Any Orange reps here? Assistance required

Hi,

I'm looking for a representative of Orange that might be able to help with a friend's account issue.

The mother of one of my friends was recently widowed. Her husband used Orange (Wanadoo if the login name is anything to go by) to provide their Broadband service. When he passed, she sorted out his bank accounts and stopped all DDs, not realising that amongst them was the payment to Orange. As a result her broadband has now been suspended.

She's tried (multiple times now) to get the account details changed over to her name, and has sent a covering letter with new bank details, plus copy of the death certificate on two occasions. Attempts to speak to customer services result in a wall of "can't talk to you as you're not the account holder - data protection act blah blah blah" type issues, so she's unable to get the broadband re-enabled. She seems to be going round in circles as Orange still claim they've received no documents from her.

I'm an ex ISP support engineer myself, so I've been round to her house with my own equipment to test the circuit. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the circuit is physically still active, but the Orange radius is refusing to authenticate her login details, and I can also see that her router is configured correctly (can't confirm password, as she doesn't know it, but have no reason to believe the router's config is hosed), so I am 100% sure the broadband account has been suspended at the radius.

She's trying to get the account enabled, and for Orange to accept her new bank details, change the name on the account. I know from experience that this represents about 2 minutes work by an account team operative worth their salt, and the fact that in this case it's a widow they are dealing with, not just a normal case of refusal to pay, makes it doubly important that Orange deal with the matter quickly and efficiently. My team used to fall over themselves to be helpful in similar circumstances.

So basically she's stuck. they won't accept the name change, they deny getting the paperwork, they won;t even carry out the basic diagnostics on the circuit to reenable it , in fact they won't even discuss the possibility that there is a problem. Equally of course, she's now struggling to get a MAC code to move the broadband to another provider. She'd rather not spend time having to deal with Orange over the phone and in writing repeatedly over what should be an easy matter. Ironically, all other services for the house, and all the bank accounts were in her husband's name, and every single one of those has now been switched without a single problem. Only orange are being unhelpful.

If there's an Orange operative around please contact me. I'd like to get a quick resolution to this.

Obviously, if anyone else has any ideas as to how to move forward quickly, I;d appreciate it.

Thanks

Don't work for them any more but I would suggest the following.

Call them & ask to speak to the escalations dept, you should be able to Fax them a copy of any details etc so they can receive them immediately (or as soon as you can get to a Fax machine). If there's an outstanding balance that's over £50 then they should be able to take a PDQ payment and reactivate the account the same day as long as the escalations agent has recorded on the notes that they have received the Fax. The escalations dept is now in a different office to the collections dept so you may have to ask if a manager can call them to arrange a callback to take the payment. If you get fobbed off by an Indian call centre, choose the option to cancel as their call centre is in the UK. I dealt with a few such cases and know it can be sorted out easily enough. Hope this is of some help & good luck.

From experience, the Orange Executive Office can be helpful when you reach an impasse with customer services: their address is '[email protected]' and you need to mark the e-mail explicitly for the attention of Jonathan, Darren is another contact: also quote the account and landline number and a telephone contact number. I'd also explain the problem with a chronology, but of course keep it short and simple (it's Orange!).

Hi JasonJ,

I work for Orange and would like to offer my assistance.

If you can ask your friend's mother to contact me, I should be able to resolve this problem. My address is [email protected] and the information I would need is landline/account number and best contact number.

So I can pick up the mail quickly, please add 'Jonathan Orange Response' in the first line.

Hope this helps

Jonathan
Orange Response Team