Orange package ‘too restrictive’

A CONSUMER body is accusing Orange of unfair practices over “Open”, its “quadruple-play” package, to which a million people have signed up.

UFC-Que Choisir says it has made an official complaint to the Autorité de la Concurrence (Competition Authority) in relation to this package which adds a mobile phone contract to the “triple-play”concept (landline, broadband, digital television), originally pioneered by the firm Free.

This comes at a bad time for Orange, just as Free is itself poised to launch mobile phone services this week.

Que Choisir says the mobile contract in the Open package is too closely linked to the triple-play part, and the conditions “imprison the customer”.

It says that if you make a change to your mobile contract you are obliged at the same time to renew your contractual obligations with regard to the other services; customers are not able to cancel the mobile service or triple-play separately, and furthermore the firm does not allow people to take their landline and mobile numbers with them if they change to another company.

“Consumers find themselves locked in in terms of contractual obligation periods and the costs of leaving are much increased,” says UFC-Que Choisir. “That limits correspondingly their chances of joining another, better-performing or more innovative, service provider, restricting competition.”

Orange said the complaint is “incomprehensible,” saying that it used advice from the Competition Authority in creating the offer. It added UFC’s claims are inaccurate. For example, it said there is no obligation period attached to the landline service and it is possible to cancel the triple-play element and keep the mobile one. Orange said it was working on “technical problems” which were preventing taking numbers to another company.