Jon wrote:
> ivor@despammed.invalid declared for all the world to hear...
> > True, but annoying existing customers to the point where they leave is
> > hardly good business practice, is it..?
>
> But they have more now than they ever before, and we're piling on the
> customers at the moment - so something must be right about the setup or
> people would be leaving in droves!
>
> If it means annoying 1 customer to the point where they leave but
> gaining 5 more then I know which I'd prefer!
> --
> Regards
> Jon
Many valid points have been raised, though I must say, Jon, that yours
are extremely biased if not a little short-sighted.
I've moved our whole company's business from O2 to Orange after careful
consideration to the other options. Our business would only move for
financial reasons, but I was biased towards Orange knowing that they
would offer good customer service (for a business) and their network /
call quality and services would be at least on par with O2 and
Vodafone. They wouldn't touch T-mobile and 3 with a stick (mainly based
on reputation and rumour, not fact).
Now, if I could do that then I imagine other businesses would carefully
consider moving to Orange too. That covers the business customers.
In recent months we all know about Orange buying Wanadoo (previously
Freeserve). This takes in old Freeserve customers, existing Wanadoo
customers and Orange customers all to consolidate their services and
save money. Only the existing Orange customers will have knowledge and
experience of Orange customer services, tariffs, etc. So, though it may
seem that Orange are doing well as a mobile network at this time I
would encourage you to look at the bigger picture and tell yourself
these customers joining Orange are not joining because Orange are
offering better phone packages but because they're consolidating
internet and mobile services. It makes business sense.
Now, I've covered Orange business customers (probably any business with
over 20 phones) and broadband customers and Orange customers who want
Wanadoo broadband. That leaves us with people like me who have been an
Orange customer for a while, and with several resons for being one.
Most of those reasons have now gone out the window as I am someone who
would prefer to pay £25 or less for calls and GPRS usage, not to send
text messages to my school-mates or to sign up to a very average
Freeserve broadband service. That's not to mention Orange does not take
into account your spend on Line 2 when it comes to upgrades and
renewals. Now tell me, for individual customers like myself, and I'm
sure there are a number of us out there, will we not be disappointed
with Orange? Orange spend heavily on branding and image and they
focused on quality. It wasn't that long ago that Orange had a
reputation for being hard to get a contract with.. they didn't do a
"one2one" and give free mobiles to every uni student living out of a
sleepingbag on someone's living room. They recognised the need for
their brand to be associated with business types and serious
individuals and they always won JD Power Survery awards as a result of
concentrating on quality and service.
It's only a matter of time before people decide they don't want a
Freeserve broadband service and realise that Orange isn't as great as
all the hype was about it in the last few years. Orange will be just an
average Joe network and all us ex-Orange customers will be very
disappointed. And we won't be the minority. The current wind of change
for Orange is probably just a short-term success that's got more to do
with broadband than it does with your average mobile user.
a still-disappointed Orange customer
Orange killed OVP! 
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