This was a letter to Orange CEO. Customer DID get a reply from him. CEO sent a new phone (a downgrade) and told he'd raise the issues with the board! And that was in OCTOBER 2000.

I write to express my extreme concern regarding your company's management of it's customer relationship, and to ask for help with the problems I have had. I am amazed that the J.D. Power and Associates' Customer Satisfaction Study concluded that 'Orange led the industry in virtually every driver of customer satisfaction,' given my experiences.

I believe in Orange, however if you consider the way in which I have been treated, you will wonder why.

I can split my problems into four main areas.

MIS-SELLING
My problems began on the day I purchased my phone. It was purchased the day before I flew to Ibiza for a week. The reason I gave to the sales assistant in the Orange shop was that "I wanted a phone that would let me check my email while I was away." I was happily sold a Nokia 7110e under these circumstances, although I later find that Orange does not support email, and that WAP access is not available abroad. I should well have gone back for a full refund under these circumstances, but I trusted Orange and stayed a customer.

CUSTOMER ACCESSABILITY
In today's times customer relationships are key to business success. Orange tries to maintain these relationships through force, by insisting on a 12 month contract, -locking the customer into a relationship. This is certainly how I feel when I tried to change my handset after discovering it had a faulty speaker. I phoned orange on various occasions to report thin, each time being put on hold for anything from 30 minutes (5 or six occasions) and 1h 40 (three occasions) to a mammoth 9 hours on wait (one one occasion). Most of these calls resulted in my battery dying or me hanging up to go to a meeting. It has taken me to date over 20 hours on hold and three weeks of my like to resolve this despite paying £5 a month to guarantee my right.

After the contract is signed, Orange appeared to remove all concern with maintaining our relationship and move resources towards gaining further customers. This is fundamentally wrong.

INTEGRATED LOGISTICS
It is your logistics arrangements which have caused me the most inconvenience. I was told in the Orange shop that Paying £5 a month would guarantee me a replacement handset within 24 hours should I have a fault. The handset was faulty on the day you sold it me, and from the date of reporting this to you I went through a three week patch of

1. waiting in during the day for a delivery which then failed to arrive,
2. ringing orange to complain,
3. receiving an apology and a promise of a further delivery date,
4. [go to 1]

Specific highlights include;

1. Being told on at least three occasions that a courier would deliver it and receiving no explanation after the event why this did not occur.
2. Being told that it would be posted to arrive next day, and ringing on three consecutive days to be told that it had been posted and to 'just wait', only to be told 5 days later that 'some delivery notes have gone missing and that yours was probably in there

RELATIONSHIP HANDELLING
Some businesses such as Woolworths adopt the mantra that 'the customer is always right'. Some businesses such as Carphone Warehouse go further and say they would 'rather under promise and over deliver than over promise and under deliver'. I can only assume that Orange has no thoughts on this matter from the way I have been treated.

1. After waiting on hold for 9h05:53 I was told later that night that 'that is not possible' and practically called a liar. I have received no apology for this.
2. After being insulted I have asked to speak to a supervisor to be told that one is not available, I can not be told when one will be available and that I can not either have the phone number of one or be called back by one.
3. When I call with a problem such as the posted handset above, I am routinely fobbed of by staff who don't know the answer and make up a response ('just wait, I'm sure it will be there tomorrow'), instead of actually finding out the answer.
4. Even after 9 hours on hold I receive the message 'your call is important to us, please be aware we are doing everything possible'. This constitutes lying!

Further to this, I have recently had problems with loosing my insured handset only to find Orange being obstructive and unhelpful. I lost my handset on Saturday and promptly phoned Orange to freeze it, telling the operator that I wanted to catch up with my friend before blocking it and check it hadn't been found. She told me that this was fine and after finally reaching my friend on Tuesday to find that it hadn't turned up, I reported it stolen and contacted Orange to arrange a replacement only to be told that the eight hour deadline had expired and I could not have a replacement. Why then was I told on Saturday that this would be fine?

To make matters worse, the staff I spoke to on Tuesday were rude and unhelpful.

To reiterate the key failings I have been:

• miss-sold a product at a cost of £500*,
• sold a faulty product,
• waiting at home for 3 weeks for a replacement,
• held on hold for 20 hours total and still without my problem being solved,
• lied to and insulted by call staff,
• cheated out of a new handset when my old one was lost

* phone plus insurance plus one year line rental

With 7 million customers I can see the difficulty in maintaining relationships, but that does not excuse the need for doing so, and failing a customer to the degree you have done with me is simply unacceptable. I am a good person at the end of his tether with a company who he can not talk to about the problems and yet continues to pay circa £100 a month to.

