Hi You wont be able to cancel the contract due to a fault with the handset, but the good news is that Orange carry the warranty on Orange branded Blackberry phones for 12 months, regardless of where it was bought. If it is Orange branded, give Orange a call and they will run a diagnostic, if found faulty it will be replaced the next day by courier. Only other thing you can do is have it sent off for repair again, or simply put your sim in another phone, you will be able to call orange to have the Blackberry bundle removed if a seperate bundle. If not charged seperately then it is inclusive with your talkplan and you are not paying anything extra anyway. Hope that re-assures a little!

Hi Chiddock The best Union for callcentre workers is the CWU - Communication workers Union. Check out their website cwu.org, you can join online or find you nearest Branch details to find a Rep. Regards OP

Hi, Yes it is the 'coleman' case (cant remember the other parties though!) As a registered and sole carer, your husband has the same rights to 'reasonable adjustments in the workplace as you yourself would if you where there. this does included allowign time to 'cater' for needs that crop up during the day and scheduled meals/personal cleaning up tasks. Your husband needs to remind them of this and negotiate with the managers that if he does return 5 or 10 mins late that he will tag on the extra minutes at the end of the day or something. They certainly shouldnt be descriminating against him. Would also suggest he contact a Union rep if one on site or a local office for advice (also nothing stopping him joining a Union for future help/back up even if not recognised in workplace !

Hi, your best bet for a decent upgrade deal is to ring through and select option 4 'thinking of leaving' this will put you through to the disconnections dept. aske them what they can offer you to stay and you will probably find some good deals/discounts being offered. Have a good idea of the phone you want (the Tocco is good - i have one!) they can work out what to offer from there. Dont worry about credit check, it is a load of tosh telling you there will be a credit check on an upgrade, it just doesnt happen!!! you are a present customer and have built a good history with the network, they have absolutely no need to credit check you again. would be a different story if starting fresh with another contract on diff network though. if they cant offer any different deals, you can stay on your existing 'plan' and just take the phone, you may then be able to negotiate a 12mnth term, but dont get your hopes up! Good luck and happy shopping. OP

although i understand the shocker this bill must have been when it landed on the door step, it wasnt unauthorised access! the son had use of the phone, the son gave it to a friend to use. it was used and unfortunately a very expensive use! why would any network or service provider not expect the bill to be paid for the services used? your thread title says bullying? are they just not sending a bill and asking it to be paid (as would any service provider) and remember the network is only collecting the charge for the 3rd party company supplying the songs/video and retaining a small amount as the 'delivery' agent. for the amount of money these services cost it sounds like it was full song tracks or video clips bought and downloaded on to the phone. have you thought of asking the lad who took the mickey to cover the costs, or his parents? consider if you lent your car to someone and they had an avoidable accident but they not insured, who is liable and going to pay for the damage to the car? the driver who drove like an idiot or you for lending the car in the first place! your local garage certainly wont fix it for free! best way for success here is to get the details of the 3rd party company and chase them for the costs using the fact that it is someone under 18 (they will then question why an under 18yr old is using a contract/billed account and not payg) and then use any refund they may give you to put towards the phone bill. only problem is that they will more than likely quote the t&c's and the bit that comes up on the phone when ordering these services, that confirms the charge and that it clearly says 'have bill payers permission' and have to select YES!! just giving you a heads up on what barriers you will come across as have had to deal with these things too many times before!

