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Peter Steward's Web Pages |
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My Site
Review Section Books Concerts
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The Rant Section - Letter to Orange Mobile January 2008 Dear Sir/Madam I have written to you on numerous occasions to query
a number of consecutive bills from yourselves. To date the only response I have received has been a
two paragraph letter in September informing me that you have a backlog of
correspondence but will reply in due course. Four months later I am still
awaiting that reply! You failed to reply or address my questions but you
did manage to put the matter into the hands of a debt recovery company and
I have had three threatening letters from them. Last night I made a very
upsetting phone call to them to try to sort the matter out and spoke to a
very rude young man who insisted that I was phoning up because I
couldn’t pay the bill. This is absolute nonsense I was phoning to try
and get him to push you for a response, but, of course, he had no interest
in doing this. I found his attitude obnoxious as he had no intention
of listening to what I had to say – similarly you seem to have no
intention of responding to my queries. I live in an old fashioned world
where I believe that 1/ the customer should be shown
respect (I’m sure any marketing charter you have stresses this),
2/ Correspondence is answered within a 10 day period and 3/ Complaints are
investigated. You obviously live in the modern world where queries are
constantly ignored and the customer is treated with utter contempt. My queries were, as you will know if you had the
common decency to read my letters, regarding
a number of calls over a number of months I had been charged for from my
mobile to my home landline. These calls are entirely fictitious. The fact
that they re-occurred on a number of months should make you suspicious in
yourself. As you will recall I cancelled my contract with you
as I was already unhappy with your service over a number of previous
months. I was locked into an 18 month contract and accepted this. During
the final three months the phone was uncharged for most of the time and
sat in my lounge. On the dates in question I was working from home. The young man from the debt company tried to tell me
that it was quite possible I had the phone in my coat and had accidentally
activated the home number. He was therefore suggesting that I had somehow
accidentally activated the same number over three consecutive months – I
think not. Neither do I think that I would ring myself on my landline from
my mobile and answer that landline whilst still on the mobile. It would
take quite a contortionist act to be able to do that! When I make comments to you regarding my billings I
expect them to be answered. Once they have been answered to my
satisfaction I would naturally settle my bill. It is beyond me how you can
forget to answer the letters but can manage to put the matter in the hands
of a debt company. Or was this the easy way out for you? I am still awaiting an answer. Due to the aggressive
nature of Northern Debt Recovery I have now sent a cheque for the amount
requested but am very unhappy at being forced to do this through threats
to me as a customer (sorry former customer). Northern Debt actually said in one of their letters
that they had tried on a number of occasions to contact me on my landline
without success. This strikes me as strange as I work from home and am at
my home address for most of the day. When not here my landline has a 24
hours a day answermachine. No messages have ever been left. I suggest that you re-visit your customer care
charter and re-write it and also that you finally address my queries that
began many months ago. I expect 1/ My
claims to be fully investigated and 2/ A full apology to be issued
regarding the treatment I have suffered. You might even consider some
recompense for this. Needless to say I have moved to one of your
competitors from whom I have received good service, putting Orange in the
shade. You will notice that I have sent a copy of this letter to both BBC
Television’s Watchdog programme and to Which consumer magazine to warn
people that if they query a bill with Orange they are more likely to be
taken to court than have their queries answered. I have also written a
piece for my own web site where Orange has been named as the worst company
I had dealings with (or should that be didn’t have dealings with) in
2007. I will also be putting a copy of this letter onto that web site at www.petersteward.org.uk/rant.htm
It might help other people to avoid suffering the same problems as myself.
Needless to say I will never subscribe to another Orange product. How many
customers are you prepared to lose in a very competitive business before
you realise that antagonising people is bad business sense? Finally please respond to my queries by either e-mail
at petersteward@lineone.net
or by post to the above address. I do not wish to be contacted by
telephone as, after speaking to the debt company, I feel too angry to be
able to talk about this matter objectively. Do, however, make sure that
you contact me. Further ignoring of my correspondence WILL lead to me
taking the matter further. Yours faithfully Peter Steward I sent the above letter on January 10th both by mail and e-mail. On January 14th I received the following e-mail reply which struck me as being very similar to the letter previously received stating that they had a backlog of correspondence. It seems virtually impossible to get a reply from this company. Interestingly enough the top of the e-mail had the following words: "Orange strive to supply customers with the highest level of service." Now if you believe that heap of b------s you must still believe in fairies!! Hello Peter As I write this it is now 25th January and I still
await a response
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