While I was away at the weekend, spending some quality time with Becky, while my Mum & Dad had the kids, we decided to get round to upgrading 2 of our contract business phones. Becky and our engineer Rory both have the Orange SPV C550, and we have been looking for a while to upgrade but there wasn’t anything “special” out there. I have the Orange SPV M3100 which has a slide out keyboard which makes it really useful for texting and web browsing.

We just happened to pop into the Orange shop in York to find that they had just released a new business phone, the Orange SPV E650. This is a smaller version of the SPV M3100 and has Windows Mobile 6.0 on. Brilliant we thought and we spoke to the guy in the shop.

We have found before that the sales guys in the Orange shops are really knowledgeable and helpful, but are totally let down by the Orange Support who they have to ring to get upgrades and packages sorted. This day was no different.

So the phones start going through the upgrade process, and at the same time I was adding to the business contract a 3G wireless aircard for my laptop. Various forms and phone calls had to happen while we waited in the shop. The 3G card got added to the account, Rory’s phone was upgraded but the Orange Support flatly refused to upgrade Becky’s phone. They wanted a purchase order faxed over on letterheaded paper (which it’s not really the sort of thing you carry with your on a weekend away). After an hour in the Orange shop on Saturday we left without any phones and Rob from the shop said he’d sort it for us for the following day. We went back today (Sunday) and still not sorted. They needed more company info.

Now I’ve been an Orange Business contract customer for about 5 years now so enough was enough. I called the Business Centre at Orange and assertively (as apparently you don’t get anywhere by shouting) explained the situation. The guy I spoke to said the whole thing was stupid and couldn’t explain what was going on. Needless to say that Becky’s phone got upgraded straight away.

So firstly I’d like to thank Rob from the Orange shop in York who went out of his way to help us. He did chuck in a digital photo frame/video/mp3 player, £100 for the old phones (that we don’t have to return) and got 18 months 3G connection for the price of 12 for our troubles so that was good. The rest of the shop staff were great too, and I don’t know how they put up with some of the customers who come in off the street moaning at them.
But most importantly … if it wasn’t for the shop staff Orange probably would have lost my business due to their call centre who the shop staff rely on to be able to provide a high level of customer service. Something needs to be done about it … and hopefully before my next upgrade is due!