Orange Charging for Delivery Reports

[maybox]

Orange have been charging for delivery reports (1p per report) since July 2006.

At no point did orange inform me (or any other customers I imagine) that this would happen and I only noticed it after agreeing to renew my contract and looked at my bills. Nowhere in the T&Cs of Orange's contracts does it say it charges for delivery reports.

Can I get out my contract charge free on the basis they have broken their agreement to inform me of new charges?

[MrShed]

It probably does say in your T&Cs that call charges may change etc. However, this is disgraceful IMO - how on earth can they charge for delivery reports without warning you? Doubt you can legally get out of your contract free however.

[buzby]

I'd keep quiet. 1p for a delivery report? They charge me 10p! Delivery reports have always been a chargeable service - there is a system generated SMS sent to you when the message you sent has been safely delivered to the distant terminal (but not necesarily read). This acknowledgement to you incurs a charge, usually the same cost as the message you sent outbound. I am unaware of any network that provides these reports FoC, and having been with Orange since 1996, the charge has been in place ever since they ended their free SMS service.

As for them not informing you - it's in the Price List, and not really Orange's fault if you didn't notice it. If you don;t need these reports, why not turn them off - that way there is no charge!

[maybox]

Originally Posted by okonski

I'd keep quiet. 1p for a delivery report? They charge me 10p! Delivery reports have always been a chargeable service - there is a system generated SMS sent to you when the message you sent has been safely delivered to the distant terminal (but not necesarily read). This acknowledgement to you incurs a charge, usually the same cost as the message you sent outbound. I am unaware of any network that provides these reports FoC, and having been with Orange since 1996, the charge has been in place ever since they ended their free SMS service.

As for them not informing you - it's in the Price List, and not really Orange's fault if you didn't notice it. If you don;t need these reports, why not turn them off - that way there is no charge!

I'm not sure you know what I'm talking about. No other network charges for delivery reports to the best of my knowledge. If orange have been charging you 10p for them, then you're being ripped off BIG TIME!

[buzby]

I'm not sure you know what I'm talking about. Vodafone and O2 also charge for this - I also explained precisely what I meant by a 'delivery report'. It is an inbound SMS that is billed to my account that confirms an SMS message has been delivered. Why do you think you should get a service like this for free? If you don't think it's worth 1p - stop using it.

[cadencealex]

We have several Orange phones on contract and I have never seen a charge for delivery reports. Why isn't it listed on the bills then?

Just looked... and there is most definitely no charge whatsoever for delivery reports.

[MrShed]

Having been an orange customer for 6 years, there certainly has never been a charge for delivery reports before.

[buzby]

Originally Posted by MrShed

Having been an orange customer for 6 years, there certainly has never been a charge for delivery reports before.

I'm afraid it depends on many variables - espcially the mobile tariff your handset it on - just because some people don't receive a charge for a particular call or service, does not mean others do not... as you recall, this thread was stared by someone complaining they were chargesd 1p. My Tariff - OVP charges 10p, and is itemised as such.

[maybox]

Originally Posted by okonski

I'm not sure you know what I'm talking about. Vodafone and O2 also charge for this - I also explained precisely what I meant by a 'delivery report'. It is an inbound SMS that is billed to my account that confirms an SMS message has been delivered. Why do you think you should get a service like this for free? If you don't think it's worth 1p - stop using it.

Can you link me to a site that confirms this for me? Sorry I'm not convinced any other operators charge for delivery reports and Orange charging you 10p?? Where's that come from? Orange used to be free - I should know, I've been a customer since 2000.

Orange have never charged for delivery reports before. Why some customers are now being charged and others not is a mystery (read the comments at the bottom of this page Weblog - Money - Times Online: New Orange charges: fair or foul? )

Also the service should be free. Why should I not be entitled for free to know whether or not a message gets delivered? I'm paying for a service and I should be entitled to know whether or not that service is correctly implemented. The actual cost of informing me is probably 100 times less than the 1p they want to charge anyway.

[buzby]

Originally Posted by maybox

Can you link me to a site that confirms this for me? Also the service should be free. Why should I not be entitled for free to know whether or not a message gets delivered? I'm paying for a service and I should be entitled to know whether or not that service is correctly implemented. .

