Orange Data Plans; People who listen to customers
I like Orange. I’ve been with them for a long time. Whenever I upgrade they are very competitive. However just before I got my N95 they cancelled all their data plans, and caused me to write this blog post.
I called Orange back yesterday and spoke to someone who was very pleasant, but not able to help (and by the way the ability to simply select an option for “I want to talk to a person” is still making me smile, it’s so rare these days). He did however offer to get a manager to call me back. After about 20 minutes of no call I thought it would turn out as it does when British Gas promise the same thing.
However, I did receive a call. I spoke to a very switched on chap called Jan. I would say that Orange should give him a promotion but I worry about taking good people out of the front lines when customers are calling needing to get stuff done. We chatted for a long time and he was very open to my point that Orange calling a 30mb capped package unlimited
was very out of sync with the market. The rest of the market refers to unlimited as a 1gb cap.
Part of the problem is that Orange don’t give customers a way to realisticly experience data. They have a “3G trial” package which you get for a couple of months when you switch to a 3G phone. During the trial you get a 1gb a month of data for 3G stuff. Then if you don’t cancel you get automatically moved to a 4mb plan. It’s absolutely insane, talk about disparity. It makes Orange seem like a drug dealer, getting you hooked on unrealistically cheap and plentiful data and then charging you through the nose when it’s too late to back out. After a little discussion he offered to wipe any additional data charges from my account for a month, so I could find out if I really needed a gb. That’s pretty good customer service.
He promised to investigate and feed my concerns up. It’s simple really, I want to use data. I’m a geek I will happily use lots and lots of data, but I want to pay Orange a competitive price for it. The best deal he could find was 500mb/mo of GPRS for something like £50. I don’t want GPRS hell no, I want 1gb of 3.5G data for something which competes with T-Mobile’s web ‘n’ walk. I really hope Jan gets back to me.
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I like Orange. I’ve been with them for a long time. Whenever I upgrade they are very competitive. However just before I got my N95 they cancelled all their data plans, and caused me to write this blog post.
I called Orange back yesterday and spoke to someone who was very pleasant, but not able to help (and by the way the ability to simply select an option for “I want to talk to a person” is still making me smile, it’s so rare these days). He did however offer to get a manager to call me back. After about 20 minutes of no call I thought it would turn out as it does when British Gas promise the same thing.
However, I did receive a call. I spoke to a very switched on chap called Jan. I would say that Orange should give him a promotion but I worry about taking good people out of the front lines when customers are calling needing to get stuff done. We chatted for a long time and he was very open to my point that Orange calling a 30mb capped package unlimited
was very out of sync with the market. The rest of the market refers to unlimited as a 1gb cap.
Part of the problem is that Orange don’t give customers a way to realisticly experience data. They have a “3G trial” package which you get for a couple of months when you switch to a 3G phone. During the trial you get a 1gb a month of data for 3G stuff. Then if you don’t cancel you get automatically moved to a 4mb plan. It’s absolutely insane, talk about disparity. It makes Orange seem like a drug dealer, getting you hooked on unrealistically cheap and plentiful data and then charging you through the nose when it’s too late to back out. After a little discussion he offered to wipe any additional data charges from my account for a month, so I could
He promised to investigate and feed my concerns up. It’s simple really, I want to use data. I’m a geek I will happily use lots and lots of data, but I want to pay Orange a competitive price for it. The best deal he could find was 500mb/mo of GPRS for something like £50. I don’t want GPRS hell no, I want 1gb of 3.5G data for something which competes with T-Mobile’s web ‘n’ walk. I really hope Jan gets back to me.
July 17th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Let us know when Jan gets back to you. You’re only asking for what we all want, hopefully they’ll realise that soon!
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 am
too right, their data plans are archaic and, frankly, are going to lose them at least one customer unless they sort it out in the next few weeks.
t-mobile and vodafone have had this sorted for a while: i hear rumblings of a similar o2 plan.
wtf orange?
October 16th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I too have been trying to get on a decent data package with Orange since August 2006 when I was about to leave them for T Mobile Web N Walk.
The assured me they were finalising the data package, gave me a free SPV M3100 with 3 months of unlimited 3G data to try only after 3 months to find out that they don’t have a package for me to live out the rest of my contract on.
Every few months I will phone up and try to get through to someone who even knows what data packages are, but still end up with either being offered the off peak for £5 or the unlimited WAP package which is limited to 30MB and doesn’t support 3G.
I rang up this morning to try yet again and this time was offered the Orange World access 80, which is 80MB of data per month for around £40 a month but yet again no 3G access.
Over 12 months Orange don’t seem to have done anything about data packages to at least offer something similar to the competition, instead they seem to just keep pushing the older WAP packages that I just can’t see the point of having.
I’ve spoke to many people now who are all leaving Orange due to their poor ability to listen to customers needs for data and I’m afraid I will be one of those people when my final months of my contract are up.
It is a shame as I too have been with Orange for almost 10 years, but I do get the feeling i’m on a sinking ship now.