Link:
Orange puts squeeze on customers | The Register .
Rachel sent this Register story by Bill Ray over to me in total disbelief. She can’t believe she’s now having to pay for message delivery receipts. That’s not all though. Bill’s outlined a heck of a lot of other ‘additional charges’ that appear to have crept into the Orange business model…
What is it with cellular operators these days? One minute they’re calling you up and offering you ADSL for free, the next they’re billing you for services which used to be free and chucking in charges where there used to be none.
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Mike42 on 
Comment by Rachel on 21 July 2006:
I’ve had a response from Orange:
Hello Rachel
Thank you for your mail about text delivery report costs.
We can confirm that on our new Pay Monthly animal tariffs there is a 1p per delivery report charge to receive the message.
Please call our helpdesk to confirm if this charge will apply to your tariff. Please call our Customer Services on 150 from a pay monthly Orange phone, or 07973-100150 from a landline. Our Helpdesk is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and any of our representatives will be pleased to assist you.
We trust this is of assistance.
Kind regards
Dominic
Orange Customer Services
I’ll phone them later and find out.
Comment by Chirag on 18 August 2006:
That’s incredibly annoying! I was almost ready to sign up to the “dolphin 35″ 18 month tariff that provides “free unlimited” text messages. I can’t see the point of bothering if I’m going to get charged for knowing when my messages are received!
Comment by Flick on 2 September 2006:
I am completely and absolutely outraged! I would never have even noticed this ‘1p charge’ until I scrutinised my online bill (having changed from itemised billing to a standard bill to save the 1.50GBP cost) and discovered an extra 40p at the end of the bill when the numbers all appeared to be zero. I have been with Orange for at least 6 years and have always had free delivery reports.
Comment by Alex on 2 September 2006:
Delivery reports costing money are one of the great myths of the SMS world. Any operator or aggregator worth their salt will provide delivery reports to their customers for free, as they already have them for every message sent. So this whole thing about charging you for seeing them is just a crap excuse to make money. Next they’ll be charging you for letting you move between one cell and the next while mobile.
Comment by marisha on 6 November 2006:
Im totallt peed off with the charges it made up £6 out of the £12 call charges amount and i did not see this in their contract it beggars belief!
Comment by Little Lisa on 12 April 2007:
What a load of sh!t, talk about being ripped off, wish I’d never changed my plan now. aaaargh!!
Comment by Tobeon on 25 July 2007:
I just found out today that my so called unlimited free txts weren’t so free! Delivery reports were turned on by default on my phone and seeing as I was never charged for delivery reports in the past it never occurred to me that they might be charging! I spose it will teach me to pay more attention to my bill in figure.
Comment by Arun Rakhra on 17 August 2007:
This is unbelievable, I’ve been with orange for 6 years and since they didn’t charge back when I first signed up I just assumed they won’t charge now – They’re not the company they used to be, call quality’s going down, calls and reception drop – But at the same time they seem to be getting more and more expensive!
Comment by curious4orange on 8 December 2007:
What does an Orange delivery report actually look like?
I’m on o2 and it takes this format:-
Message 2531741274 to 447985xxxxxx, was delivered at 13:23 on 15/11/07. Text: Hi. How are you? Sha
Comment by Peter on 25 December 2007:
Checking the Orange price guide document dates on Archive.com, this charge was only published between the copy taken on 7 Sep 06 and 27 Oct 06. Before that it’s not mentioned. If you took out a contract before 8 September, I think you could claim that the charge wasn’t part of the contract and that they shouldn’t be billing for delivery reports.
Comment by vic t on 29 February 2008:
well i get charged 9 pence a delivery report from orange. asnd ive now been told that it is compulsary for me to pay insurance for my phone even though i dont need it. i also have to pay for some sort of help line as well. what an absolute rip off. i thought i was getting a good deal with £35 a month and unlimited texts but my bills are somewhere in the region of £50 a month. RIP OFFFFFFF