Dolphin 35 (£29.26 p/month) giving me 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 250Mb internet included.

I am very happy with it (especially now I have installed the latest Samsung ROM instead of the standard buggy slow featureless Orange one)

So I called the Upgrade team, Ironically I was told (as above) this has been removed from sale as they has loads of technical difficulties and were getting more sent back then they were selling. I explained this must be non-sense as I had just come from an Orange shop where I could get one over the counter that it was on display clear as day for sale to new customers yet me and also at the time was still showing on there website. All he said was well can only tell you what I can tell you. So I asked to speak to cancellations.

A lady came on the phone and wanted to know why I was interested in leaving, I explained and she said no what I had been told was incorect (in a tone that suggested this was not the first time this had happened) she explained the phone was fine but that the decision had been made to pull the Omnia from general sale and make it exclusive to business customers only. I said that was a joke, that people want the handset and we do not all have business contracts. I said as your staff have pointblank lied, that I had been a good constant customer would she do it for me, I was told that there was nothing she could do. So I ended the call.

Got a phone call today approx 2 weeks on from all the above, from the Orange Upgrade team, They guy said im well overdue an upgrade did I have anything in mind so I said well yeah the Omnia his answer was the what… never hurd of it! I explained all the above, he searched his records and sure enough the phone is not listed on there general sale pages only on business pages, he said it was why he had never hurd of it.. but was a decent guy when I spoke to him about wanting the iPhone he said if you want it that bad and dont want to leave Orange, go to France, buy it on Orange there (As they have the exclusive rights like o2 in UK) and change settings to English sorted!! hmmm decisions decisions.

Still very poor of Orange shame on you!!

I was then put through to the retentions team, who said that because they had so few of them, they had all been allocated to the small business contracts.

My suspicion is that Orange are chasing the cash, identifying that they can’t get as many as they’d like so giving them to the more valuable business customers, but trying not to annoy the hoy-poloy “so my money isn’t good enough” response by saying they don’t work.

Shame they can’t keep it consistent.

Interestingly though, it is listed – and available to buy – from their Business store. So it seems that businesses can buy it, but not consumers…

Anyway, I was told at that point that the Omnia had been discontinued so I ordered the Tocca, which is fine and i like it. So We then wanted to upgrade the second handset, wanted a HTC but couldn’t have it (although I could have sworn it was on the upgrade menu when I was trying to upgrade the first handset…) and we were told on about 3 occasions (we like to phone at different times to see if there are different answers!) that the Omnia was still discontinued….. (no explanation, just “it’s discontinued”)…

THat was last Wednesday… then yesterday I was logged to my account online to check again, and there it was, top of the menu of upgrade options, the Omnia, BUT this time for £129.99. With the £80 ‘discount’ it was £50 but i just ordered it to be done with.

Why don’t they just be honest – My guess is that demand was very high, so they stopped offering it for a bit then jacked the price. Simple.

My guess

Orange are living in the dark ages if they think this kind of poor customer service wont effect customer relations or staff motivation.

Anyway…

I’ve got an Omnia and it’s a great phone however there’s a few things you need to do to it when you get it – caution though, this is all at your own risk and you may invalidate your warranty.

First of all, get rid of the brand firmware. Vodafone and Orange do have issue with their ROMs and aren’t exactly being quick at getting new versions out so you should flash to one of the newer Samsung ROMs – HI1 and HI2 are good. HI3 is out but it’s a bit raw just now. As well as making your phone faster and more responsive it also irons out the vast majority of any bugs plus you get the default software back (Voda hide Google Launcher for example).

Secondly, go to some decent WinMo fan sites as listed here:

http://www.pocketpcmag.com/cms/bestoftheweb/bestsites

MoDaCo and XDA Developers are particularly good. There you’ll find lots of hints, tweaks, user guides and software to install. Using the list you can also find thousands of applications, many of the free for use. This turns your phone from brilliant to awesome.

And it is awesome. This is a proper smartphone and whilst it’s not as intuitive as other phones it kicks the crap out of them for usefulness and feaures.