The support issue is, indeed, the killer. And it's clear that it's where Orange falls down hardest. Even for ordinary phone use, its support isn't astonishingly good; for smartphone use, it verges on the suicidal.

I have heard nothing to suggest that Orange is taking steps to hire a new generation of support experts. Rather, the reverse; that people who are good at support and try to provide genuine help, are criticised for going beyond their brief.

And then, eased out of a job...

Now that is amazing... generally one would expect that if an employee goes out of his way to help a customer over and above what is required of him, he would be rewarded....

very interesting...

Nevermind.. I think Orange will have to learn their lesson the hard way... Lets wait till another operator in the UK takes up the SmartPhone gauntlet and see what happens... We need some competition in the market place.

The Orange SPV is available again on their website... interesting pricing though...

£119.99 on Pay Monthly or £29.99 on Your Plan 200

Not bad I guess... I paid £99 for an upgrade a while back before they dropped the price to £0!!! (should have been more patient I guess) but it looks like the price is on its way back up again....

Thanks for that Guy! <LoL> But, being objective, Orange's tech support is better than most. I've worked for Orange (having first been a customer) My wife's a Vodaphone customer (through her employer) my Son's switched from Virgin to T-Mobile, and I'm now with O2... so we've experience of ALL of them, and Orange ARE good. Good that is at sorting out problems with voice calls. They're not at all bad at telling you how to connect your Ipaq to your Nokia with Bluetooth, and using GPRS to connect to the web. But these are fairly narrow areas, and can be handled by reading aloud from a script (without really understanding what you're reading) I'm sure that some of the advice I gave to customers never had been given before, and never will be again (like "keep your GPRS bill low by increasing Internet Explorer's cache on your laptop") - it wasn't in The Script and would have been utterly incomprehensible to most of my colleagues.

Smartphones need a different KIND of support. And that's NOT going to be popular with middle-management in tech support departments, who will be faced with a new influx of people who are junior to them... but can do the job WITHOUT a script. How can you justify your pay and rank, if you haven't a CLUE what they're telling customers? This "middle layer" is where management get the information on which they base policy. And you can bet that they'll be told what a BAD Idea change is.

One of the unanswered questions about the SPV is "why the hell did they launch it late last year?" Because - ask any techie who bought one - what GOT launched was quite clearly a late-Beta version of an unfinished product. It was SUPPOSED to have included an FM radio (I think the box still says it does) and it was SUPPOSED to be able to be used as a wire-free modem. But the hardware arrived in the stores months before the drivers required to make it work. The people who "register" the phones onto the network were half-trained, so that a significant proportion of phones didn't get signed up for a complete collection of network features (like MMS and GPRS) and more again didn't get signed up for the cheap GPRS package (but assumed they had been, and used their phones acordingly - to be greeted by massive bills, apologies, and refunds) It all has the hallmarks of a shotgun wedding, rushed down the aisle on the way to the maternity ward. Despite being an "insider" at the time, nobody was willing to tell me "why the hurry?" A coincidental 9 months later, we have the SPV Mark two, which seems to differ in having a better screen, bigger smartcard (but STILL half the size of the one that was planned to be supplied with the Mk1) and a two-tone plastic case rather than a plain silver one. And - of course - THIS version has the upgraded software which provides reasonable battery life and includes a modem driver for WinXP. Maybe it's not so much the launch of a new product, as a second launch (this time getting it right!) of an old one. But I have the disinct impression that HTC's launch (in Germany) of the superficially "new" phone came as a slight shock to Orange - who alledgedly co-designed the orgiginal, which differs only in trivia from the new model.

Interesting about the GPRS price. I know I recommended people to sign up for it because of the low cost deal. Nobody actually complained to me! - I suppose, probably, because Orange sorted it out.

Anyway, since I'm going to bbe out of the office this morning, I thought I'd post the "questionnaire" to save people phoning me from Malaysia in the middle of tonight they way they did last night! :-)

=========
We will shortly be running a four-week trial to selected Orange customers and would like to invite you to apply to take part. For this preliminary trial, we will be selecting triallists based on their usage of specific Orange services and currently-owned hardware.

Successful trialists will be provided with a prototype of the forthcoming SPV and will be transferred to a promotional tariff including free
of charge GPRS data and inclusive text and photo messaging bundles for the duration of the trial. Triallists will be expected to complete questionnaires throughout the duration of the trial and must return the equipment when instructed to do so.

As a token of our appreciation, triallists will receive a voucher for a free upgrade to the launch version of the new SPV and activation of a new promotional SPV pack. Further details of the SPV pack and information on how to redeem your voucher will follow.

If you would like to apply, can you please fill in the following short questionnaire so we can determine your suitability for this trial.
Please return the questionnaire to julian.hope@orange.co.uk.

Orange is looking to recruit as many suitable triallists as possible, although we may only be able to accommodate up to 300 trialists for the first wave.
We would therefore like to encourage you to extend this invitation to any colleagues or friends who may also be eligible to apply.

Orange SPV2 trialist questionnaire

Are you a Pay Monthly or Pay as you go customer?

Which model of phone do you currently own?


Do you own a home computer?

If so, please provide brief details of the model and operating system
below.



Which of the following connectivity methods does your computer have:
 Infrared
 Bluetooth
 USB
 Serial




Do you own a PDA or handheld computer?

If so, please provide brief details of the model and operating system
below.

Which of the following connectivity methods does your PDA or handheld computer have?

Infrared
Bluetooth
USB
Serial
Don't know


Do you regularly use any of the following Orange services
Text messaging
Photo messaging
Reading emails using the email client on your phone
Browsing WAP
Browsing the internet on your phone




If you use WAP, which Orange WAP services do you regularly use
Orange email (orange.net)
Find my nearest
News and Weather
Cinema
Your page
Downloadable ringtones and sounds
Downloadable logos and pictures
Games

Do you use your phone as a modem to access the internet on another
device?

