Orange billing mistake has affected my credit rating - what do I do?

moonklash

Hi there,

I took out a contract Orange a few years ago. Towards the end of that contract I upgraded to EE.

12/11/2014 - Received a letter claiming I owed a termination fee, despite the fact I had upgraded. I called and the billing team confirmed this was a mistake and nothing was owed. I thought the matter was closed.


18/01/2015 - Received a letter stating £15.47 was due, from the Orange collections department. I called, and collections refused to acknowledge my previous discussion. I was put through to Billing who acknowledged my first discussion and said a £20 credit was being placed on my account to cover the £15 and a £3.50 fee that would be charged for paying by a method other than direct debit.

12/02/2015 - I received a letter from Orange Collections stating this was being passed to an external debt collection agency. I called, complained to Ofcom and wrote a formal complaint to Orange and was told that 'this would never happen.' I was told they would take care of the matter. I also found an app to record this discussion, having grown frustrated with the ongoing u-turns and lies I'd been told. I received a letter stating nothing was owing on account.

I've just checked Noddle and my credit rating has dropped from 3/5 the value at around December) to 1/5. It lists arrears for January and February and has clearly destroyed my credit rating.

I'm now really worried about how this will affect my finances in the future. I don't know what actions I should be taking. Could anyone tell me what steps I should take? I'm in the process of writing to Orange but I don't know if this is sufficient?

Malmo

Hi moonklash,

This type of issue is all too common with telecoms companies, sadly. I've also had a poor experience when I migrated from T-Mobile to EE.

The whole thing was a fiasco from the start and at one stage, my credit file was badly affected by their incompetence. The issue was eventually resolved. See these threads:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5171087

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4888238

If you've exhausted the usual complaint routes and have had no positive outcome, you can do what I did and email the executive office at executive.office@orange.co.uk. Also CC their CEO Olaf Swantee at olaf.swantee@ee.co.uk. This should get their attention hopefully and a quicker resolution should be forthcoming.

Good luck!

GingerBob_3

Malmo wrote: »

This type of issue is all too common with telecoms companies, sadly.

Quite. And with other companies too, especially energy companies. If these organisations can't report your finances to the CRAs accurately then they shouldn't be allowed to report anything. The whole system is broken, with a significant part of the blame lying with the CRAs themselves. I'm considering lobbying my MP to look into this, in the first instance to address the problem of rogue companies like Orange and NPower, and maybe to have them banned from using CRAs if they don't apply proper QA checks. Has anyone, taken this up with their MP, and if so, what was the response?

boo_star

GingerBob wrote: »

Quite. And with other companies too, especially energy companies. If these organisations can't report your finances to the CRAs accurately then they shouldn't be allowed to report anything. The whole system is broken, with a significant part of the blame lying with the CRAs themselves. I'm considering lobbying my MP to look into this, in the first instance to address the problem of rogue companies like Orange and NPower, and maybe to have them banned from using CRAs if they don't apply proper QA checks. Has anyone, taken this up with their MP, and if so, what was the response?

Probably nothing of any meaning.

The CRAs should really be more proactive in all this, they're essentially breaking the DPA by holding inaccurate records and doing little to fix it, although I appreciate it's difficult when you're being fed garbage by the data controllers.

That said there's very little incentive for the CRAs to blacklist anyone, they pay them money and there are no repercussions (yet) for giving out bad data provided by incompetent data controllers.

moonklash

Hey everyone,

Thanks so much for the advice. I've written a scolding four page letter demanding they rectify this but the Executive Office sounds like a more hopeful approach - I'll definitely give this a try and report back what happens.

You're absolutely right in saying that Orange/EE should be banned from the CRAs. An organisation like Orange - who I had to call every couple of months to let them know about their billing errors - should not be allowed to do anything that involves credit reports. These people can have damaging affects on our lives yet don't seem to be able to use a calculator themselves - ridiculous.

moonklash

Malmo wrote: »

If you've exhausted the usual complaint routes and have had no positive outcome, you can do what I did and email the executive office at executive.office@orange.co.uk. Also CC their CEO Olaf Swantee at olaf.swantee@ee.co.uk. This should get their attention hopefully and a quicker resolution should be forthcoming.

This is the advise that saved the day :-) I wrote to three different addresses for Orange (recorded delivery) and separately emailed the executive office, Several days went by so I sent a follow-up email and received a response apologising and saying the charges would be gone from my credit rating in 28 days, so presumably things should go back to normal. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it ;-)

Malmo

moonklash wrote: »

This is the advise that saved the day :-) I wrote to three different addresses for Orange (recorded delivery) and separately emailed the executive office, Several days went by so I sent a follow-up email and received a response apologising and saying the charges would be gone from my credit rating in 28 days, so presumably things should go back to normal. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it ;-)

@moonklash, did your credit file get updated correctly in the end and has this been resolved to your satisfaction?