Certainly dont need to check with any superiors, have been doing this numerous times a day for many years. It is not a golden loophole, it is a consumer right. if the customer is not happy with the equipment sent to them they have the option to send it back and try out another type of phone. majority do this until they find one they are happy with, a very small minority will decide to leave and go with another network that supplies a particular model of phone that they are after. and....? fail to see the relevance. as stated in previous posts, an upgrade is an upgrade in the hardware, the actual phone. the CONTRACT is brand new and starts a new term of 12 or 18 mnths or however long is set, this is often with but not dependent on, changes to talkplans, offers and incentives etc. it is not a continuation of a previous contract. continued usage of the new equipment and use of the service/minutes/talplan provided is classed as acceptance of the new contractual terms given verbally at the time of the upgrade. these can be requested in writing at any time. No common mistakes being made here! yes i have READ a contract, and can probably quote you majority of Orange contract word for word! certainly know which sections to quote for certain aspects of it! one of the reasons more upgrades are done directly by cutomer service over the phone and on the web than in the retail stores! in fact we promote that as a benefit of ordering on line or over the phone. incorrect, (actually not very many customers actually register the sim that arrives with the new handset) it is not the SIM that is being rejected it is the equipment AND the contract terms. you have a great deal of knowledge buzby, but occasionally you are NOT 100% correct, I am aware you will rarely admit that you are mistaken and will argue till the cows come home, but as much as i enjoy a lively debate the following should settle the matter once and for all. apologies to mods if links not allowed but wanted copy/paste evidence and below quotes from a 'reliable' source and not something i could be accused is 'made up'! Also think this is relevant and useful information for any customers with the same query. from Orange website: http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/com.instranet.InstraServlet? What if I change my mind and no longer wish to upgrade? When you buy in the Orange shop online, you can cancel your upgrade within seven days of delivery. Just call the Upgrade team on 0800 079 0169 to cancel your upgrade and arrange for the return of the phone. The Office of Fair Trading: Cancellation periods Cancellation periods The regulations give consumers an unconditional right to cancel an order. This is to allow the consumer the opportunity to examine the goods or consider the nature of a service. If a consumer cancels an order, written notice must be given to you by: goods – seven working days from the day after that on which the goods are received by the consumer; services – seven working days from the day after that on which the consumer agrees to go ahead with the contract. If you fail to provide consumers with written confirmation of all the required information, then the cancellation periods can be extended up to a maximum of three months and seven working days. If the missing information is provided during this time, then the cancellation period ends seven working days beginning with the day after the full written confirmation is received by the consumer. Where a contract is cancelled, the consumer must ensure that reasonable care is taken of any goods received and 'restore' them to you. This does not mean that they have to return them - unless you stipulate this in the contract - only that they make them available for you to collect. You must refund the consumer's money as soon as possible and, at the latest, within 30 days of receiving the written notice of cancellation. The consumer may, at your discretion, be charged the direct cost of returning the goods, but you must tell them about this in the written information you give them. If payment for the goods or services is under a related credit agreement, the consumer's cancellation notice also has the effect of cancelling the credit agreement.

Sorry Buzby, on this one you are incorrect. the handset is subject the the normal distance selling regs, in rejecting those goods as unsuitable or unwanted the 'upgrade' is being rejected also then any terms that accompany it so then cancels the NEW contract. the previous contract does not apply, an upgrade is not an extension of a previous contract it is a brand new contract and often subject to different talk plans, costs, incentives and terms/conditions than the previous one. As long as the OP contacted the supplier within the 7 days period they will be able to return the equipment and cancel the new contract. Would again suggest that is sent back as a matter of urgency with a covering note of account number etc and include the code given when first contacted.

thanks for the reponse - But - payment wasnt by D/D. the whole premium was paid by visa debit card last year, (only way to cancel them from the consumer end is to cancel whole card after every transaction, rather tiresome!) they obviously retained the card details and deducted £229 quid from my bank account. I responded to the renewal notice and gave plenty of notice to cancel the renewal of the policy, even had a long conversation with the agent (mainly one sided - him trying to persuade me to renew!) Cancelation was confirmed on the call with a 'we will send you confirmation of no claims discount in the post to pass on to your new insurers' as a clear indication that he understood it was being cancelled. Have confirmed with the bank, 'electronically' the funds cleared from my account the same day it was requested. it was confirmed in the possesion of the insurance company and already earning them interest on day 2 (that was last Friday) I called them on Monday educate them on the error of their ways They did have the actual nerve to try it on and say I would only be getting £217 back because i had been insured with them for 5 days!! I swear I could actually feel the blood pressure rise! still yet to see a penny back in my account - Bank say they could have started the refund process on Monday, I would have seen my money on Wednesday - oops no, not arrived yet, insurance company squeezing some more interest out of mine and probably thousands ££££ of other ex-customers premiums. from feedback from other sites i have also posted and from talking to people this does seem quite common and definately a good money making con for the insurance companies and obviously better than the good days of ringing up to renew as that didnt make them any money! hopefully Watchdog will ask some pertinant questions!

