Friday 31 July 2009

The penultimate pith taking by Orange...

OK, new phone, new provider, new contract. And Orange are still taking the pith. Be warned: Requesting a PAC (Port Authority Code) from these muppits is like getting blood from a stone. Oh, they'll give it to you, but NOT on the phone. They WANT their extra pound of flesh. They'll send it to you by mail instead.

That's a marked difference to one2one, when I left them close to twelve years back, one call to their customer service department, on their phone, and I had a PAC to give to Orange the day I signed with them. No fuss, no problems.

Orange, on the other hand, refuse to do this. Oh, yeah, I know the regs are there from OFCOM to provide us number "portability", but Orange know the rules better than thee or me, and get around them by sending the PAC by mail.

Vodafone are under no obligation to accept a PAC after you've signed the contract with them, and this was made clear to me at the point of purchase, so there y'go. I could have delayed, but frankly I've had more than enough of Oranges stuff and nonsense (VERY polite way of putting it, lemme tell you), and just want the hell shot of them.

And I'm now at part one of "Operation Launch Orange Into Space". Part two will be replacing their broadband service with a more cost-effective (and cheaper) alternative, and for that, I'm gonna be doing a LOT of research over the coming weeks.

Parts three, four, and five will comprise replacing the broadband, and paying the final bills to orange, after which, you may well and truly colour Orange as greyed out.

I've been trying to compose a pithy end to this Blant, but really and truly, can't find one. Pity. Oh well. Obviously too early in the day - I mean night - for me. Oh well, breakfast calling...

2 comments:

Mike Man said...

Hi Roger,

I've been reading your posts about Orange and the HTC Touch Pro2, and your story is very similar to mine. I too was 'locked in' to Orange thanks to their £5 pcm unlimited broadband. I also experienced worsening customer support over the years, and was pleasantly surprised by the staff at Vodafone. I also had a nightmare with the Touch Pro2, and decided to write about it:

http://mikemanreviews.blogspot.com/

I hope you have better experiences with Vodafone than you did with Orange.

Roger said...

Hiya Mike - thanks - I'll look over your blog in more depth tomorrow - working nights means I have to go to work in about half an hour :(

The quick glance that I had just now though, showed me one thing - your phone was equipped with the Vodafone TouchFlo branding - mine was unbranded - this might have some bearing on the problems you found - although I still can't get the blasted FM Radio to work on mine, despite trying several of the suggested software/firmware solutions over on XDA-Developers :( Oh well, at least everything else works thus far :)

Not tried mobile e-mail yet, have to find a suitable independent pop3 supporting free provider (heh, I suspect I've as much chance of finding one of those as I have of finding rocking horse droppings, but there we go :)).

Cheers for the comment, by the way - hope things go a lot better with your TP2 :)

Roger