Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Someone isn't listening

You may recall the unwanted text messages on my phone and my subsequent email to Orange; well I got a reply.

Thank you for your mail regarding your Orange phone.

We can confirm that a third party provides the text information service you have set up. You can cancel this service by sending the command STOP by text message back to the code used to access the service which is usually a 5 digit code at the end of the message, or showing as the sender. If you require further assistance, please reply with the code and subject of the messages. Please note, it can take up to 48 hours for the text messages to cancel.

Text messages received from third parties cannot be cancelled by Orange however, if you experience difficulties when attempting to cancel the message, please contact us by phone or email and we will be happy to advise you of the contact details for the Company, provided that it is an approved third party supplier.

We trust the above information is of assistance.
Check that first sentence again "service you have set up" No, no I didn't. Next thank you for telling me how to cancel it, that's more then they did on their first go around. For more info text them back with the subject? Now just to point out I've entered a few competitions via text message and they all state that it'll cost X+normal text rate and they've been 5-digit codes too, so my question was how much is this going to cost me? Finally look at the get-out clause "provided that it is an approved third party supplier" Well that's what I asked, are they an approved third-party?

I'll try again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

IME, communications companies are not very good at communicating.

For example, I used to have a BT pager. To page it, you have to ring a phone number and speak to a human being and explain to them what message you want. They then type it in and send it.

Crazy, eh? Well, on the BT website there is a little utility that you can download that will allow you to send a page straight from your PC.

Oh, but only if you access the Internet via a modem. ;-) (It uses the modem to dial a special number.)

At the time, I was at Uni, and I wanted to page my sister. So I sent an email to BT asking them for a tool that would work over the Uni Internet connection (which isn't a modem!)

I got back an email that read "thank you for your email. I have attached a utility that will allow you to send the page". And attached... the utility that I just emailed them to say wouldn't work for me.

Hello??

FlipC said...

Scan email, pick out key words, return rote reply. Damn you could get a computer to do it; and they probably do. It's much easy then having to talk to someone who can point out that you're not paying attention.

I swear too many companies view the internet as more of a way to stop people calling them then as a better means of communication.