trouble was I didnt pay last year on D/D, paid the whole lot in one go with Visa Debit Card. you cant cancel them without canceling the whole card and getting a new one sent out. If a company retains the details from the previous year you are simply at their mercy!

Hi All Have a question - has anyone had the following scenario happen to them? Your annual insurance, lets say for a car, is up for renewal but not liking the renewal quote you give them notice to cancel (giving plenty of notice!) and take out insurance elsewhere. a few weeks later you get a new certificate in the post from your OLD company, so check your bank and find that they have debited the renewal amount. A call to the company and they say 'oops, yes that shouldnt have renewed, we will cancel immediately and refund your premium' (No major issues getting it resolved and you think no more of it, a simple mistake) it then takes about 5 days to get your money back. so they have had your money for sometimes as long as 10 days! This has just happened to me for 2ND YEAR RUNNING with 2 different insurance companies. my thoughts are that even if they do this to only 10 people a day with a couple of hundred a pop they are earning some nice interest from us over the days they have our money sitting in their account!! Anyone else experienced this? wondering if I am just unlucky or if more widespread and earning these companies some nice extra interest.

As the OP was SENT the phone by Ph4u it must have been a telephone or web sale. Distance selling rules apply. if the customer is rejecting the PHONE, then they have the right to reject the GOODS within 7 days, this then cancels the upgrade and new contract leaving the customer the choice to chose another phone, starting a new contract, cancel completely or just wait until another phone comes along that takes their fancy. Zhangwb97, as Bankfodder says, send the phone and everything that came with it back to PH4U (keeping the tracking ref number) make sure yoy let the Network know of your actions and they will confirm which sim you need to keep. again as bankfodder says it may not be easy, but as long as you post the equipment back within that 7 days and you have notified them (possibly email them the notification?) it shouldnt be that much of a problem. try 3 for doing the upgrade direct with them as you may well get a better deal than doing it with a 3rd party company. good luck!

Hi All Have a question - has anyone had the following scenario happen to them? Your annual insurance, lets say for a car, is up for renewal but not liking the renewal quote you give them notice to cancel (giving plenty of notice!) and take out insurance elsewhere. a few weeks later you get a new certificate in the post from your OLD company, so check your bank and find that they have debited the renewal amount. A call to the company and they say 'oops, yes that shouldnt have renewed, we will cancel immediately and refund your premium' (No major issues getting it resolved and you think no more of it, a simple mistake) it then takes about 5 days to get your money back. so they have had your money for sometimes as long as 10 days! This has just happened to me for 2ND YEAR RUNNING with 2 different insurance companies. my thoughts are that even if they do this to only 10 people a day with a couple of hundred a pop they are earning some nice interest from us over the days they have our money sitting in their account!! Anyone else experienced this? wondering if I am just unlucky or if more widespread and earning these companies some nice extra interest.

Hi you are covered under the distance selling regs that allow you 7 days from the day after you recieve your phone to have a look and see if you like it, even on an upgrade. this is if you order over the phone or web and never took away from a store. you are within your time limit even if you call them on the 30th. make sure they note that you are rejecting the goods, get it back in the post TODAY, with a trackable reference. (worry about claiming the postage back from CPW later) and chose another one! Even better, if you are already with Orange and want to upgrade, give CS a call you may get a better deal, or on Orange web site (get a fiver off line rental for a start!)

