‘Wearisome’ fight for phone apology (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

‘Wearisome’ fight for phone apology

5:02pm Friday 20th February 2009 in

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Sir – I found the article about the court ruling in favour of Mr Prescott encouraging as I too, a year ago, spent many wearisome months fighting Orange for the restoration of my home computer access to the internet.

The company had indicated its not unreasonable wish to upgrade our access to broadband after March 2008.

It sent the appropriate software, none of which ever worked but, four months prematurely, a technician cut off our web access and never restored it.

Like Mr Prescott, I made many fruitless and costly phone calls to a range of different “customer service” agents, frequently going in circles, both before and after the cut-off.

Orange never admitted it had disconnected our service even though I was paying monthly debits.

After writing to and calling them several times, I received a series of letters threatening court action if I did not pay a year's subscription for failing to pay for the functioning service it had never given me.

Eventually, as I would advise all readers to do in similar circumstances, I reported Orange to Ofcom and received a form of apology that still did not admit what had happened.

Unlike Mr Prescott, I did not seek compensation, merely the promise that Orange would admit its serious mistake, the failure of its support agents and the undertaking to drastically improve its customer service.

Ian Andrews

Uxbridge Road, Hampton