How I fought my mobile phone company… and won

My only complaints were with a BT landline – frankly the line was terrible and totally useless for Bulletin Boards (before the Internet) as it kept dropping the connection causing the Bulletin Board to go off line for others. They kept “fixing” it only for the line to go bad within two weeks – Luckily for me Cable and Wireless laid fibre optic cable and I became their first customer in my area. The line is still totally superb.

The other problem was once BT charged me for charged (collect?) calls from Ireland for several hundred pounds – But as I was working and the only occupants in my house for the calls were my three greyhounds (actually all whelped in Ireland) I refused to pay and informed them why – But I did pay the balance – They spent 12 months sending me numerous bills that I refused to pay – But this was not a Direct Debit so they never got hold of the money. BT is rubbish.

My old analogue mobile was cloned – a bill of £90 for one day’s calls – but Vodaphone stopped the connection – did not charge me – and offered a digital phone at no cost – but I decided I didn’t need such a tariff.

I complained about Orange when they cut off both of my sons’ contract phones when they were “on tour” in Holland with a sports team. Even ‘though the ‘phones were registered in my name (because the boys were both U16) apparently children going abroad with a tri-band phone had to be notified in advance(?). By the time Orange had unblocked the handsets and enabled the calls again the kids were on a ferry returning to the UK.
The worst by far ‘though was CPW. They decided to phone me one evening on my mobile to offer me a renewal to my contract. I said repeatedly that I was in a train station and that I couldn’t hear the salesman, as well as being very happy with my terms and conditions and not wanting to change my handset in any case, but he started to read the “legalese” stuff to start up a new account. I shouted “No!” three times during this verbal tirade but he hung up! To stop this I cancelled the direct debit mandate. I then got a bill for over £100 – for withdrawing from the “new” contract and for running up call charges on some internal-billing tariff which only had free calls between 11pm and 5am. Then the handset stopped working – blocked! Every time I phoned from my [TalkTalk] landline I was charged over £1 per minute for an 0800 number. Their customer services staff are only given access to a screen that takes credit card details – they can not access account history or any other information. Several of their teenage “bunnies” said that I was “abusive” for asking them to find someone who COULD provide service! My complaint was escalated to “the office of Charles Dunstone” but those staff can not be ‘phoned directly or emailed – you have to send a snail mail letter off into the ether and eventually you get a cut and pasted standard reply that doesn’t answer any of the questions! {One of them even left voicemail calls on the BLOCKED handset’s number apparently!} CPW charged me £10 to send me a recording of the sales call. It backed up my version of events. It took 19 months for the Ombudsman and I to get the 24 month contract recinded – and twice I had to contact firms of bailiffs to explain the CPW had no right to refer my “debt” since the amount was still in the Ombudsman’s complaints process!

I took Orange to the small claims court when they refused to replace a phone bought from one of their shops which did not work properly. It was not until they had received the details that the case was to be heard, that they rang me and settled. Brinkmanship seemed to be their intention. I no longer use Orange at all.