The future’s Orange – not.

The future’s Orange – not.


As an infrequent user of those pestulent carbuncles called mobile phones I am not over familiar with the topping up procedure. Some people seem to be never off the damn things, so must be topping up every five minutes. Well, I come from a generation where if you walked down the street seemingly mumbling to yourself it would not be too long before you had a nice new jacket, albeit with sleeves rather longer than you were used to, and a bed in a small but comfortable room with nice soft walls. Hence I only use the mobile teleponic device for what it’s creator intended. I make telephone calls on it, in situations where Mr Bells devices are otherwise not freely available tied to a wall or in a convenient box in the street, and I make these calls only if they are necessary. I do not send text messages, as that is what emails were created for, nor do I play games on it. I have a perfectly good PC to play games on, which I keep in a safe place on the desk at home, which is where my free time would be spent if I had any. If I am out of home I am busy doing something, so games on my phone are no use to me. Nor do I use it as a Hi-Fi, as I have a good stereo in the car, or a proper MP3 player which sounds far better than the tinny speaker on a phone.

So, I have a very basic phone, and a Pay as you Go arrangement with Orange. That is to say I did have, but not any more. Orange boast several ways in which you can top up your PAYG phone.

1. You can top up on line via the interweb. No you can’t. You have to enter all your personal details, and a password, and your bank card details each time you log in. This is a pain because the website crashes constantly, and you have top start again each time. Then you have to associate your phone with an account. I have had the phone a long time, so it should already associate with my account. But it doesn’t. Apparently the tariff I am on no longer exists. So how did I use up my credit then? I have to chose a new tarriff, one of the Animal Plans. There is Dolphin, Monkey, Elephant and something else, I forget, possibly Rhino, but none of these suit my needs. They allow me Gigabytes so I can browse the web, which I don’t do on my phone, or I can Stream music on another plan, which I don’t do on my phone, and one does the washng up for me, or something. But there isn’t a plan to suit someoone who uses a mobile phone to make phone calls occasionally. Ignore this and top up anyway. My Credit Card details are incorrect. And so are my other credit card details. Also my debit card details. Having tried all three cards, having logged in several times and gone through the whole palaver I come to the conclusion that the interweb option is entirely disfunctional.

2. You can top up in supermarkets. All you need is the card that came with your SIM. Which I found in my wallet. On a trip to ASDA I tried to top up, but couldn’t, as my card has not been associated with the phone. How do you associate the top up card with the phone. Well you ring from the phone (which has no credit on it) or you do it on the interweb site which isn’t working properly.

3. You can top up at a cashpoint. All you need is the card that came with your SIM. Which I found in my wallet……… oh, that sounds familiar. Do I need to assocaite the card with my account first? Yes. And you do that by ringing from the phone (which has no credit on it) or you do it on the interweb site which isn’t working properly.

Now I appreciate that as a low user I only put about £30 credit on my phone in a year, but surely it should be simpler than this? How do other people cope? It took me the best part of two hours and I still got nowhere.

I concluded it would be easier to buy a new SIM card, but then I had a stroke of genius. In an old PDA which I rarely use I had another SIM card, and what’s more it had credit already on it, a whole £1.38 worth, which ought to last me a couple of months. An even greater stroke of luck is that it was a Virgin SIM, and a qucik visit to their website had me a £10 top up completed in under 30 seconds. I have no idea what the tariff is compared with the tariff that doesn’t exist for Orange anymore, but it certainly doesn’t involve animals permitting you to do incomprehensible things for stupid reasons.

So, the future, in the short term at least, is Virgin, and Orange will not be getting my custom back unless they sort out their issues. I know the loss of £30 income won’t have the shareholders shaking in their boots, but I feel better for making them suffer even a tiny bit.

*Note that I have written this entire article without any smutty inuendo. I could have made all sorts of peurile gaffs about the number of Virgins I’ve had or how I used a Virgin, but I resisted.