If so, do you usually connect using
Dialup (circuit-switched data)
HSCSD
GPRS

Do you use your mobile phone to send or receive faxes?



 

Do you own a Bluetooth headset? If so, please state the model.

 ==========

Guy > Where do we send this questionnaire?

have emailed you asking for an email address already.

cheers.

Edited by author 06-16-2003 07:20 AM
Nice hoax Guy! Julian Hope is really impressed

You seem to be categorically certain that this IS a hoax - can we ask what makes you think so? I've seen the same email elsewhere. Julian Hope is alledgedly on holiday until 30th. If he is, then how do YOU know his opinions?

Having spoken to orange business services who spoke to Jullian Hope, apparently his inbox is full of questionaires he knows nothing about. The handset exists but there are no plans for a public beta. Im waiting for a call back from my account manager.

The original source of the email was the Modaco forum, where a new member (named "Mr Morris" in the mail) claimed to have received it - he also (in another post) exhorted people to "get their replies in fast", and planted a seed in another thread drawing peoples' attention to his original post. The thread has now been deleted in its entirety, so I conclude that you're correct - it HAS now been exposed as a hoax.

Question remains of motive. This was a VERY polished job. Hoaxes are usually badly spelled, ungrammatical, and refer to important officials who don't exist. This one was better spelled and more grammatical than GENUINE Orange output, and included authentic Orange "Boilerplate" text. And it not only referred to a genuine Orange Official, but seemed to be aware that he would be unavailable to expose the hoax for what it was. So, not the usual hoax profile. Was the target Orange? Was it a cruel prank played by a colleague on Julian Hope? Was it an attempt by an Orange employee to discredit Modaco?
WELL? Guy - you're the "investigative journalist"! We rely on you for answers!

"Interesting about the GPRS price. I know I recommended people to sign up for it because of the low cost deal. Nobody actually complained to me! - I suppose, probably, because Orange sorted it out."

"Registering" a new phone is normally a fairly simple process. With the SPV however it required several different steps to be fed into a geriatric (DOS?) program written as a "stopgap solution" back when Orange had a million customers. The clerk needed to add GPRS, MMS and the "SPV Value Pack" each as a separate process, and some of those options are found buried deep in "nested menus". A significant proportion of the people tasked with the job never DID seem to find "SPV Value pack", and so customers that they'd registered got billed full whack at the "PAYU" rate (which I seem to recall was £10 per megabyte) When tghe bill arrived, they'd ring up to complain, and they'd get a refund. But in the early days, a significant proportion of calls relating to the SPV were down to things simply "not being switched on for that accound at the exchange." When someone asked WHY their phone wouldn't send MMS messages, you KNEW the answer even before you'd checked. Not a techie problem... but because the phone's a/c hadn't been "flagged" as MMS capable. Due to a screwup somewhere in the system, the registration software initially refused to believe that the SPV *WAS* MMS capable - and the error message had to be over-ridden. But I don't think anyone ever explained that to the registration people...

Sounds like a disgruntled orange employee!

More info: it seems that the original hoaxer joined the Modaco forum on 13th June they did so under the name "SPVlover", and posted three messages - the original hoax email, another telling people to sign up, a third drawing attention to the mail in another thread, and UNDER ANOTHER NAME ("Chris D") repeated the scam through a newsgroup synched with Modaco, claiming to have "also recieved the same email". All in all, a very busy bunny around teatime on Friday, but also a VERY well planned, slick operation; quite the opposite of the usual hoax profile. This chap was clever, and reasonably well educated. He also looks to be a techie of some kind.

Modaco have been something of a thorn in Orange's paw for quite some time - while not mentioned by name, Orange have put out press releases denouncing release of instructions on how to "decertify" the phone (it's "locked" and should ONLY run Orange-approved and licensed software. Unlocked it'll run it approved or not)If you want to unlock or SIM unlock your SPV, Modaco has long been the place to look. And its membership is now 8000+ - more than 10% of all SPV users worldwide. So, I'm left wondering if this is more than a "jape"; could it be the act of an "Agent provocateur" to give Orange the excuse to take legal action?
Whoever it was, and whyever they did it... they seem to have been aware of Julian Hope's holiday schedule, and that he'd not be around to rubbish the hoax. How DID they know? Who HAS access to that kind of info?

Maybe Julian had taken some time during his break to tell some of his mates about a really good trick... maybe he has some proposals to put forward at work about handsets or security for that matter which would be much better received after such an incident... Maybe he just didn't plan on his mates using him as the recipient at Orange...


who knows... but it does seems to be playing to Oranges benefit at the moment...

Cut and pasted from Modaco:

"Received this from neil ashley at O.
"Hello.
I've received a number of emails over the past few days, presumably because Julian Hope's vacation message suggests contacting me in his absence. Unfortunately, this relates to something in which neither Julian nor myself have involvement. The following statement should clarify the situation;

A number of Orange customers have received an email which claims to be from Orange inviting them to participate in a trial of the new Orange SPV handset.

While this information appears to have been sent by the Orange trials team, it was not generated by Orange.

The next version of the SPV, the SPV E100 will be launched in the UK in July. All trials of this handset are now complete.

Orange very much regrets any disappointment caused to our customers by this misleading email and we are conducting a full investigation into its origin."

IP numbers and full details have been passed on to Orange by Modaco. Conclusion, someone somewhere's for the highjump. Nobody's confirming that this wasn;t "just a prank", but... they're not denying it either.