I have spoken to a lady on a number that I believe gets you through to Orange head office. She was able to tell me what the problem was with generating the PAC. I will most likely need to provide proof of purchase and proof of identity, but she will ring back to confirm what I need to do. I am dismayed as to why I have been fobbed off so many times by customer services on previous occasions.

I have contacted the business I bought the SIM from and they have advised me to raise a complaint with OfCom. I have now done that and have a reference number and a number to ring at Orange that should allow me to find out more specific information about why there is a delay in receiving my PAC.

I appreciate that this can and does happen. However, I have the physical SIM card. I have now had the SIM for 79 days. I have not had a single phone call by anyone stating that they've had this number stolen from them, and it is receiving phone calls. To the best of my knowledge cloning SIM cards is extremely difficult due to built in measures that render the SIM unusable if there are any attempts to bruteforce the information contained in them which would allow it to be cloned. I am also still in contact with the business that sold me the card. It's not been a case where i've bought something off of ebay and the company has already disappeared. If that had happened then I wouldn't be pursuing this like I am as it would be clear that something was not quite right.

Hi silverfox, Thanks for the welcome. I have sent an email to Olaf Swantee, so hopefully this will get the ball rolling on this.

Hi padja, I haven't been into an Orange shop yet. There is one in a city 10 miles away, but I would be suprised if they could do anymore than what's being done at the moment. However, I am willing to try if nothing gets resolved in the near future.

Hi, I am having major difficulties getting anyone at Orange to help me with what was originally one problem, but is now definitely two problems. I bought and registered what would be considered a fairly nice mobile number through a company that I will not name right now, but they’re a limited company, registered on Companies House in 2001, and have, what I believe, to be a good reputation. The registration process was fine, and I have been receiving phone calls with the SIM since I acquired it back on 17/08/2011. I put a £10 top up on the phone through my orange online account on 05/09/2011, but this never appeared on my account. My first thought was it wasn’t successful, but I wanted to wait until I could see my bank statement before doing anything further. My bank statement indicated that £10 had been taken by “ORANGE.CO.UK TOPUP PAY AS YOU GO GB” on 06/09/2011. I contacted Orange customer services on 12/09/2011 to try to resolve this. The gentleman said he would send the details over to the accounts department, and be in contact within 48 hours. I was not contacted. Fast forward over a month. I decided that chasing £10 was going to be uneconomical, and topping up again would be potentially throwing more money away , so I decide to request my PAC and move to T-mobile, as I have a phone that is locked to that provider. I phoned twice on 24/10/2011 to request my PAC, and ended up speaking to someone from customer retentions, who questioned where I got the number from. He said they were having troubles generating the PAC and the number was now under investigation. He couldn’t or wouldn’t elaborate over what that was, but the undertones of the conversation suggested it was because of its desirability. Customer retentions attempted to call me on 25/10/11. They left a voicemail, which I was unable to listen to as I had no credit on the phone. I was also unable to access the voicemail from another phone as I didn’t have a pin code set up. I was able to get customer services to add £1 to my phone so I could setup a pin code and listen to future voicemails. The voicemail just reiterated what was said the day before: The information has been sent off to one of their departments and they’ve said the number is under investigation. They’ll be back in contact with me when they’ve had a look at it. I contacted the company I bought the number from and spoke to someone who identified themselves as the owner of the company. He said he would be willing to provide evidence as to how they came into possession of the SIM card if it was required. On the 26/10/2011 after doing some research, I contacted Orange customer services and attempted to quote points 18.9 and 18.10 from Ofcom’s ‘General Conditions of Entitlement’ publication, but was told to not ‘rattle off about Ofcom’ and I would be notified by text with my PAC once the investigation had finished. I decided to chase Orange customer services again today (02/11/2011) to see if there was an update to this. I was told by customer retentions that it was being dealt with a department that she termed as ‘offline’ which I assume means they cannot be contacted. At this point I said I was going to seek advice from the consumer action group, and so here I am. To Summarise: I have the physical SIM I have the 4 digit code that I needed when identifying myself. The number is registered to my address. I have a paper record of how I came into possession of the SIM It is now 78 days since I first registered my number. I still have the text from Orange Services asking me to confirm the account with an 8 digit number. I would like to know what I can do about this, as I have been using this number to receive calls since the end of august, and I believe according to the rules set out by Ofcom that I am entitled to keep it.