What are the options to chose when calling Orange CS on contract to get through to someone in the UK? Or rather, not someone in India?

I'm not sure tbh. I know that myself, i get standard customer services which i think is mostly call centres in India. But my mother she gets 'Premier' customer service, which is in the UK, 24/7, and answer time of about 10 seconds. I have spoken to the premier CS before when mothers phone broke and they are very helpful! Phoned them at about 4pm on Friday, on Saturday at 11am brand new phone was here by courier, and they took her old one in a carrier bag!

I don't want premier service and I certainly don't want indian service, just normal UK service, there must be a way of ensuring you can get through to them.

I've never been put through to an Indian call centre with Orange in 7 1/2 years and I'm not on premier cs... I didn't even realise they had call centres outside of the UK

Neither did I, I was with them 2 years ago and it was always UK callcentres then but I've recently had to take out a second line and I went with Orange but 3 times I've called them today and each time I went through to India, even having one of them lying to me (when I asked if she'd put me through to the UK) that if I hang up and call them again, their systems would recognise I'd just call them and would automatically route me to the UK.

If you want a guarantee that you'll get someone in the UK, no matter when you call (even around 3am) be a pay monthly customer

You calls shouldn't be answered by anyone outside of the UK not all pay monthly CS is onshore, based in the UK. The only time I know when offshore is used is when there are too many calls and PAYG CS India is used for short while to cover the overflow. Thats it.

You want to consider yourself lucky, when we do new connections we have to talk to India and it's a bit of a headache I must admit. PAYG is still based in India, this is not subject to change as I understand it.

But I am a pay monthly customer.

Well I am also a pay monthly customer.

So far I've spoken to a few Geordies and other assorted northern British accented souls but never yet anyone else. Though one particularly unhelpful female did sound a bit "Essex Girl" on the one occasion I lucked out

Ensuring? I don't believe there is a way to actually ensure you get a UK CSR when you ring Orange, except for going on Premier.

Chances are the best advice you're going to get, as a "standard" pay monthly customer (for want of a better term), is to ring at a particular/quieter time of day (mornings usually had smaller phone queues when I was with Orange) to be more likely to get through to the UK.

I'd have thought Orange have a particular department that only uses UK staff, something like the way most/all of the networks have UK-based retention departments, those are the people I'd try to get through to although it's unlikely the cancellation people would be able to help with general CS issues.

Tmobile staff tend to be 'multitasked' so with most of the available options you will often get the same department. I'm hoping that the-powers-that-be at Orange have decided certain issues (such as billing) will only be dealt with by UK staff, That way I'll just aim for that option each time.

So as to avoid getting through to the offshore side of Orange, why not set up an account on the Orange website? If you haven't already.

You can change a talk plan on there, add a bundle, view your bills (and also keep track of your usage until your next bill), upgrade, etc etc.

It's very limited on there and it's no substitute for speaking to a human some of the time.

OK, can I stop some of the inaccuracies on this thread please?

PAYG standard service is off-shore in Mumbai
PAYG High Value is in the UK (Dealt with by Orange Premier)

PAYM Helpdesk and Billing are shared between UK and India (Up until last month General H/desk was in India, and Billing in UK but they have merged the queues)

PAYM Handset Faults (or Handset Support as it is now called) is UK based.

PAYM Premier is UK based (and 24/7)

CMTS (156 basically) is based in the UK.

Being a Premier agent, I get swapped to other call queues at short notice to satisfy customer demand (as we are trained in all areas above) - we also take Dealer Helpdesk Calls.

Unless you are a Premier customer, or a regular customer with a handset issue or data issue, there is now no guarantee you'll get UK service, I'm afraid.

Being a Premier customer you'll get 97% of things done by the same operator. If you are not Premier, and you select, say, Handset Faults and you have a billing query, you'll be transferred to the other department as they won't be trained to take the call.

Thought it was changing?

The brief we had instore was PAYM was all going to be UK based by this time?

The recession buggered that idea up.

Joking aside, internally you can tell things are changing. For example, MNP is UK based now instead of offshore, and there are now a lot of PAYM registrations operators back in the UK now, so it is happening, albeit slower than we were promised.

Rome wasn't built in a day and all that....

The people who do pay monthly handset support, are they trained in general account queries as well?

I have noticed when I have queries about my pay monthly mobile, I get through to UK support, but if it's broadband problems, it goes to India.

Some may be able to help, sure.

I'd like to clarify that the Agenda hasn't changed, and the promise was all PAYM Customer Services back in the UK by the end of 2009.

PAYG will remain as it is for the time being.

Broadband CS is also remaining off shore for the time being.

Are they any closer to achieving this?

I'm pretty sure when it was announced that PAYM was to be UK based by end of 2008, and PAYG by 2009.

I remember somehting like that at Tom's Q+A session when he came down last year...