Orange and iphone4 – an upgrade nightmare
Ok, warning time, this is a proper ranty consumer post….I’m at my wit’s end and need to get some moaning off my chest!
Last week I went through the usual process of upgrading my phone with Orange. I’ve been with them for five years now and up to this point have been relatively contented with their service. Never had any issues with upgrades or sorting replacements if phones have failed.
I asked for an iphone 4, paid my £119 and was told it would be with me the next day – woohoo! I got home Tuesday to find an iphone 3GS sitting in my living room. Now, I’m no rocket scientist but im pretty sure that that’s not an iphone 4! A quick call to the upgrade dept the next day got me the response of “I’m really sorry, whoever put it through actually just clicked on the wrong phone” – how very annoying, but these things happen so I’d survive! They credited my account with £7 to post it back and would, i was told, send me the phone I ordered instead.
Phoned a few days after returning the 3GS and they weren’t sending me an iphone 4, they had reset me back to my old contract and the £119 quid would appear in my account at some point in the next 28 days. A sigh and a second upgrade attempt later (which included dishing out a second amount of £119) and I was promised the correct phone this time.
Phone turned up – woohoo (again, as not even the wrong phone was an issue at this point)! Setting up was easy and I was well away – until I tried to make a call! My poor guinea pig (my brother) on the other end of the phone couldn’t hear anything I was saying. Same occurred when I tried to call a few other people. This was ridiculous.
So this morning I phoned orange support RE: the microphone being a bit pony. Numerous calls backwards and forwards occurred between me and Michael in the iphone support team, who was exceptionally professional and a credit to the company, where we eventually established that the mic was, indeed, a bit fubar’d. At this point he put me back through to upgrades….sigh.
What a shame the guy on the other end of the phone at this point wasn’t as polite, professional or considerate. He told me just to send the phone back and the contract would be cancelled again. Not best pleased with this, and when I tried to ask what would happen in the interim, what would happen about sims and still having a working phone the answer I got was “dunno mate”. This is just not good enough! Anyway, agreed to get phone sent back just so I no longer had to speak to this moron.
Immediately called the “thinking of leaving orange” line as I’m at the end of my tether and asked what the hell was going on. The lady on the other end of the line at this point, started to show some promise and explained how I can get the transfer made back to my old sim and not be without a phone, though I’ll have to do this tomorrow as I don’t have my old phone with me. From that point forward when I enquired about the upgrade and payments etc then she said that I’ll just have to send the phone back and go through the whole process again, appeared to lose interest and made absolutely zero concession to the fact this was a problem that wasn’t caused by me.
No offense Orange, but I don’t have three lots of £119 just floating around to send to you at my leisure. I can’t afford another upgrade until you give me the money back for the other two that you ballsed up on. So for future reference here’s what I suggest to you:
- Get your staff to double-check they’re ordering what you asked for.
- Sort your upgrade/faulty handset returns procedure. These are not my errors and I shouldn’t have to go out of my way to fix the problem. Come and get the phone from me!
- Make sure your call centre staff are competent individuals and not just killing time until the next episode of the Jeremy Kyle show starts.
- When it’s your error, go out of your way to fix it. Replacing a phone I have damaged myself is easier than fixing a mistake you’ve made (this seems wrong to me).
- Rather than refunding me each time, just keep the first payment and get the right thing to me – I can’t upgrade until you give me my money back and 28 days is a long time.
So, here I am, trying to work out when I can next get to a post office to send a phone back, next call orange – which is difficult as I’m at a wedding tomorrow and they wouldnt be able to hear me anyway as the iphone mic is broken – to get my sim set back to the old one so I can use my old phone, waiting for two lots of £119 to be returned to my account and wondering if I should even bother sticiking with Orange past September when my old contract ends.
I’m not best pleased to be fair
Urban Debris 