I have had an incident recently where my post has been intercepted and my credit card and PIN stolen (that's another story). To my disbelief the Orange Shop in Beckton sold a Blackberry 9790 on my stolen credit card without taking any customer details. I am so angry that a so called reputable company could sell an expensive phone without actually collecting customer details. How is this possible? I then go to my bank to query this and they are now insisting as it was authorised by Chip and PIN that they will not refund the money. Orange have CCTV footage but claim I was in the shop when the transaction took place. Now it seems impossible to actually get sense from Orange! They will no query this transaction or provide the bank with any details regarding it. I think I am about to drive to Hertfordshire and sit outside the head office until I get an answer because this is ridiculous. According to the Data Protection Act I am entitled to a copy of the CCTV footage if they same I am in the shop, however when requested they refuse to give me the footage as I wasn't. They won't even block the IMEI of the phone purchased with my stolen credit card! Does this count as 'aiding and abetting fraudulent activity'? To top things off the international call centre managed to connect me to another person rather than the payments department so now I have other numbers calling me. Is this a new level of incompetence?

I really need some advice. around 6 weeks ago I suffered a seizure. As a result I lost my phone (HTC HD Desire) I claimed a new phone via my Orange care insurance which i received 24 hours later. However, my old handset had been found and handed in to lost property by this point. Rather than keep a new handset (even though I'd paid a £20 'admin fee' to receive the replacement) I decided, stupidly in retrospect, to do the honest thing and inform Orange so that I could return the replacement handset. The customer service advisor informed me that I had no need to do this as everything had been completed via insurance and I could keep the new handset. I explained that I didn't need it and was happy to carry on using my old handset, so they arranged to have a returns envelope sent out to me. On or around October 31st (give or take a day or 2 - I didn't write the exact return day down in my diary!) I placed the replacement handset in the returns envelope provided and had our post room at my office send it back. 2 weeks ago I received a text message from Orange stating that they were applying charges to my account as they hadn't received the handset. I called immediately and spent over 50 minutes on the phone to customer service (over 30 minutes of that was on hold) I was passed between 3 different departments and eventually, when I asked to speak to a manager I was cut off. I called back a few days later and again, was on the phone for over 20 minutes, only to spend less than 5 minutes actually talking to someone, who advised me that the department I needed to talk to was closed on the weekend. I called back yesterday and spent over 1 hour 10 minutes on the phone explaining the situation for the 7th time, to the 7th customer service advisor. I eventually asked to speak to a manger, who informed me that indeed there was no receipt of the handset being received by Orange and so I would be charged for the handset. The charge was £374.00. I explained that A) I had no need to return the handset in the first place, as I was within my rights to keep it, but I was doing what I believed was the honest thing to do in the circumstances. This being my main point naturally. B) That I was [according to their recorded information] entitled to an upgrade for £110 - so why would I be charged £374.00? C) That I had been a customer, with orange care insurance, for over a decade and i asked if we could resolve the matter as I refused to pay. D) I asked whether they were prepared to lose a customer over this matter - To which they replied yes, they were. The problem is that our mail room staff aren't able to find a record of the postage - If they were things would be much easier naturally. I have been advised that if, worst case, they mistakenly sent the handset back via regular Royal mail business post that our mail man may have to process all packages under the name of our business, so may be able to check and see if they have any sort of record of the package being returned. So I am in a very very stressful situation where I have to keep escalating my claim (I'm waiting for the operation manager to call back and give me the same response as everyone else at Orange, so I can escalate to Cicas, their version of offcom) I don't know what to do and i'm really distressed by this, more than I can convey here. Postage responsibility aside, does the above charge seem legal? Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I am worried sick that I may have to take them through small claim court action over this. Thank you