HI When ordering over the website you have seven days from the day AFTER you sign for the equipment, and that is 7 working days! so dont count weekends in that. if you are still in that time frame, immediately phone CS, to the upgrades dept and request cancellation of the upgrade. They will give you the address to send the equipment back to, and then you can chose another phone! Merry Christmas!

Only problem here is that Orange have never had the facility to put blocks on accounts when a set amount has been reached. This is something all front line staff are aware off. A 'call restriction' to stop outgoing calls can be put on at the request of the customer. Bars are put on when bills become overdue but that is when payments are late. There is no facility to set an amount during a 'live' billing period as the OP suggests this is the reason they are refusing to pay for the calls that have been made. The argument that will be given here is that every handset has a call log that counts the minutes being used and dialling 150 opt 1, opt 1 will give an updated balance of minutes/texts used, or a call to CS will be able to find out the bill run up so far. So hence why they do not offer, and i say again, never have offered, the 'budget' cut off the OP would have found usefull (as I am sure many customers would!!) Heard the request many times, the self managing processes above are the reasons the company give for not having it! Sorry, but with nothing to back up what you say you were told, and claiming default on a service that doesnt exist, the company in this instance havent failed to provide. there is a question here though - if after one month the account was not 'outgoing' barred once reached a certain amount of minutes, how many months and how much money are you saying you went over by? surely when it didnt happen in the first month, a realisation that it wasnt happening would have been evident on the next bill? only ask, as i think this may be a pertinant question that may arise if you did decide to take it further.

Hi Juliex Try not to worry too much, Flyingdoc is 100% correct in the advice they have given. The sims and/or phones will have been sent out to you by the 3rd party dealer Southline and forwarded the details on to Orange to get the equipment activated. This means that they are 'live' and reasy to use so the network start charging line rental (although the bills you are mentioning do seem quite steep!) Dont use the sims or any phones at all. return them to Southline (NOT Orange, they didnt send them out so will have no means of tracking them) make sure it is done by registered trackable delivery and call Orange CS. (call to Business dept - 345 from another Orange phone if you someone who has one, or 07973100345) Frontline CSR's come across this alot and will be able to deal with it and help. Collections dept can only deal with trying to get outstanding amounts, they dont have the facility to check accounts/dealers ect. Also ask for Dealer feedback to be carried out, explaining everything as you have above. this will then be entered on to the account notes and will be able to be seen by the relevant depts. In the meantime you will be able to tell the DCA to hang on (or themselves!) for a while as it is in dispute. What should happen then is that Orange will insist the Southline cancel the connections and the billing issue will go away. hope that helps

Close to a free upgrade? sounds like a phone at least a year old, so only entitled to a 'like for like' replacment under insurance? if getting an upgrade then why need another brand new? how much will the brand new replacement get sold for? how much greed can a business handle? Its actions like this that will probably lead Orange to go the same way as all the other networks. = responsible if supplied for SOGA period, REFURBISHED replacement, then, get it sent of for repair under manufacturers warranty (so no replacement) or take out other insurance through a 3rd party, you pay through the nose for with a minimum £25 excess fee every claim. and guaranteed it will be the network that will get the blame for bad CS!! just as voda and T-mobile did when they couldnt sustain the costs of these unwarranted demands. let the indignation begin!

HI Emma 'Prove it' letter to the DCA is a good idea but if you want more info on the actual account (that the DCA wont have - and wont know that you have called in to Orange about) contact CS with the reference number, this should be the account number also, or give them the mobile number and just ask them if it is in your name. If not, they wont be able to give you any info like who's name it is etc. If it is in your name, you should be able to get more info about the account. They wont be able to deal with this as a mail or email request as they wont know who the heck is writing in!! Contact them on 150 from your phone (450 is pay as you go) or 07973100150 from a landline.

