My Orange contract expired last week so I was in the market for a new phone. I had my eye on a Nokia 6630 as the Orange web site said that I could get one for £30. But when I called Orange to arrange it thy said that it would actually cost me £150. This is apparently because I’m on such a cheapskate tariff (long time readers may remember the hoops I had to jump through to get on it). I was told that Orange had introduced new pricing policies that would penalise (that’s not the word they used) light users like me.
I went back to the web site to check again but the 6630 was showing as out of stock. They still had the (newer and better) 6680 available for £80 but that’s more than I wanted to pay for a new phone (did I mention that I was a cheapskate). So I widened my search a bit to look at all of the 3G phones that Orange offered. And I found the Sony-Ericsson K600i which was apparently available as a free upgrade. After doing a bit of investigation it seemed like a pretty good phone so I ordered the upgrade.
At this point I was convinced that the web site had out of date prices on it. The email I got confirming my order said:
Your upgrade fee is dependant on the products and services that you subscribe to. If there is any change to the upgrade fee shown above, or any other problems in processing your order we will contact you.
So I was expecting an email saying that as I was on such a cheap tariff I would be charged more for the phone. But the next day I got another email confirming my order.
And the phone arrived yesterday. It doesn’t seem to be missing much that I would have had with the 6630 (WAP browser instead of HTML browser for example) so I’m happy with it.
I notice, however, that the section on the Orange web site where you can do online updates has vanished and they ask you to call them.
Now, what cool applications do I need for my new phone?
hiya,glad im not the only one to have problems with orange… today i have come to an agreement woth their debt collection company over a disputed bill from 14 months ago.Without going into to much detail i had a motorola smart phone that wasn,t, no downloads of any sort ever arrived… bur i of course got billed for them, even for the ones when orange,s customer services talked me through the process to recieve them…. which i didn,t!!!the phone was returned twice.. customer services often didn,t call back when they promised… and lots more helpfull things like that.I offered to pay for my calls, service charge etc.. if orange would seperate them…. which they didn,t…Anyway due to the fact a baliff was about to turn up on my doorstep… i have more or less been bullied into an agreement today to pay a percentage of the bill and not to be allowed an orange phone again( which is a relief) as im now with o2 and have had dealings with their customer services i have to say it may be wise for orange to find who trains o2,s staff, as they are a 1000% more helpful and better trained.Finally, orange are still sending me fliers about “how the grass is greener” etc… well it may be elsewhere, but at orange i reckon its a dirty brown colour!!!Thanks for accepting my rantingsRegardsColin Brown