It is not often that I get so worked up that I feel the need to publicly criticise an organization. But I experienced a series a problems when I moved from T-Mobile to Orange that I feel I must share my story here.
Here is the story. I have owned a Google Android phone for just over 1 year now. I bought the G1 phone myself from T-Mobile and then had a separate contract for the calls and 3G internet connection. This was all working OK, although I was a little disappointed with the quality of the connection at times. However, as my contract approached its end I was thinking of going with another supplier. I had heard good things about Orange with Android so was planning to make a call.
A couple of weeks before I was going to take action I received a phone call from Excell Communications. They introduced themselves as representatives for Orange and started selling me a 24 month Orange Business contract. I had always been against longer contracts but this seemed like a good deal. I asked them a few questions. I asked I would be able to use my Android G1 with Orange with no problems?
They answered that yes, all I would have to do is unlock the G1 and the put the Orange SIM in, it will work fine. This sounded great. I was told that I would be sent a Blackberry phone, but only because they had to send something. I was told I could sell it on eBay if I wanted. We were all clear that I would not be using the Blackberry as I run my business on Google software using Google accounts in my Google mobile.
I then agreed to the contract, which was the same price that I was paying T-Mobile, but with more texts and call allowance per month, and was told that the 3G access would be faster than T-Mobile. I asked them about the Internet package and was told that like T-Mobile it was unlimited Internet.
The system of payment for the contract was explained. Excell Communications would give me a discount to Orange’s business contract. I pay Orange each month and then get a refund from Excell. All good. All I had to do is unlock my G1, get a PAK code from T-Mobile, port the number over to Orange, wait a little while, put the SIM in, boot up and shut down a few times while SIM updates come through, then I would be good to go.
So, what went wrong? What didn’t go wrong?
I received the Blackberry and an Orange SIM card and decided to try the card out in the Blackberry. It worked. But I only had GPRS on the phone. I called Excell and they explained that the Blackberry was not 3G (I did not know this) so it would all be OK once I get my G1 unlocked. I got it unlocked and then put the SIM in. Still no Internet.
I called Orange. They at first gave me the APN details to allow me to access the Internet using my G1. All well and good. I tested on Google and BBC News and it worked OK. At this stage I did not notice it was still only 2G. I then called Orange again, this time I was told that it would cost me a fortune to access the Internet using the APN I was given as I did not have an Internet package. This almost knocked me over. Excell Communications told me that I would have a package equal to the one T-Mobile gave me. It turned out that I had been set up with a Blackberry Databundle and sent a 2G card.
As a “favour” Orange sent me a 3G card to use instead, and updated my account to give me Internet access. How very nice of them, giving me the service that I had agreed with Excell (as a favour). It turned out later (a month later) that Orange do not actually send out 3G SIMs now. Oh, also they do not do unlimited Internet either, usage is capped. So a possible mis-sell from Excell Communications – although even Orange once called their 500Mb capped Internet bundle “unlimited”. Their idea of unlimited is that you can use it “a lot” but not too much. A bit vague. Update – I now have two 500Mb Internet bundles from Orange and this is enough for me, for the moment. Who knows what new mobile Internet projects I will be working on this year?
OK, so a few days later I received my new 3G SIM from Orange. I popped it in my phone, and it all seemed to work great. Except that I could not access my Google account, which meant I could not use it for business. I called Orange, they could not help. Suddenly their line became “we do not support your phone so cannot provide you with any settings to help you access the Internet“. I reminded them that I made it crystal clear when I agreed to the contract that I would be using my G1 and not any other phone. Orange told me to take it up with Excell Comms. Excell Comms had all gone home, so I searched the Internet for a solution and found one. AndroidBloke provided the Orange APN to allow me to access the Internet. This information has been in the public domain since 2008, but Orange were unable to give it to me, as I do not own one of their branded phones.
So, after updating the APN settings again, I had a fully functioning Google G1 with Orange 3G on a very expensive business account, with special business account privileges such as excellent client services (that is sarcasm btw, referring to Orange’s very poor attitude with me). Great. Everything was wonderful. Until….
Over the weekend Orange issued a couple of SIM updates. Now, I did notice while out on Saturday night that I could not access Google Maps (I almost got lost in Basildon). I assumed that it was a poor connection in the area.