Legalpickle, i have always respected your viewpoints, feedback and help you offer, but this post was in MY opinion disgraceful. splitting hairs and stating that i claimed all calls are monitored and coming up with 'Head Office told me' different. well whoopdie doo! yes they would have said that because it is true and i never claimed anything different. My statement was, 'calls are monitored' I did not imply ALL calls where monitored and certainly nothing about recording off calls as your 1st reply stated. And, 'Orange are ALWAYS in the wrong, whatever' - that is such a sweeping statement, totally incorrect and based on what? after 7 years with the Company I can assure you totally wrong! Staff DO NOT force payg sims on customers or insist they have them. they offer them, and that offer is taken up about 50% of the time, please do not claim to know any different soley based on your hatred of the Company. I am sorry you had a bad experience with Orange, i am sure you will go on to have a few more bad experiences with other various service providers be it mobile, gas, electricity or a complaint against Tesco's, but at least TRY and keep it balanced!! "incompetent Orange puke staff" ??? MORAL: dont personally insult fellow posters who only happen to be employed by the Company you may dislike, they are only trying to help by explaining procedures. your Moral in capitals and highlighted in red - And you have the nerve to call ME biased!!! slanging match over - time to put your personal feelings aside and advise posters effectively and correctly i think. (in MY opinion - if someone is having a problem with a company, getting a little knowledge on its inner workings, it can only HELP? someone who DOES NOT have that knowledge can only hinder if giving incorrect info)

as above, if user simply has no interest in number a simple 30 days notice is taken, end of matter - the contract cancels on the 30th day - a letter is sent out confirming this.

you obviously love your Network! you say good stuff about yours, i will do the same with mine and we shall agree to differ!

Can i just point out that calls are monitored and that each and every time a payg sim is requested to transfer a number when cancelling a contract the instructions and the number to call are given. the calls are specifically monitored to make sure that happens. Also, when the sim pack arrives there are instructions, clearly stating that the conract number will not end until the number is transferred, and the number to call to get this done. Often these instructions on the phone are forgotten, the leaflet that comes with the sim is not read and the payg sim is put into a phone and activated with a completely different number ( and it isnt quried at the time what happened to the contract number they wanted to keep?) Majority of the time it is the subscriber that causes these issue, and CS will, dependant on how much abuse they are recieving at the time offer to waive part of the charges as goodwill. mostly it is demands for full waiver, sometimes even when the contract sim has continued to be used, if you can believe that!! compromise is normally the preferable outcome with both parties shouldering the responsibility, but, and this is my own personal opinion, consumers seem to be under the impression they can never do, and will not admit, any wrong!!!

there is another aspect that needs to be considered - yes the handset may have been supplied to you 'free' - as in you didnt stump up any money for it, but that is because it has been supplied to you on the condition of a 'minimum contract term' as in, x amount of £'s per month that covers the cost of the phone supplied. I am having a problem understanding why somebody would pay a monthly contract and not use the service at all? Because you chose not to use the phone is down to you - if you had used it the error would have been noticed a lot sooner and resolved. The network could argue that you knew the bar was there, didnt worry about it because using a diff network sim, (they may even check if handset serial number been used with another sim in it!!) with the aim of trying to claim back 8 mnths worth of line rental (a phone extremely cheap!!) IMO i dont think you can claim the whole 8 mnths worth (if it were me personally i wouldnt feel that i deserved it!) as it is 50/50 fault, so you may get further by showing you accept some of the responsiblity and asking for half of it back?

Think you will find though that it does say in the T&C's of contract that a charge will be made if customer does not pay by D/D and these terms are accepted by the customer with acceptance and use of phone. To my knowledge, when this is clearly printed in the contractual agreement not one person has had those charges refunded once contract under way or when contract ended (unless of course charged incorrectly when D/D in place!) Quite a few have tried, but courts say -nope, you agreed to it - pay it! btw, have noticed a couple of service providers have increased their charges overall, done away with a 'non D/D fee' then given the amount previously charged to the others as a discount (to those who pay D/D) - pretty clever, they still getting their money and those not paying D/D are still paying more anyway!

Non Direct Debit charge for Orange is £3.00 per month. As far as I am aware there are no plans to raise that cost.