Orange unlimited data bundle is off peak!

I got another mail from Dan Lane of BlackFin this morning on the Orange Unlimited service plan.  If you recall, I did a piece on it last week.  I got his mail just as I was perusing a related thread on MoDaCo about the potential of Orange introducing an £8 unlimited add-on.

Dan writes:

So further to what I mentioned the other day… I’m looking into Orange’s Unlimited tariff… I’m not sure I’d ever contemplate upgrading to a 75/month tariff but I wanted to know more.

In the terms and conditions I found:

———

The Offer provides Eligible Customers with one of the following "Unlimited Bundles" dependent on their talkplan:

    * Dolphin £35 – Unlimited Text Messages Bundle
    * Racoon £35 – Unlimited Fixed Line Calls Bundle
    * Canary £40 – Unlimited Orange Off Peak Calls Bundle
    * Panther £75 – Unlimited Text Messages and Off Peak Data Bundle

———

OFF PEAK DATA BUNDLE!

Yeah, no wonder they put "Unlimited Bundles" in quote marks!.

I can’t even comprehend the meeting in which someone thought 75 quid for unlimited data was competitive before some other marketing chump stood up and said "we can restrict it to off peak!".

As for the target market for this tariff… the high cost puts it firmly in ‘businessman’ territory but that kind of user is far more likely to be attracted to peak-time data bundles.

Orange haven’t so much dropped the ball on this one, they fumbled around a bit before kicking it into a ditch. I look forward to seeing them attempt to recover the ball by poking it with sticks.

No wonder Dan is positively vomitting with annoyance.  Off-peak?   An OFF PEAK data package?  Like I’m going to wait until 6pm to use the data on my handset?  What planet are they on?

There might be a special £8 add-on data plan.  There might not.  The MoDaCo thread on the subject has a ton of conflicting views.  You have to seriously wonder what’s going on there at Orange Towers.  Can’t they just make it simple a la T-Mobile’s £7.50 a month proper unlimited deal?