Went into Orange again today, hopeless on data

It’s such a pain in the arse when I walk into an Orange shop. The team there seem to know NOTHING about mobile data.

Nothing at all.

It’s a recurring theme and it really does wind me up.

Orange, once the domain of the 2-hour-handset-replacement-offer (contributor Jonathan Jensen was reminicing about this yesterday), it seems they’ve thoroughly degenerated over the years.

I went in to the shop below SMS Text News Towers on Oxford Street this morning and asked if they have the Nokia N82 in stock.

They do.

Good.

“Talk to me about data,” I asked.

“We do a browsing bundle,” the nice lady said.

“Right, but if I take a photo, with the gorgeous camera on the N82, and want to send it to my Facebook account, what’s the cost? Do you have a data bundle?”

I didn’t even mention ShoZu. Or Jaiku. Or any of that. I reckoned that was the simplest explanation. Picture and sending to Facebook.

The lady sales person did her best, but she couldn’t hide the look of surprise and ‘why would you WANT to do that’ spreading across her face as I explained ‘picture’ and ‘Facebook’.

Annoying. Really annoying.

She turned to her manager and repeated my question.

To my ABSOLUTE ASTONISHMENT, he said, “Er dunno. Dunno. Call customer services and ask.”

Ridiculous.

I figured it out though. To qualify for unlimited ‘anytime’ data (i.e. day or night), you need to spend at least £45 per month on their ‘panther’ plan — and it’s subject to a maximum of 250mb.

I do think I should have an Orange account in the interests of SMS Text News. I have one on o2, Voda, T-Mobile and so on… but not Orange. I’d only get one if, when I wanted to, I could use unlimited data.

What do you think? 45 quid a month is quite a lot to pay each month though.