hosted services
Orange provide a good and reliable data service for their pay-as-you-go customers. I've recently moved house so I'm lacking residential broadband.
For £10 (for the SIM including a top-up) you're able to dial 343 and select the 'Dolphin' animal package. This provides 500MB of data.
This is great if that covers what you need. Monthly you can add £10 to your SIM to maintain its data provision.
I've not gone over this allowance so I don't know if it's a hard or soft 500MB limit. Either way I'm doing my best to fit within this. It's best to avoid connecting any Windows PC's as they'll probably require ISO sized updates (most of which it'll be silent about).
The dongle which I'm using for this is an unlocked 3mobile dongle, which I won't ever use for Three again.
update
At least, that's what I thought I had, until 2011-09-28 18:47 when I tried to save this page to find that there was no data left - this could be a processing mistake of theirs as I selected their Dolphin package less than an hour ago.
update
On Saturday I decided to switch from Orange Pay As You Go to an Orange £7/month 12 month contract which should include 150 anytime minutes, 500 anytime texts and 250MB internet browsing.
The transition should be simple, I had a "pay as you go sim" (which was costing me £10 per month). Over the course of the "pay as you go" I had accumulated £16 of phone fund. There was also £22 of credit on that account.
At the Orange shop in Maidenhead where I decided to be bound to the contract I was told that "phone fund could not be transferred to a contract". They did promise me that my account balance would be transferred to my new contract and that I wouldn't have to pay anything for several months (since it's £7/month I make that three months).
The sales assistant rubs his hands with glee as he was about to make a sale (it's lovely to watch their little faces come alight with the prospect of closing a sale).
We took a seat at their counter (well, I went and got a seat for my wife, he totally ignored the fact that two people would be sitting) and told me that I'd need to answer some questions. The questions started to get a little odd when he wanted to know how long I'd been at my current address, length of mortgage and how long we had been paying it. I did ask if this was a credit check, his reply was "no".
After doing all the questions he told me that I'd receive a text to notify me that my number had been transferred within two hours.
Next came the contract to sign. I glazed over it and put my scribble at the end, the sales person signed it too and I put new new SIM card into my phone in readiness of the text.
Upon arriving home when we looked over the contract a second time. At the very top it informs me that up to £200 of account balance and "phone fund" credit could be transferred. So the sales person was wrong about this. We also note that he had signed the manager's name on the contract, we both think this sales assistant is above his station.
So a few hours pass by and there's no text. He's also wrong about this promise that we'd get a text within two hours. I decided to phone Orange at this point, mostly because I'm worried about the loss of phone fund, so I make a phone call to Orange.
I get cut off 2minutes into the call.
So I dial again. The person on the phone tells me that I'll be getting a text to show the number has changed. 15:47 on the phone.
I wait, there's no text. So I call again. This time I speak with someone else, they give me the same promises, as before nothing happens.
The following day I call no less than five times. At the end of Sunday I'm able to dial out on my number. "Fantastic" I think. These calls took (in order) 01:25, 00:28, 04:58, 13:51 and 08:19. Very little accomplished and since Saturday night I had received no texts or phone calls as the number had been incorrect and possibly remained that way.
Monday morning I receive no texts, but I try to send on text at 10:00 to inform my wife that I'll be cycling home at midday for lunch, which was quite an important text considering how bad the weather was on Monday.
So when I come home to an annoyed wife as she was not told what my plans were I turn my phone off and back on to see if that made any odds since I could neither send or receive calls or texts any more. I now get a text telling me that something has been altered on my account.
Off I go to www.orange.co.uk to see what my account is now telling me. It's a bit odd, I can no longer log into the account to see my balance. Out comes my phone to dial 439 to talk to their accounts people again.
What ensues is ten phone calls over Monday was approximately seven phone calls where I try and find out what is wrong with their online account, some of the time they hung up on me and some of the time they said they'd made changes. Eventually I'm told my account needs to be deleted and they had created another account. So before I'm given an option the account is deleted. What's really wrong is that I'm told to wait three days before I can log in again.
Thursday arrives, I try to login at lunch time. No success, so I phone again. This time I get through to their UK call centre and I'm told that my account was incorrectly configured. But I've got to wait 20minutes before I can log in. This call takes 15:31.
Half an hour goes by, still no success.
Finally I called Orange again, at 16:28 on Thursday I get through to a foreign call centre again, I go from department to department. Eventually I give up, 41:18 of my time wasted trying to find out how to view my transferred balance.
Shortly after hanging up the phone I received a text message asking me to perform a survey reporting my customer experience to them. Needless to say, this was not glowing.
update
So, called the support people who agreed that the £5.60 should not have been taken from my account for internet use. They promise that within 24-48 hours the billing team will resolve the issue and a SMS message will be sent to me informing me that the account has been credited. The reason for lack of internet use is due to there being no balance on the account.
