A bad customer experience with Orange UK
My daughter’s first phone was very basic – it did voice calls and text only. No music or games. She really wanted games. After a few years we decided to get her a new phone for her birthday, and of course we chose one with games.
I bought the LG KS360 from my local Orange store. The staff member assured me that I could “get the balance from her old Sim card transferred, no problems”. Yes, she actually said the words “no problems”.
So my daughter’s birthday came and she unwrapped the phone. A leaflet says you must transfer the old Sim card balance before you put the Sim card in the phone. That’s why I had been unable to fully test the phone before giving it to her.
I phoned the number provided (freephone, thankfully) and got through. The operator complained that the old Sim card was never registered (which is true, as it’s not compulsory). Anyway he took my daughter’s details and asked me for a 4-digit passcode. He asked me to call my daughter to the phone, so that he could check the details. At no point did he convey to me that he was doing anything other than transferring the old balance.
We put the Sim card in, and everything seemed to work except the games. Selecting Games just makes the phone reboot. Every time. When you click “Games” the Java logo flashes briefly then the phone shuts down and restarts. My daughter was so disappointed.
The next day I took the phone back to the store and demonstrated the problem. The staff are presumably sales rather than technical staff, and they phoned the Orange call centre.
The call centre operator then told me that he wasn’t going to fix the problem; that my daughter had to sort it out herself. What am I supposed to do, take her out of school to bring her to the store? Set a schoolchild loose to battle the multiple confusing options of the Orange call centre?
I explained that I was the buyer of the phone, and that I expected to be sold a working phone, but the operator wasn’t interested. He tried to invoke the Data Protection Act, claiming that this somehow prevented Orange from fixing the phone. How bizarre, considering that I hadn’t asked them to divulge any personal information, and in any case the only information they held was that which I had supplied to them myself the previous day.
We went round in circles a few times, but it was obvious that the call centre operator had no interest in solving the problem. I then asked the sales assistant for a refund, but she refused, saying it was impossible. She didn’t offer any positive suggestions, nor did she seem the slightest bit sympathetic.
I left as a very unhappy customer, trembling with anger, £98 out of pocket and with a non-working phone. I hope this story is going to have a happy ending for my daughter; it’s already too late for it to have a happy ending for me.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
My daughter and I have just spent over half an hour on the phone to Orange. First we had to navigate the voice menus, but there was no option that covered this problem. Then we got through to “Linda”, who worked for 20 minutes to try to decide the source of the problem, regularly putting us on hold. Next we knew we had been incorrectly transferred to someone from insurance, who transferred us back to faults (but to a different person). This guy decided that I had to take the phone in to an Orange store to have the Java software updated.
Well thanks Orange. If it needed a Java update, you could have done that when I took the phone to the Orange store this morning.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:44 pm
On Monday I had asked the guy on the phone (see last comment) for some kind of job number or reference number to take to the Orange store, but he said we would need to start again and sort out the problem from scratch, which meant that I’d need to take my daughter with me as they wouldn’t know that she had already authenticated herself to Orange on the phone. Today was the first day she was available after school.
We took the phone to the Orange shop. I spoke to the business manager and explained that I’d been told by Orange 450 to take the phone into an Orange store to have the Java software updated. The manager told me that this store doesn’t do software updates at all. Great!
I turned on the phone and demonstrated the problem to him. He agreed that it was faulty, and said that they needed to exchange it. The only problem is – the phone is out of stock, and they have no idea when they will get any more of them in. The best he could do was to suggest that I phone every day to see if any of them happen to have come in.
I asked if I would then be able to get the phone (which I bought) exchanged without having to bring my daughter in again. After all, she had already presented herself to him and confirmed that she wanted them to fix the phone I bought, and to do whatever they needed to do to make it work properly. No, said the manager, I would need to bring my daughter in with me every time. He said this was due to the Data Protection Act. This is nonsense, as my daughter has given Orange permission to do whatever needs to be done. And if Orange can’t fix a faulty phone without invoking the Data Protection Act, there’s something very customer-hostile about they way they have organized their business.
At this point it occurred to me that it might be possible for my daughter to transfer the balance into my name, so that I could take care of getting the phone fixed. The manager said this should be possibly by phoning 450. Just to be on the safe side, I did this from the store. My daughter gave her secret number to the operator, and I gave my name, and the operator said the account will be updated. I’m surprised the operator didn’t ask me to choose a new “secret number”, but she did confirm that the old “secret number” (which they consider to be my daughter’s) will still work. Weird.
I should mention that the Orange store is half an hour away from my home, so this fruitless outing wasted an hour and a half of my time, not to mention my daughter’s time and that of the manager.
Stay tuned.
February 20th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Eventually the phone came back into stock at Orange, so I took the phone and receipt to arrange for the exchange. At first I only saw the staff who had been totally unhelpful the first time, so I kept coming back each day in the hope that I would see the guy who had actually told me I to exchange the phone.
After six visits I still hadn’t seen him in the store, but I saw someone I hadn’t seen before and decided to see whether he could do anything. He got a replacement phone out from the back room, then realised that it was more than 28 days since I had bought the phone.
He said that after 28 days they can no longer do exchanges, only repairs, although possibly he could seek extraordinary permission to do a replacement. I’m actually happy with having the phone repaired, because it’s more environmentally friendly, so he removed the SIM card, gave me a reciept, and took away the phone.
Now, if only the business manager who I saw a few weeks ago had offered the possibility of a repair – or failing that had put the wheels in motion for an exchange before the 28 day limit was reached.
Stay tuned.
March 1st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
On Tuesday 24th February I got a phone call from Orange to say that the phone was fixed. I went straight to the store to pick it up. An employee grudgingly went into the back room to locate it. I tested it out and sure enough it was working properly. At last!
All in all, this took 36 days to fix. I had to demonstrate the problem to three people at the Orange shop. In addition I had to explain the problem to three Orange support people over the phone (going through long lists of irrelevant menu options and working my way through the call centre list of inane questions every time). I had to authenticate myself six times (in addition to showing my purchase receipt and repair receipt). My daughter had to authenticate herself three times. I had to make four visits to the Orange shop, dragging my daughter along one of those times.
Not once did the people I spoke to express any kind of sympathy, or any kind of regret that Orange had sold me a faulty phone. Each of them, except the last, considered the problem resolved (from their point of view) as soon as they could find some excuse why they didn’t need to sort out the problem. Customer “service” at its worst.
After being treated like this, my family are moving away from Orange. My daughter first needs to use up her initial credit then we will get the phone unlocked. My wife also has some credit to use up first. My other daughter is now with Asda Mobile, whose four pence text messages are ideal for a high school girl. I have started to use T-Mobile, whose internet deal is excellent. Way to lose a family of customers, Orange.
March 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm
And to add insult to injury, it turns out that the four games bundled with the phone are just crippled demos, which you have to pay to unlock.
May 1st, 2009 at 3:37 am
It is a real shame when companies do not show respect for their customers. When this happens to me, I look for other places to purchase my products and services. Customers have a voice in that they control where they purchase and that has a lot of pwoer in the marketplace.