Mystery shopper: Orange customer service, mobile internet advice

Our mobile mystery shopper grills an Orange customer service rep on a series of mobile internet questions. Find out how he did in the latest instalment of our mystery shopper series.

For more details on our mystery shopping series, including the questions we ask, the dream response to our customer service query, and a run down of how Orange compared to the competition, head over to our summary page.

Orange customer service, mobile internet advice

Making my way through the automated system I had a brief period on hold before getting through and, after explaining what I was after, I was treated to a very friendly “By all means mate.”

Harold (as I will call him here) was very friendly and spoke in a clear Geordie accent, quickly getting on with the job at hand and asking me about my mobile usage and what I wanted out of a new contract.

After a quick overview of what I was interested in, he immediately had a deal on hand and offered up the Sony Ericsson X10 with 100 minutes, unlimited texts and a 250MB internet limit.

This was an Android phone as I had suggested a slight preference towards, but he didn’t offer a choice or justify why he thought this might be the right phone for me.

How much is 250MB?

When I asked about how much 250MB was and if it would be enough Harold told me he used his phone for the internet a ‘massive amount’ and he only ever used about 200MB.

He did admit that it was possible to go over the limit but suggested that this would take doing a lot of video streaming and that 250MB would normally be more than enough.

This did seem a tad optimistic, but to put my mind at ease, he also told me that there was the option to go one step up and get the more expensive contract that gave me a limit of 500MB.

When I asked what happens if I exceeded the limit, Harold earned a gold star for getting the right answer that I would be charged a maximum of 60p a day. This assuaged my fear of bill shock, although it would have been nice if he had volunteered the information without prompting.

Downloading apps

Next I checked what I could download with my allowance and how many MBs certain things might eat up. When I asked about applications I was told they were generally small files and Harold also used this as an opportunity to plug Orange’s Your Account app. This would allow me to keep up-to-date with how many minutes, texts and MBs I had left for the month.

I then asked if using applications would make a big dent in my allowance and Harold told me that I shouldn’t worry too much, as even if I ‘constantly hammered it’ – I assume he meant using it heavily rather than physically abusing my phone – it would only use about 3-4MB a day.

Orange customer service summary

Harold was friendly and informed and performed well, giving me a good introduction of the world of mobile internet. I still wasn’t entirely convinced that it would be so difficult to go over a 250MB limit and he seemed to take his choice of handset for granted, but it was a very good performance.