I am still without a phone, apology, explanation or compensation for the appalling way in which I have been treated. I have received no joy from the help line and so as Chief Operating Officer, and the person who seemed so pleased with the J.D. Power survey, I look to you to deal with the problems I have encountered, compensate me and do your best to keep me as a customer. I cannot afford three more weeks waiting at home and 20 more hours on the phone to try to resolve this.

Name withheld

Yet another sad story

Here is a copy of an email sent to hans.snook at regarding the most unprofessional and outrageous case of customer service I have ever seen!
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Dear Mr Snook.
Reference: Mobile Number 0976 7*****

I am writing you to as an extremely dissatisfied Orange Customer. A customer that has been with Orange since 1995 when you first began. I really think that you should be made aware of the problems I have had with Orange over the past few months.

Firstly. back in April I enquired at your Brighton (Western Road) store with regards to upgrading my Nokia 6150 to a Nokia 7110. I asked the Assistant Manager in the store whether the items I had for my 6150 (eg Hands Free Car Kit, Nokia Cellular Data Suite and additional batteries) would be compatible with the Nokia 7110. I was assured by the staff that all the items would be compatible and that I would not encounter any problems.

I left the store to think about whether to upgrade or not as I would have to do an indirect upgrade, costing me an extra £100 on the phone price. The following day, I telephoned the store to place an order. Upon doing so, I was told that they were currently out of stock but they would be having a delivery the following day. They said that they would put one aside for me. The next day I went in and they still did not have any in stock, I stated that I wanted to cancel my order as I was going to find another supplier who had stock. I was told this was not a problem.

I then went to another mobile phone dealership whom I used to work for, and found that they had one in stock. I asked them to put it aside as I would be in later. Having then purchased the Nokia 7110, I took it home and went to work. During the evening I needed to send some email messages. I found that the Nokia 7110 did not work with my existing DAU-9P data cable that I had been using with my 6150. This left me in a very awkward situation with my customers who I support.

I contacted the Orange Specialist Product Support department who deal with mobile fax and data, and asked them why it did not work. I was informed that I would have to purchase a new cable if I wished to use fax and data with the 7110, or get infra-red capability on my laptop (all at extra expense). You can imagine that I was not happy!

On the 21st April, I contacted Customer Services, and explained the situation to them, that I had been given wrong information about the phone by the Orange store and that I wanted to return the phone and get a refund. I eventually spoke to Darren Pounder in the upgrades department. He assured me that I could take the Nokia 7110 back to the company I purchased it from and would be able to get an RA (returns authorisation) number and would be refunded the money I had paid.

I went back to the dealer explained this, obtained a refund and was about to leave the store when I was called back. The returns department would not authorise the return as it was an upgrade and there is no 14 day return on upgrades. At this point I had had the phone for 2 days! I then spoke to Mark Simmons on Ext. 36105 who told me t hat there was no problem. The dealer could return my money and that if they contacted Commercial Support they would get the required RA number.

The staff at the dealership did this and were told by Katherine in that department that this was not possible. I had purchased the phone from a different dealer to who gave me the information and that it was my fault I should have asked the same question. The staff were told it was between Orange and myself and that as I was to blame they could do nothing. This was also repeated by Abi on ext 35161, who stated that I was at fault.

Having been a customer with Orange since 1995, this is not the way I expect to be treated! To be given wrong information by one of YOUR retail shops and then to find out that the information was incorrect is outrageous. In total my upgrade cost me £249.99 and that excludes the numerous telephone calls I have had to make, and the time out of work I have had to take.

It seems that someone at Orange can make a mistake, and it then comes down to the customer, who becomes at fault!

This is the first instance of bad customer service.

The second incident is regarding the recent unlocking of my Nokia 6150 so that I could use it on the Vodafone network (incidentally they are now my new airtime supplier and are more reliable!). I was told that I would have to pay £35.25 which I knew anyway, and did not object to. On June 5th I paid the £35.25 fee with my Visa Card and was told that I would be contacted by an engineer within 48 hours.

A week later I had still not been contacted. I advised the staff that I could not afford to wait any longer and would either have to buy a brand new phone SIM free or find an alternative company from the Internet who could unlock the phone for me, and asked for the £35.25 to be refunded.

Upon checking my bank statement on 21st June, I noticed that the money had not been refunded. As I had not been able to find a suitable phone or company, I requested that Orange retained the £35.25 and asked for an engineer to contact me again. This was agreed with no problem as the operator could see that the fee had been paid and I was promised a call from the engineers at Orange within 48 hours. On Friday 23rd June, I was contacted at approx. 11.47am by Customer Services, who were phoning because the request to unlock my phone had gone to the engineers and I had not paid the £35.25. This confused me as I had it on my bank statement that it was paid. I was then told that someone in the accounts department had refunded the money. This was against my wishes, and at no time during that conversation had I requested a refund.

