Mobile phone scam
Discussion
Blatant "Naming and Shaming" but they deserve it, a company called North East Radiopaging in Glasgow. They phoned one of my staff at the end of last week and implied they were from Orange, since his contract is coming up for renewal and he was offered a "free upgrade" which he accepted in the belief it was all genuine and above board, anyway for the last three days he has recieved a new phone every day all from different companies (but oddly all despatch on the same City Link account number) todays one being from Mail Order Phones Direct Ltd in Manchester. The scam is that according to Orange each phone has been pre registered as an additional phone on his account and after a few months he would recieve a "substantial bill" of many hundreds for them. Life is made more difficult by the paperwork being enclosed saying "no returns will be accepted without a returns number" it then gives a premium rate number for "customer services and returns" which oddly enough goes onto a voice mail and "you are being held in a Q" never to be answered. He has spoken to Orange customer services who have given him the details of the company and address with the advice to return everything and not accept any more deliveries from then (14 day rule), all numbers have been blocked and his account flagged. Apparently everything they have done is "legal" but when we phoned the phone number given to us by Orange (non premium rate this time) the bloke got awfully twitchy because we had him on speaker phone and hung up on us. Be warned this may be legal but is certainly a scam.
How can it be legal to pretend they are Orange when they are not? Your employee thought he was renewing a contract with one company - Orange. It seems this was a lie. Why not report it to Trading Standards, see what they say.
If Orange are genuinely not connected with this company in any way, their lawyers ought to be going nuts as this company may be passing themselves off as Orange, and in that situation they could sue/get an injunction etc.
All just my opinion, of course.
If Orange are genuinely not connected with this company in any way, their lawyers ought to be going nuts as this company may be passing themselves off as Orange, and in that situation they could sue/get an injunction etc.
All just my opinion, of course.
Believe it or not I used to work for them!!! (They used to have (about 2 years ago) only 2 offices - 1 in Gateshead and one in Glasgow.
There was no dodgy stuff when I was there, indeed it seemed like a very genuine company who only used to take incoming sales calls from Newspaper adverts. The only problem we had in those days was a lack of phones as demand was so high!!
Things must have changed some since I was there...(they are only a small company though - with only a 4 person sales force in Gateshead - unsure of Glasgow, but was under the impression it was small also.)
There was no dodgy stuff when I was there, indeed it seemed like a very genuine company who only used to take incoming sales calls from Newspaper adverts. The only problem we had in those days was a lack of phones as demand was so high!!
Things must have changed some since I was there...(they are only a small company though - with only a 4 person sales force in Gateshead - unsure of Glasgow, but was under the impression it was small also.)
I think the key thing is "implied" they were from Orange not blatently said "Hello I'm from Orange" more like "Hello Mr Smith I'm phoning from Customer Services about your Orange mobile contract thats due for renewal, we obviously value you as a client and would like to offer you a free upgrade" type thing. Very clever with words
Yeah - we used to say something along the lines of we are working on behalf of Orange or we take orders on behalf of Orange etc etc.
I had never realised how dodgy it may sound. Also, how can they be offering free upgrades? Sounds dodgy to me as an upgrade implies keeping your original number but getting a new phone - which is never free - just try asking Orange!! (or any other mobile company in my experience)
I had never realised how dodgy it may sound. Also, how can they be offering free upgrades? Sounds dodgy to me as an upgrade implies keeping your original number but getting a new phone - which is never free - just try asking Orange!! (or any other mobile company in my experience)
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