In order;

1) Regarding some customers being charged and others not - it's because of a thing called tariffs. All customers are NOT the same, only those in the same groups. I was told Orange have in excerss of 158 different tariffs (some still running since 1996). You get what you sign up to. There is no mystery.

2) Tariff details are only shown on websites relating to the currently available product. The actuall tariff and attendant costs are loaded into each network's billing system with the relevant code, which pulls up the costs for that customer. You can request your own tariff be notified to you, but for 'competition' reasons, networks do not issue a grid showing the differences of their previous offerings, old or new.

3) Why shouldn't everything be free? If I post a letter, should RM send me a postcard saying they delivered my letter successfully, and do it for free. No, wait - they charge (or used to) 49p for advice of delivery. If a text message costs X to send and a network has the ability to advise said message has been delivered, and YOU want to know it has - it's only reasonable the thae cost of so doing is billed to the person requesting the service.

4) You are paying for the sending of an SMS. If you wish the confidence of knowing it has been delivered, that's an extra. Looking back at some earlier bills, I note that I had 'inclusive' texts, and the the cost was 0.00, however it came out of my allocation, so inclusive, not 'free'. On switching tariffs and being charged 10p a go, I turned off Receipts. IF the system coud tell you when the message was READ, I might reconsider, but all these are additional services, and nothing to do with the basic SMS service.

5) As to the latest news that Orange will be charging for itemised billing - again, Free Itemised Billing is part of my tariff and they cannot change this unless/until they force me off onto a different one.

[maybox]

Flippin' ek - i wish people would get off their 'look at me being cutting' puerile horses and try read things both properly and in context.

Incidentally, Royal Mail return mail for free if it is undeliverable. If Orange informed you automatically that text messages are undeliverable I'd have no qualm here. Fact is they don't - you have to switch on delivery reports for the luxury of this service.

I was put on to new "better" tariff after threatening to leave Orange. I did not incur any new charges for itemised billing nor delivery reports in the 1st month. Second month and onwards I've been charged for delivery reports. This to me is not on and must breach their side of the contract somewhere. I don't think it's any coincidence that the timing of delivery report charges comes in alongside their new parent company Wanadoo - who have massive debts to pay off.

[buzby]

Differnet issues. Delivery reports have been charged for long before France Telecomn thought it was a great idea to buy the network from Vodafone - the Wannadoo nonsense has probably resulted in the imposition of the £1.50pm charge for itemised billing - the fact that Orange appear to have imposed this by default on those customers without giving them a chance is a scandal - especially if they're not going to be prepared to show that it actually COSTS them £1.50 to collate the data and add X number of pages to a bill they're sending out anyway. But I digress.

Royal mail may indeed return mail that is undeliverable, but that's not the issue - at least compare like with like! We're talking about delivery of the item (not its return) so the networks charge for this because they can, and some of us are happy to pay the price.

As for switching to a 'better' tariff - I have a number of mobiles on Orange and the 'best' tariffs available are those that you cannot sign up to anymore! (The best being contract rates for making calls, but NO line rental) it was only offered for about 14 months, but there's no way I'm switching tariff. When you do switch, all the prices change to a new level - and whilst you may be told of the 'headline' rates, the boring stuff like delivery receipts, free calls to 0800/0500 and/or voicemail are seldom hilighted, but change nonetheless. That's why a bland statement that your network charges someone X for a particular feature or service doesn't meant they do the same to everyone else. Having been a customer of theirs for the last 10 years, I learned the hard way!

[MrShed]

I have had about 6 different tariffs on Orange during my time with them - none of them charged for delivery reports. Of course, I can't say that none of them do, but I would be very surprised. I would be even more surprised if these charges are on contracts but not PAYG, which they aren't.

[buzby]

Originally Posted by MrShed

I have had about 6 different tariffs on Orange during my time with them - none of them charged for delivery reports. Of course, I can't say that none of them do, but I would be very surprised. I would be even more surprised if these charges are on contracts but not PAYG, which they aren't.

Well 6 out of 158 can hardly claim to be representative, of my 8 network connections, 2 are PAYG and only use SMS, but as these are telematics devices, they don't generate delivery requests, 4 are on the OVP tariff and charge 10p per report, so they're not used. The last two have bene ported to Vodafone, and they charge 5p. In each case, when the charge was discovered, the service was discontinued.