 weeks ago Orange rang my T-Mobile number asking if I had an Orange contract, to which I said I cancelled probably a year or 2 ago the caller said they must have the wrong person and hung up (I wasn't really in the mood for unsolicited calls at the time and paid it no more mind), then 2 weeks ago BCW sent me a text message saying that they "had urgent information for me" which I promptly ignored believing it to be a scam (since I had no idea who BCW were), (although it did have my full name on it), the next day BCW sent me the same text message. Which I again ignored, however I thought I should find out what BCW stands for, a quick google search later reveals its a debt collection agency, anyway about a week later I connected the two pieces of information and called T-Mobile to ask if they could look into it for me. Given that this was the run up to Christmas the guy on the phone at T-Mobile customer services was extremely helpful and although I spent a good deal of time on hold while he called Orange to find out about it came back saying that Orange believe I have missed some over use charges. He then tried to transfer me through to Orange so I could find out for myself, about a half hour later I was about ready to throw my phone out the car window after listening to really bad Christmas music over the phone while waiting for Orange to pick up and ended the call.
However at home I thought it might be a good idea to do a little more digging and check to see if Orange had actually taken the money out of my account to which I can find no record of an amount in excess of £100 after December. I do however have a record for an amount of ~£96 on the 24th December 2012 which I figure would have been a about 2-3 months before I cancelled the contract and therefore been one of the times I picked up the bill for my now ex-girlfriend.

Unfortunately for whatever reason my ex has decided that we are no longer on speaking terms and refuses to talk to me so I am unable to find out if they tried to take it out of her account instead of mine. (Pretty drastic to my mind since her explanation of breaking up with me was that "I suck at socialising" which is probably true, still...)

The question:

My real question here is, am I actually still obligated to pay whatever amount it is that Orange seem to think is outstanding this far past the agreed termination date (and to the best of my knowledge given my recent search probably is) given that:
- Authorisation for a direct debit was given to Orange to pay off the contract and they subsequently sent me a letter confirming that the contract had been cancelled (unfortunately a letter I presently cannot find, but I'm still looking for, I know I've seen it) although I can't see any evidence of them actually taking the money in question; neither did I get any communication from Orange or my bank to say that there had been a failed payment
- I have had no contact from Orange themselves regarding this particular issue either by phone, mail or email (I admit we have moved house, but that wasn't until September this year and I think the contract was cancelled probably around February/March. We also have/had a 3 month mail redirect and for the first month and a half regularly went back to the old house to collect mail that didn't hit the redirect)

P.S. bear in mind I haven't actually managed to talk to anyone at Orange yet despite numerous attempts. On my last attempt I called T-Mobile again and asked if they could put me through a second time and I got a "We are still two separate companies and there is no connection between the two"

To be honest for me now, this is more about damage control and making sure that Orange don't wreck my Credit rating with something I thought was done and dusted a long time ago. But if I find that given their appalling behaviour in this matter I don't need to give them the money anymore either that's a big bonus. Because lets be honest, the first real indication I've had of there being anything amiss is a debt collection agency sending me a test message. My gripe here is that I run my own Server Hosting business and if I had taken payment information from a customer and failed to bill them, then subsequently failed to catch that I hadn't billed them for over 6 months that's down to me. Not the customer. There's no possible way I could contact them that late on and expect them to pay up. Much less pass the issue onto an agency to hassle that customer for payment every other day. And even if I had thought to put that in the contract, and issued legal proceedings the entire ordeal would likely cost me more than the customer is worth just to file the complaint with my solicitor.

