orange nightmare

[alymac]

my other half has a mobile phone contract with orange, on or around nov 05 she received a call asking her if she would like an upgrade on her phone which she replied yes.

new phone arrived which she then fitted her old sim card to, and never thought about it again untill two months latter when in the bank the clark asked if she was awear that orange were taking two dd's from her account which she was not.

on talking to orange she found out they had set up a new account, now she had two accounts.

orange said they would close the newer account as the sim had never be active.

that was the end of it or so she thought then one day morecroft started chasing her for over £150 for line rental on that phone, after explaining all this to morecroft they said they would refer it back to orange, this has been going on for all of last year.

tonight she received a call from morecroft stating that if they did not receive payment (reduced down to £90 that they were going for a ccj.)

i spoke to them and got no where with then and left it saying see you in court,

got back onto orange but they are useless at sorting out anything,we both have phones with orange and we stopped paying the bills on these as a tool to get orange to fix out the mess on the upgraded account.

tried to cancel both contracts tonight but were told by disconection that they could not as we were on a free tariff cause of the dispute. and collections need to do it,

now how do we defend there actions to serve a ccj, quite prepaired to defend and counter sue (got spare time now as got all bank charges claims back nearly)

[Bigmac versus]

orange said they would close the newer account as the sim had never be active.

These days you need everything in writing as this is not unusual, send orange your complaint in writing refering to the above and give them say 14 days to have this resolved or you will commence legal proceedings.

[alymac]

its imposible to get orange to do anything and the misses thinks im having a go when i tell her to write to them never sort out disputs over the phone as i have learned with the halifax,

one more thing which moorcroft said that they issue a ccj and you dont get the chance to defend it?

[buzby]

This is a mess, and you've a fair bit of work ahead because of having to prove the actions that were taken (nothing in writing). Firstly, you cannot set off one debt for another to make orange see sense. There is no right of set-off built into the contract, so the contract that isn't in dispute, get that back into order ASAP.

Every phone Orange supply comes with a replacement SIM, you should not have transferred the SIM, you call to activate your new SIM card and phone, and they close down the old SIM and account. This is explained with every phone supplied, so because you did not follow the process, it will be difficult to prove Orange negligence because you did not complete the process to permit an upgrade. It would be better if you resolved this informally before it came to court, as they have systems in place and their instructions were not followed.

Moorcroft staff usually don't know the day of the week - a CCJ is only issued after it has been through the court system. You'll be called to pay or defend, and that's your chance.