Chris Alexander

On Engineering

Orange Customer Services Incompetence

2nd August, 2008

I realise this may appear to be a bit of a rant, but I promise there’s good tips in it if you want to switch your mobile number away from Orange in the UK.

I called them up to request the code that you need to give your new network to transfer your number, and they said (rather annoyingly) that they would post it to me. They do this to make it slightly inconvenient to you, because a little while ago a law was passed prohibiting them from charging you to get it (at least thats good news!)

So I waited and waited, and 2 weeks later they still hadn’t posted me the code! By this time the code would have been invalid anyway, as they only last for 7 days. So I phoned up their customer services again, finally got someone who sounded remotely English, and they put me through to the same department who was meant to post me my code, who promptly texted it to me. It took me 2 weeks and 3 minutes to get my code to unlock my phone - Orange are rubbish (good job I’m leaving).

Here’s the tip - always always pester for the code as soon as you can! A week after you called get on to them and harass them until they give you the code!