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Orange Internet - invoice shock


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Just received my internet invoice for December - usually 24euros but this time it's 58.16euros.

In December when we were at our house, I found a really good meteo site - nothing to say that you'd be charged approx. 1.42euros per minute!!

I have queried this with Orange because I've been charged twice at the same date and time.  So beware!!!

www.infosmeteo.com

 

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Jean:  Look at you bill and see if you have charges under "Contact+" or Minitel. Applies to some websites which are linked to Orange.

If so you need to disable this by getting your bill etc online where you will eventually find the option.

Dishonestly, imo, they make it enabled in default mode.

Many people have had this problem with Orange, including us.

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I see nothing on that site which makes any mention of charges, even in the T&C's

I don't believe the service is switched on by default and it seems quite random so maybe caused by a glitch somewhere and ironically there was a massive surge in complaints coincident with them switching the Minitel service off !

None of those services have ever been switched on for me.

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[quote user="AnOther"]
This link will take you direct to the page where you can check the services and turn them on or off.

[/quote]

Thank you for the link. I checked and all three options are désactivé.

I have a feeling I have checked this before, but don't remember, nothing unusual about that, so who knows?[:D]

 

 

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I have just received a bill for 77€ and as we have a we should be paying around 37€ a month I was a bit shocked.

So I have just checked the bill on-line (I'm not at home that often so don't pick up on these things to be honest)

Low and behold

achets on line Internet+    €9.99 

achets on line Contact+    €16.00  (for two calls)

reading the blurb it says that they are enabled by default

As I have now deactivated them (the feckers!!) can anyone tell me what I will be losing out on ?

 

EDIT: I've just had a mooch around the French "arnaque" sites and quite a lot of people are peeved by this. I think it is really underhand by Orange. I can't find anywhere on the bill that tells me what "calls" caused this cost

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Nothing except being robbed by Orange and their partners in this scam, it will have absolutely zero effect on anything else you do online.

The T&C's for these instant purchase partner sites state that there should be a second confirmation layer making it impossible to simply click on something and find that you've unknowingly bought it and annecdotally Orange ALWAYS back down and refund when aggressively challenged inferring that they know damn well what's going on but choose to do nothing about it because it makes them money.

Reading what blurb ?

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[quote user="AnOther"]

Reading what blurb ?
[/quote]

I followed the link posted above and there was something saying that these are activated by default, I think when I got to the page to activate/deactivate the option there was something on there. Strange now as I can't find it again.

I'll have another look tomorrow in the daylight

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I think this is the bit you are looking for.

http://assistance.orange.fr/desactiver-les-achats-contact-5054.php

Contact+ est activé par défaut pour tous les abonnés Internet Orange. Vous pouvez le désactiver depuis votre espace client Orange.

It occurs to me that charging for access to certain pages of the internet is probably more shocking to Brits than it would be to anyone accustomed to paying for the value-added pages on Minitel.

I assume that's why it was incorporated into Wandoo's structure when the internet started to elbow out Minitel,It was a natural progression.
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[8-)]Thank you for all your help - I've now deactivated them. Below is the response to my email to Orange.

Nous vous informons que le moyen de paiement Contact+ est proposé pour différents services d’éditeurs partenaires, dont GIBMEDIA.

Pour des raisons de confidentialité et de sécurité des transactions, l’éditeur partenaire est seul à même de vous fournir certaines informations, telles que les éventuels bénéficiaires de services achetés ou les informations de compte ayant commandé un service en particulier.

Will keep a check from now on.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have just had the January invoice and there was another 40€ worth of Internet+ calls on there, even after I turned everything off last month.

Absolutely no idea what we bought with that money as there is no individual breakdown.  I will call their help line tomorrow and ask what on earth all this money is supposed to be buying us, and more to the point, can I have it back

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I've been looking into this today, and it really is quite scary. I think it must have been one of the kids who clicked on something, free games or something. Since early in November we have been billed 4.99€ a week from one site, and 5€ from another. It seems that when you click , you get the first week free but if you don't cancel it you get billed PER WEEK

This is an example of one of the abonnements :

Abonnement hebdomadaire :

 UNE SEMAINE D'ESSAI GRATUITE et 10 CONTENUS OFFERTS en cadeau de bienvenue !Les meilleurs jeux, applis, vidéos, sonneries et logos à choisir chaque semaine pour votre mobile !

 

If you don't know what you have paid for, you can find it out on-line.

Espace Client => Mes contrats -> Mon access internet -> THE BOX Mon suiv conso (Internet + voir le detail)  - scary stuff

 

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  • 1 month later...

I sent an email to Orange calling them thieves and not expecting any reply but they have agreed to repay 19.98€ which isn't much but it's something I suppose.

They know very well what's going on I reckon but won't change their methods as it makes too much money for them. If this happened in the UK they would have had to shut down the Internet+/Contact+ stuff, or at least change it to "opt-in" rather than "opt-out".

I still think this is a scam on a massive corporate scale.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
I too will be contacting Orange on Monday morning! I didn't realise this thread was running until Norman pointed me to it. The theiving sods are taking money from a site called Le Code Route, a site that lets you look at and answer questions for the French driving test. there is no indication I can find that it is charged?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to start a sticky on these theiving sites? I have no doubt that all of the ISPs are doing the same thing!

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This trickery has been going on since 2008 so I'm amazed that nobody has actually taken Orange to task over it.

It's a while ago now so can't remember where it was but I read something in the T&C's for this 'service' that there was supposed to be a second layer of confirmation to prevent inadvertent and unintended single click purchases, and quite rightly so.

While Orange seem to be a willing conduit for these frauds, because that is what they are, it's actually the 3rd party sites who don't observe the rules who are the real villains.

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[quote user="Jonzjob"] I have no doubt that all of the ISPs are doing the same thing! [/quote]

Until I googled Betty's suggestion I had no idea that SFR was using the same trick as Orange. Fortunately I have never been anywhere online that charges via this system but, even so, I was astonished to read that, as with Orange, with SFR it is turned ON by default. Consequently I have now turned off access for anyone who uses my laptop ... just in case.

Sue

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I would assume that all of the ISPs are using the same method? But for those of us on Orange here is the turn off method. Not totally complete, but what else can you expect

http://assistance.orange.fr/desactiver-les-achats-contact-5054.php

After you have gone to Espace Client select Accuiel Client in the black top band and carry on from there.

I'm leaving our on umtil I've argued the point Monday morning!

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As mentioned earlier in the thread, my neighbour got charged when she

first started using the internet with Orange a few years back.

When

she received her first invoice, she queried the charges, stating that

they had never been mentioned by the Orange advisor when she went to

their shop for advice, and she wouldn't have agreed to them if they had

been...

She did get a refund.

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[quote user="suein56"]Fortunately I have never been anywhere online that charges via this system[/quote]That's part of the problem, you simply don't know which sites are part of this stupid and disreputable system and which are not although you can probably safely assume a couple of things.

1. They will only ever be French.

2. They will be trying to sell you something  relatively small and virtual, ring tones or games perhaps.

It would be interesting to know how many who have been caught out by this either have children living in the house or as regular visitors as it seems to me that most sites are aimed at that demographic.

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I think what happened was that FT simply continued the payment system which existed on Minitel when the Internet took off. Virtually all of the content on there had always been chargeable once you ventured beyond directory enquiries.

I imagine that they expected it to become the norm for the majority of sites to be chargeable on the internet as well!

It's alwas surprised me that here isn't a law forbidding sites from giving away news content since it could be classed as competition deloyal!
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