During the rest of the weekend I was at home mostly. I did go out for Sunday lunch, and again had no connection, but I put it down to the country pub being too far from a mast, and was not bothered as I was having lunch. On Monday I was at home, and my phone was picking up the wireless connection so I did not see any lack of service.
Today, I popped out to town and realised that I had no Internet access. Even if G or 3G was displayed I still could not access the Internet.
I called Orange, waited 20 minutes, then hung up so that I could drive home. I then called again, and this was the start of the nightmare.
Orange told me again that they do not support my phone. Furthermore, my only option was to use an Orange branded phone instead. I asked why I lost connection after having it for a couple of weeks and man on the line said that he does not know what the SIM updates involve. I asked if Orange do any tests before updating the SIMs to check that the customers will still be able to use their services. He was totally uninterested in this topic of conversation. It was becoming clear that my phone was now useless.
I asked Orange how I go about cancelling my contract. Oh, you cannot do that, the contract is with Excell Communications. There is nothing in the documents from Excell Communications explaining how a client can cancel. In fact, it even mentions the very rare situations where a contract may end early. It speaks more about recovering failed payments than closing contracts. Of course, Excell Comms have nobody to talk to me at this time of night. But, there contract does clearly say “Blackberry with Blackberry bundle”. So even though on the phone I agreed to a 2 year contract for an Orange mobile with Internet service, I was sent a contract saying Blackberry with Blackberry data bundle. No doubt all this works fine.
I now find myself with an excellent Google G1 Android phone, a 2 year contract to the value of about £1200, no mobile Internet from a service provider that do not support my phone – that is, they told me, their client, to use a different phone. It is not their fault that their SIM update broke my phone. And a contract for 2 years for a product and service I never asked for. Wish me luck, I fear I need it in bucket loads if I am ever going to have a smart phone that accesses the Internet again.
I have emailed AndroidBloke to see if he knows of a solution. It certainly is not right that a business client with Orange is expected to seek solutions from random people in the Internet to get his package working though.
To summarize:
- I was told by Excell Communications that the Orange mobile service would work with no problems with my Google G1 (from T-Mobile)
- I was told by Excell Communications that the 3G Internet service would be better, both in terms of greater coverage and speed
- I was told by Orange that they do not support the Google G1 and cannot help me in any way with regards to getting my service working on it.
- I was told by Orange to use one of their own branded phones for my mobile Internet
- I was told by Orange that they do not even provide 3G SIMs now. Mine was just a gift (probably to keep me sweet while still in the 7 day cooling period)
- I feel that I should never have agreed to the Orange Business 1000 package as it is not very suitable for my needs. Orange do not give a damn about this, even though they could so easily agree to stop billing me and close the account.
- I wish I never left T-Mobile.
Response from Excell Communications
Hello. Firstly we would like to thank the Webologist for adding this response to his post, due to the nature and number of comments his initial article has had we felt it best to add our side to the story and refute some of the claims made below. We accept that, apart from stating we have broken rules, the original post, and subsequent updates by the Webologist are even-handed and generally fair and upon finding his post we have tried to resolve his remaining issues.
We are of course disappointed at many of the reply comments made by other visitors to this page. Firstly to those who have bought a contract from us and have had any problems we are very sorry to hear this and would still like to resolve your issues. We honestly try to resolve every issue that arises and take very seriously any constructive points made on this page. We would ask anyone who has an issue that hasn’t been resolved to get back in touch and we will do our very best to work things out. You can call customer services on 0845 363 1175 or 01952 607 498 or email [email protected]. Both these numbers are local rate, if calling from a mobile it’s probably best to use the 01952 number, this is the Telford area code. We must note that we may have difficulty helping with issues with the networks but may still be able to help or advise you.
For those of you reading this to check up on us as a company, or who have bought from us but are now concerned from reading the posts, we want to make it crystal clear that with over 30,000 successful sales over the last year or so we have a great number of happy customers and that this page is not representative of the majority, rather a very tiny minority, and that the position of this page in search results is based much more on the reputation of the site it is on rather than the severity or quantity of the issues our customers face. Part of the reason for this response is that this page is very prominent when you search our company name and although there are a couple of genuine issues mentioned below, such as the initial Webologist post, a lot of comments are speculation perhaps written out of the worry caused by the page itself. We are fully compliant with OFCOM regulations (GC23) and , we have in fact lead the way with things like recording of calls. We are a family run business who employ around 90 staff in Telford, having grown steadily we have never spent money investing in PR or flashy advertising and therefore find ourselves without any reputation in the wider world making it of great concern that this page, which we also feel is harshly titled, is the first thing you may read about our company – we are not a Goliath or multinational and, although we sell on behalf of the Networks who are, we are very much independent and working to get the best deal for our customers from the network rather than vice-versa.
