Hi,

I will try not to go into a rant about this,Today I recieved a letter from a debt collection agency,on behalf of Orange Home Services, I phoned and was told I owed OHS money from 2007 when I cancelled my broadband,I was not aware of this had NO phonecalls No letters advising me of missing payments as all bills had been paid by direct debit.

After going of the deep end a poor man who was only doing his job , I went online to check my bank statements from this date,(Oh the joys of online banking ) I phoned Orange thankfully I got a very helpful assistant who went through my account and discovered I owed half the amount I was billed for, I can`t argue with it because I can`t remember that far back.

Then I discover they can`t take a card payment it has to paid by cheque,back to the debt collection agency to make my reduced payment .I now have to phone again in a few days to see if Orange have closed my account.

and this was me trying not to rant !!!!

TBC

Well this is my woeful story. In december i rang Orange to cancel my Broadband I repeatedly told the operator that I wanted to cancel the account as she kept babbling on about special deals and she had mentioned the 30 day cancelation process. In the end i put the phone down on her. I later found out that I'd forgotten to cancel the payments for Feb and march...thats my fault I accept that. In December I had a new phone line installed and ceased using the other one.

Today I got a letter from Orange regarding missing payments. So i duely called them to be told that in December I had not confirmed that I wanted to delete my account.....excuse me what part of I wish to cancel....didn't they understand? I'm sure the operator that I spoke to this time was trying to wind me up because he even insisted that I had not confirmed to him that I wanted to end my account FFS! He then kept me on hold for "two minutes" came back and insisted that though he would cancel my account from today another department would contact me about the debt!

hi, in response to your comment about the helpdesk being outsourced.....on is it just!!

I was with Wanadoo then they went to Orange so have been with them about 4yrs - had Livebox for over 2yrs now - never had a problem until the other day.... for some reason we were not getting a signal into the livebox and it too 2 days and numerous calls to their call centre IN INDIA which was really not much help - they were working to a script and kept going over the same thing.

When we did get a guy from the UK team to call us, they would not speak to my husband who was the only one at home (remember they called us and its a PC / modem we are talking about not bank funds!), I had to ring India to give his details so they would talk to him - asked for a call back, they cannot do that they are an INCOMING call centre only!

My ....how frustrated we were!! Eventually we unplugged everything again (4th time) and it somehow then worked!! I was considering now moving to Sky for £1 extra per month we get 4 sky mix channels as it includes broadband / free calls / all freeview channels however, having read the reviews on Sky, not sure sure now!

Hi

Have seen some people very fed-up with Orange so I thought I would share my 'success' and insights.

To cut a long story short - after ordering and repeatedly calling to try to get my broadband and telephone line sorted, I still had no service after over two months, they took 3 months payment and still hadn't transferred my phoneline over to Orange. When I called to cancel my contract which according to their terms & conditions was not valid, I was told I would have to pay £350 in cancellation fees. A blunt letter to the Executive Champion for Customer Service (nice title huh!) stating I would take them to Trading Standards suddenly rectified the problem. Money back and an apology - thank you very much Mr Orange.

If you want to persist with Orange - I was advised by an Orange customer service person to try the mobile customer service helpline. Makes me wonder whether the B'band telephone stuff is outsourced- which makes sense as I was treated badly by the Orange b'band customer helpdesk and is very unlike Orange Mobile Customer Service. i didn't try this as I had already written to the Exec Champ. and quite frankly had had enough- but good luck if you try it.

Alternatively check the Terms & Conditions of your contract and write to tell them their failings.

Then go with Talk Talk (who have been great sofar)!