Tracy and Matt's Blog

It's been a complete disappointment what Orange have done here - I was looking forwards to a Web and Walk "killer" but instead Orange have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of a real winner!


I know when my contract comes up in November I'll be off to someone other than Orange! Seems to me, that ever since France Telecom has come along, Orange have gone downhill!:(

First off, apologies if you have read this posting on another forum, but I thought it best to post the same entry on each forum to gain the widest coverage.

I upgraded my Orange SPV M3100 to a new SPV E650 about 6 weeks ago - just when Orange announced their new unlimited / £8 per month data tariff. I also signed up to a new contract to bring my monthly bill down - after some thinking I signed up for an 18 month contract because it was a better deal. On top of that the new £8 / unlimited data would be the ideal package for me.

At this time I confirmed with the woman I spoke to about my legibility for the unlimited tariff. I asked about what unlimited actually means and she said it would probably be capped around the same MB allowance as other mobile networks. Fair enough - they have to keep control of their network, but even I'd be hard pushed to download 1GB/month over GRPS.

Fast forward to today and the news breaks that Orange have capped the "unlimited" data tariff to 30MB. 30MB? What a crock of crap!

So today I phoned Orange to have a rant at them. Spoke to some bloke in the useless Indian call centre and explained the issue of the "unlimited" data tariff.

After 50 mins of getting nowhere I hung up on the bloke (who was a supervisor - I asked for a supervisor at the outset of the call - I didn't want to speak to a 1st line support monkey). The supervisor explained to me that their researchers had done some calculations into mobile usage and came up with this 30MB figure. It's laughable!

These ISP's and mobile providers need to remove the word "unlimited" from their packages / call plans as they are quite obviously not.

I'm disgusted with Orange. I'm 7 weeks into a 18 month contract. I feel like I've been conned into upgrading. Done up like a kipper. Thanks Orange. Thanks for nothing.

When my 18 months are up I'm off - and no matter how much the retentions staff plead with me to stay - I'm off...

Regards,

Lee - A very pissed off Orange customer

An update on this: I just checked the latest "Help" page for Orange World and the cap has gone up to 100Mb.

The unlimited evening and weekend browsing bundle is subject at all times to a fair usage policy of 1000MB each month. Usage above this amount will constitute abuse & Orange may, at its discretion, monitor usage and withdraw the bundle from your account in the event that the fair usage policy is abused.

However, this if prefaced with:

To ensure the fair allocation of network resources for all customers the unlimited evening and weekend browsing bundle may not be used for: modem access for computers, internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, Instant Messaging, peer to peer file sharing and non Orange internet based video. If such use is detected, notice may be given and Network protection controls may be applied to all services which Orange does not believe constitute WAP or mobile internet browsing.

So, you're OK to browse and get email, but forget VOIP, Skype, IM, and video.

To be honest, that isn't a problem for me, and for £5 a month I'm half-tempted now that the cap has gone up. Though the other half of me keeps shouting "but that is not unlimited!" :-)