Yesterday, I experienced what hundreds, possibly thousands of people suffer every day – a cracked phone screen. A drop from a height of around 18 inches was all it took to do the trick.

Now the crack wasn’t too bad and my contract is up in a few months so if it had just been a crack, I probably could have lived with it. But in fact, the screen stopped functioning completely, so I dug out an old spare phone and rang my insurance company – yes, I’m one of those smug types who pays £7 a month for phone insurance, and believe me, I’ve had my money’s worth over the years.

My insurance company, SuperCover Insurance, were very helpful, took down all the details, but said they needed proof of purchase, by way of a receipt, before they could take things any further. That, I’m sure, is in the office, and for reasons I won’t bore you with, I’m not in the office much the next couple of weeks. Not to worry, I was told, call your operator and ask them to email a copy of the Customer Agreement to us and that will do the trick.

Five minutes later and I’m on the phone to Orange, talking to a guy with a lovely Irish accent and demeanour, who is telling me that won’t be a problem. Until it got to the bit about sending an email. At which point he said words to the effect of: “I’m not sure we’ll be able to send it via email. We normally send it out by post, takes up to four working days, then when it arrives, you can scan it and email it on to the insurance company.”

The stupidity of this as a process wasn’t lost on him, to the point where, before I asked him to, he said he would ask his manager if there was a way round it. He asked. There wasn’t. So instead of attaching a PDF to an email and sending it to the insurance company to arrive three seconds later, he’s going to print something off, stick it in an envelope, send it to me, so I can scan it, attach the scan to an email, and send it to the insurance company to arrive (up to) four days and three seconds later.

I’m sure someone at Orange can tell me there’s a very good reason why this is the best possible solution. You can’t go giving call centre staff access to email. It’s tempting to say it might be the best solution for Orange, but not for the customer, but even that can’t be right, if the costs of the two alternative resolutions are compared. If this is the best the network can do for its customers, somethings gone badly wrong. This sort of thing is why so many people churn.

Now I know not everyone has this sort of a platform to air their grievances, and I rarely abuse my position in this way, if that’s the right word, but when a mobile operator’s systems are this bad, and it exhibits such a ‘Computer says no’ attitude, it’s only right that the world should hear about it.

David Murphy
Editor