Other people seem to be much better than me at getting good deals on things like mobile phone plans by playing hardball with the customer service people. I generally don't like to threaten to leave in fear that my bluff will be called and then I'll have to change provider just to save face, even though all I really wanted was slightly better value for money.
On a number of occasions I've had gentle, slightly wimpy conversations along the lines of “I'm not saying I'm going to go elsewhere, but I have been with you for over ten years, and a lot of my friends seem to pay much less for their phones, and so maybe, in recognition of my loyalty, you could see your way clear to knocking a bit off my bill. Please?”
But that approach never seems to work and I'm always left feeling somewhat emasculated. On the odd occasion that I have had some success it was because I happened to get moody enough with the "customer services representative" that they uttered the magic phrase: “I'll just put you through to someone in the retentions team”.
That's when you know you're getting somewhere.
But even then it takes me about five minutes of backstory and preamble before I can stoke up enough internal anger and frustration to get through that particular door. There must be some optimal phrase to get straight through to the people who can actually make some decisions.
“Thank you for calling Orange Customer Service. You're speaking to Angela. How can I...”
“Shut up and listen carefully, Angela. You've got exactly ten seconds to put me through to the retentions team before I cancel my contract and cite you personally as the reason for leaving Orange. Eight seconds...”
I've been an Orange customer for perhaps 12 years and the basic service has always been very good. I think I've paid over the odds at times, but take some responsibility for not being willing to have a big fight over the telephone with a stranger every 12 months to get a better deal.
However, I'm now on the verge of properly leaving because two months ago I dropped out of contract without noticing it and since then have been paying full rate for every single text I've sent so my bills have over doubled. No-one from Orange thought I might be interested in learning that my 500 free texts a month would be changing to fuck all free texts a month.
I phoned them up, had a proper complain, and they've agreed to waive some of the charges on the condition that I renew my contract for another 18 months and sign up for one of their animal tariffs.
Now these tariffs (Canary, Dolphin, Racoon and Panther) might look cute on a poster but they are inherently ridiculous:
“In terms of texting do you see yourself as more of a racoon or a dolphin?”
I'm sorry, what?
“And evening calls to landlines? Are you more of a canary or a panther?”
Excuse me Orange marketing team, are you actually asking me, in the imaginary world where an apparently arbitrary selection of land, water and air-based animals not only could use mobile phones, but actually did so on a regular basis, in that peculiar and frightening world, are you really asking me which of those animals would my own mobile phone usage most resemble? Are you actually asking me that?
You are? Right. Well, I've had a think about it and I've come to the conclusion that I text like a penguin, make calls like a sea cucumber and my data usage is akin to a ring-tailed lemur. Do you have a plan that covers those off? Well, do you?
Anyway, this could be the final straw that leads me to walk away from Orange after a long, faithful relationship, straight into the arms of an iPhone with O2.