To clear up some of the concerns mentioned below; our process is as follows: We sell our customers a contract with one of the Networks, the customer will pay the network, not us. The customer will be charged the full price by the network for this contract and we will take some of the money the network pay us for selling the connection and pass it back to the customer in the form of a redemption payment. With all discounted deals we send the first redemption payment with the handset so when it comes to paying the first bill the customer already has the discount. We then continue to pay the customer the discount ahead of the billing cycle and just ask for a copy of the bill each month to prove that they are still paying the network (as if they are not we will not be paid by the network and would be giving away money wrongly). This has been our model for a number of years and we still think it is the best way for customers to get a good deal and we do sell good deals. There are two things that seem to have caused concern, one is that discounts are for the first 12 months of the contract, which is normally 24 months. This is because we can normally offer a new deal at 12 months. We are very clear that discounts are for 12 months and will always verify that a customer understands before purchasing. If you feel this is not the case then we will find the voice recording and check, it is very very rare that this will not be made clear but we are open to human error and will act accordingly to resolve any issue where we are in the wrong.
Secondly, we do mainly sell business contracts and when doing so we offer the discounted price excluding VAT, so if you buy a contract that is £50+VAT with the network and we give it to you for £15 a month for 12 months, this means we give you £35 a month and you will still pay the VAT on the full price, in this example £8.75 VAT, so £58.75 paid to the network, £35 to you from Excell. We understand that many smaller businesses are not VAT registered and we have certainly taken on board that because we have recently been able to discount heavily some more expensive tariffs the VAT payment has been an issue which although hopefully explained during the sale may not have been as clear as we, or you, would like and we apologise if this is the case – again get in touch if you think this wasn’t made clear we will check and if we are in the wrong act accordingly. Another point mentioned is buy-outs. For those who are still in contract we can often still offer a discount and afford to buy out the remainder of your contract. For data protection and obvious moral reasons we cannot cancel peoples contracts for them, we will pay your remaining line rental though in these cases and make every effort to help you through the process, we have a dedicated team to help with this.
Finally we would also like to say that we feel a lot of the comments below fall into the category of speculation or are either exaggerated or untrue. We have asked that these comments be removed but understand that this is a difficult thing for the Webologist to do in terms of his own credibility. We have a strong suspicion that some comments are being made by competitors or ex-staff.
We have asked for the removal of these because if they were in a newspaper then they would need to be substantiated and in this case they are not and as comments are pretty much anonymous we don’t feel this is fair, anyone who has a genuine concern should contact us, we will endeavour to help you. If we don’t help then of course you can have your say on whatever forum you like but we know we will always help unless the customer is highly abusive or simply wont cooperate.
So, please bear in mind all these points if you do read on below and also please consider which comments are rational and which may not be fair or malicious.
Thanks you for reading this.
Excell Communications (Shropshire) Ltd
Reply from Webologist
Thank you for your time in clarifying how your system works and for proving to be helpful in resolving my own personal problems. I have agreed to remove the comments that you feel are unjust, unfair or possibly even designed to cause concern by competitors. You are right in that if these were published in a national newspaper they would have to be verified first. I shall add “comment removed” to the comments so that it is clear which was removed and will explain any gaps in the discussion.
For people reading this for the first time who found the site through Google search, my post started as a personal rant on this website. I was really surprised at all the discussion that followed. If some of that discussion is aimed to harm a company then I feel that it is only right that those comments are “moderated”. My issues were always technical in nature and the problems were really poor support from Orange in the early stages of the contract and not due to a mis-sell from Excell, other than a salesman telling me that the service from Orange would work fine on my phone – something that Orange later contradicted. As it happens, the service does work OK, although Orange still tell me that they do not support the Google G1.
If anyone else is having problems with Orange 3G on the Google G1 then the APN settings just need to be set to “orangeinternet” and that is all. If Orange give you IP addresses then this is likely to screw everything up! But best check that orangeinternet is indeed the correct APN for your package as they do charge HUGE fees if you use the wrong one!
