Orange mounts sneaky Freeserve accounts purge
Night of the long juicer
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Orange has started summarily deleting email accounts tied to old Freeserve and Wanadoo pay-as-you-go dial-up accounts with no warning.
For years, accounts would be deactivated after 90 days if the dial-up number was not accessed. Customers would then receive an error message when trying to access their Freeserve email via another connection, but could reactivate the account before it was deleted by simply visiting the Freeserve, then Wanadoo, and now Orange website.
Orange quietly extended the deactivation period to 260 days earlier this year. Under the new regime however, access to email is not denied when the dial-up account is suspended, so users are not made aware their account is in danger of deletion. The "grace period" has been removed.
The new policy has bitten over the last week, as noted by angry users in this Orangeproblems.co.uk thread. Many say they have lost years of email without warning and are told it is irrecoverable when they contact customer service.
User "Cav" wrote: "I am registered with many organisations, including government bodies, and I'm sure many will not let me change email address without them sending a confirmation email to the old address - which I won't be able to access!
"I'm sure they'll [Orange] say they posted a notice on their website about this - but are Orange users obliged to trawl every page of the Orange website, every day, in order to do business with them?"
We've contacted Orange and are waiting for an explanation. ®
COMMENTS
RE: the telephonica curse
Orange were bought by France Telecom, O2 were bought by Telefonica.
Where's the communication
I have had a freeserve account for 7 years which was deleted last night with no warning (despite the fact that I was using it yesterday). I have just set up my own Virtual Assistance business and have been in the process of transferring all my contacts to a new email account with an appropriate domain name. This process is not complete - I was not aware I was working to a deadline. As with everyone else in the same boat, I have received no help or support from Orange. This level of service and lack of communication is appalling. I intend to tell everyone I meet (and have just told the window cleaner!)
Beware of your orange.net e-mail when changing contracts
I used to use an orange.net e-mail account as it was realy handy at sending me a text for free everytime I got a new e-mail (luckily I didn't get any spam!). Everyone had that address and I also had some documents stored in it.
I then went travelling around the world and changed my orange contract to orange pay-as-you-go. I kept the same telephone number.
However on changing me over they delete (without warning) your login account and e-mail account. All my e-mails were lost including ones that stored some info for my travels and I was now in Thailand. All my friends e-mail addresses were lost from my contacts folder and all my e-mails with information for my travels were lost.
Worse still I couldn't go back and re-register my old e-mail address as it kept showing that it was still in use.
I tried in vain many times but could get absolutely no help from Orange - even to free up my address so I could use it again (which of course must be possible).
I know I should have everything backed up, but I was travelling without a PC and didn't think my account would be deleted. If I was moving away from Orange then I would have backed up. I was annoyed!
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