I tried to explain this to the Customer Services operator who's name I do not know, who basically said that I would have to pay the money again. He refused to accept that someone at Orange had made a mistake and tried to pass the blame to me.

Several phone calls later, it was agreed that the money would be added to my airtime account and that on Monday morning I would receive the unlocking code to give to my contractor. Monday morning came and went, there was no phone call. I expected to be contacted today (Tuesday 27th) and still no phone call. I decided to ring Customer Services to find out what was going on. I was once again told that no payment had been received despite Orange having taken the money on June 5th and also a Customer Services operator stating she could see the money had been paid. Not only was I told that the £35.25 had not been paid, there were several charges on my account which had been added on each time I had phoned. The sum of this equated to £70.50 (i.e. 2 x 35.25 - the unlocking fee!). I was then asked to fax through my bank statement to prove that I had paid the money in the first place!! This is outrageous!

It is now Wednesday morning. I have a 6150 that cannot be used due to mistakes at Orange. Once again I the customer am expected to sort out YOUR mistakes. This has inconvenienced me greatly. Not to mention the stress and anxiety I have been put through, by your staff's failure to carry out simple tasks.

I expect some sort of compensation from Orange, not for one but TWO errors . I no longer recommend Orange to anyone. Instead I tell them how they treat their long standing customers. Its a shame new customers are blinkered by all the JD Power reports into your customer service and network. In my opinion none of it is true.

Never once, in all my career in the mobile communications industry have I ever come across such bad customer service and passing of the problem to the Customer. Sadly I am still under contract with Orange. Due to the original misinformation by the staff at Orange in Brighton, I signed another 1 year agreement (which I now regret).

I wish to be contacted by someone Senior at Orange. Someone who has the ability to make decisions and will actually stick to them. Not someone who has to keep saying that they need to check with their Supervisor if they are allowed.

As you can tell, I am most unsatisfied by Orange, the service I have and continue to receive and want you to do something, that may make me change my mind and decide to stay with you. (Unless of course, you enjoy seeing customers leave! In which case I will take all my family mobiles and associates mobiles off your network and tell them just how bad you really are as a network!)

Hard to believe isn't it? Or are you not surprised?

I leave it in your hands, but expect a telephone call, even if just an acknowledgement of this email no later than Thursday 29th June. That gives you enough time to get someone to look into this. My contact number is 07********* (Vodafone) or you can call my Orange Phone (0976 7*****). If I do not hear anything by 29th June, I will assume that you do not care about this problem and will seek to disconnect my phone.

For your information I have also forwarded a copy of this to Customer Services, in the hope that someone somewhere will sort something out!

THE RESPONSE?
An email back from Hans Snooks "Personal Assistant" stating "You are an important customer to us and we intend to deal with your concerns and see that they are satisfactorily addressed. Mr Snook will be kept fully informed on his return."

So I receive a phone call, telling me there is nothing they can do. It was my fault that I did not ask the same questions at the dealership, it was my fault that THEIR staff fucked up, and of course, the famous quote "The Orange Store is not one of ours it is a retail shop that sells our products". Oh so the fact that it has "Orange" outside ,only sells Orange and calls itself Orange Retail is nothing do with Orange? Strange!!??

Then July 2000 and another email is sent stating that nothing has been done, a simple "I'm sorry to hear that your complaint continues to remain unresolved. I shall investigate this further and contact you as soon as possible." is received from the Chief Executives Lap Warmer.

Another telephone call is received, repeating that it was my fault...funnily enough the person at Orange wants me to listen to her, but she does not want to listen to me!

Now, September 2000 I am still awaiting a letter from Orange "confirming the points raised" and am still waiting a resolution to their fuck up.

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MY ADVICE?

1. Do not even consider going on Orange. Shit signal, shit customer service and unprofessional staff who only want to get your money and who will lie to get it.
2. If you are an Orange customer, get off their network as soon as you can! Go onto Vodafone - you will experience better customer service and customer focused staff.
3. Don't get caught up in all the "company" crap that they dish out. They are all brainwashed!! Ever had a conversation with an Orange employee?? They repeat everything back to you (seriously!) and cannot make a decision!

...and finally If you are reading this Christine, Hans or any other timewasters in Orange, you can stick your contract, you can stick your products and services because I don't give a shit anymore!