(Sorry if my time-frames are a little off doing all this from memory and a little peeved that this hasn't been resolved yet I'll see if I can tidy that up with a summary below)

Time-frame:

Contract taken out through Phones4U - September/November 2011
Direct Debit transferred to Girlfriend - November/December 2011
Orange puts up price mid contract, and refuses to cancel it, claiming the price hike is due to inflation and they have no control over it - March 2013?
Contract terminated by me after missed payment due to insufficient funds in ex-girlfriends account - between April and May 2013
Receive call from Orange asking if I have an orange contract - December 2013
Receive SMS from BCW "with urgent information" - December 2013

Somewhere between getting that first call and now, I have also had a number of calls from an unidentified number saying they are "calling about orange" however when I asked them to identify themselves before giving them any information they hung up. (Naturally I dismissed these calls as scams without another thought right up until I put it all together and finally rang T-Mobile to see if there was any legitimacy to any calls from Orange)


The real shame here is that if Orange had given us a way to cap the data charges (like T-Mobile) so that we could have managed the bill better there wouldn't have been any issues at all, EVER.

mobilejunkie

I didn't read all of it - life's too short. However, I would say a few things based on the gist.

Firstly, you are still liable (at least) for any money they failed to collect at the time. Secondly, your credit history is already wrecked. Thirdly, trying to deal with Orange on these matters is a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, I have found there is only one procedure which works. Hopefully you still have the letter confirming termination of the contract; in any case, send a formal email complaint to them at [EMAIL="complaints@everythingeverywhere.co.uk"]complaints@everythingeverywhere.co.uk[/EMAIL]; they will ignore it, but as soon as 8 weeks are up make a complaint to CISAS. If they failed to take payment despite agreeing to the early termination and didn't communicate with you then it is likely Orange will cave immediately CISAS write to them - despite ignoring the complaint itelf. My latest one goes to CISAS in two weeks; it seems the norm for Orange to ignore customers because (presumably) many fall by the way side without going to CISAS (and therefore get no redress).

RobSurreyUK

Thanks I think.... Although I'm really not sure I have the patience with Orange to wait 8 weeks.... This should have been over and done with when I originally terminated the contract.

Who is CISAS?

mobilejunkie

The regulator. If you can't wait, you can always spend the next 8 weeks wasting copious amounts of time and phone calls to Orange - but the 8 weeks doesn't even start until you make a formal complaint to them.

CISAS is the regulator.

RobSurreyUK

Just thought I'd update here with the information I have gleaned today.

After a lot of back and forth between BCW, Orange and my bank I have today managed to get Orange to concede that the issue and fault is in fact theirs and they have agreed to remove any additional charges and resolve the negative impact this has had on my credit file. They have also agreed to send me a letter in the post to my new address confirming all of this. The number I finally found for Orange that was of use was: 07973 100178

The problem resulted from them trying to setup a new direct debit to take the final amount due when I closed the account/terminated the contract but their system then not taken the direct debit because the account had already been closed.

dagdathecelt

Hi folks,
Well I have a similar problem with Orange the difference being I was with them for over 4 years maybe missing one payment in that time, I cancelled my contract , first they said I still had one more month to pay even though they told me this was a mistake on their behalf, this was paid although against my better judgement , it has been 5 months since I cancelled the contract with them and I see on my Noodle account I am 4 months in arrears with them, I have had various phone calls with them but nothing seems to get sorted I need help what to do, my credit score isn't great anyway but this is doing my head in , even had a Orange rep say to me ,"oh well that explains why you haven't made any calls" derrrr yeah cos I cancelled contract!!!! would be really greatful for some help how I can get Orange to listen and get rid of this now outstanding balance on my account.

Thanks

RobSurreyUK

Orange Reps aren't all the same. I actually managed to get two totally different answers out of 2 different reps in the space of 20mins. (The first time I rang that number provided above I got some really unhelpful guy who basically said pay up or email in. The second time I rang to confirm the dates of what happened when on the account (about 10mins later) I got a really helpful lady named Kate, who basically walked through the entire thing with me and did all the work and actually listened to and understood what I said.

mobilejunkie

Beware a promise from ORANGE to clear the credit file entries. THAT is exactly the subject of my current complaint (soon ready for CISAS) - I had THREE letters confirming it would be done (18 months ago); it wasn't. The departments on the letters are no longer available on the numbers given and a formal complaint (now 6 weeks ago) has been (as usual) completely ignored.

Never rely on anything Orange tells you; check for yourself and act if it isn't as they may say - even in letters.