I am happy to report that Orange have reconsidered their position, and they have now offered a resolution that I deem acceptable. As far as I am concerned this matter is now closed. 
PS – it’s amazing what an email copied to the CEO can achieve. 
Ciao for now!
Ian.
I think my best way to post this is to show the email I have sent to Orange Customer Services. 
In re. account 07XXX XXXXXX
Well – what a complete and utter waste of my valuable time!
I have followed your procedures and got virtually nowhere. Whilst the account is now (apparently) properly registered as Dolphin, this is only from 1st December 2010. When I spoke with an Operations Manager (“Steven”) he told me that the issue is fixed but Orange will not be refunding me for the texts that have been fraudulently (in my opinion) charged to the account that should have been inclusive with topups.
This is completely unacceptable, as this issue (account said Dolphin online, but was being treated as a starter package by your systems) has been apparent right from the very start (in 2009, and I received some refund and compensation during summer 2009, with an assurance the issue had been fixed. The compensation amounted to a number of free texts, then 3p texts for the remainder of 2009). Thus for the entirety of 2010 I have been charged for texts that should have been inclusive.
I have already sent a letter by Royal Mail to your Correspondence Department to request an itemised list of every transaction on this account in 2010. (I cannot get such information online, nor via your customer services). I have also attached an electronic copy of that letter herein. This itemisation will make clear exactly how much I have been over-charged. I expect to receive that list no later than Tuesday 7th December.
I am writing this email response to offer you the opportunity to remedy this situation before I take this to OFCOM and/or Trading Standards and/or consumer journalists. I have also copied this email to your CEO, so he can be clear that his company’s commitment to providing excellent customer service is failing badly.
Whilst the numerical value of what Orange owes is not great, I abhor the principle that a company can effectively say to a customer “Tough, what are you going to do about it?”. Well I actually AM going to do something about it – unless you wish to use this last-chance opportunity for redemption. If I do not receive a satisfactory outcome then please be aware that it is not only this one account that you will lose – I have control over several other Orange accounts that you will also lose. This equates to far more revenue loss than what we are talking about here in terms of recompense. And this is before we even think about the potential commercial damage of negative publicity that this issue could incur.
If you wish to call me to discuss this matter, please call me on 07NNN NNNNNN (an Orange corporate account number).
Yours in anticipation of a satisfactory outcome,
Ian Anderson
I know, I know. A new WP blog appears on the horizon so all you SPAM-twats post comments to try and SPAM your links. Well I have a simple statement to make – DON’T BOTHER! ALL comments require my approval before they’re posted, so the bottom line is – you’re not going to appear, so don’t bother. 
Peace and love (as Ringo ironically said). 
I thought it was about time I started trying to tweak this themed WP template. So here’s my first attempt – adding a dark bubble-wrap background image.
Go on – I dare you to not want to pop those bubbles! 
Ian.
In case you had forgotten (or didn’t know, for those outwith the UK), today is Armistice Day. At 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month we pause for two minutes silence to remember and respect those who have fallen or been injured defending our country.
The following Wiki article will tell you more about Armistice Day … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day
“Lest We Forget”
A comment was made in the BE forum regarding this list of firmwares, as to whether it was worth worth setting up a download page with relevant notes. To that end, if anyone wishes to send me write-ups regarding any of the firmwares listed, please send them as text files and I’ll upload them. The text file name should be the same as the firmware ZIP file, except .zip is replaced by .txt. Example …
Firmware = DG834GT_V1.02.16_DGTeam_0848.zip
Text File = DG834GT_V1.02.16_DGTeam_0848.txt
My directory listing script is setup to look for the .txt file for each .zip file, and display the text file contents. I think this will be the easiest way to provide additional details about the firmwares listed. (I don’t know the details, hence I’m not able to provide them).
Note: I’ll be checking any submitted files for naughty code, so just plain text please.
Ian.
If you’re a follower of the DGTeam firmwares for the Netgear series of modem/routers (such as the DG834G, DG834GT, DG834N, DGN2000 etc.) then you may have found that the project has come to an abrupt end. 
However all is not lost! Whilst there may be no further development of these firmwares, there is a resource wherefrom some of the firmwares can be obtained. The relevant link is http://www.siteguru.co.uk/be/netgear/ and it contains links to ZIP files (hosted here on this domain) of various Images of DGTeam firmwares.
Hopefully additional firmwares will be added over time. To that end, if you have a version that is not currently hosted here then drop me a line attaching the image and I’ll add it to the collection.
I hope you find this beneficial.
Ian.
Morning all!
I loaded this blog on another PC this morning and noticed that yesterday’s post didn’t appear until I did a Ctrl-F5 to force a refresh. This means the blog template wasn’t refreshing, so what was displayed came from the browser cache.
To that end I have update the header.php page of the template to add the following lines, so as to force the browser to retrieve the latest info rather than reading from cache. I hope others may find this useful.
I had called this blog The Musings Of SiteGuru – I am SiteGuru, and this blog is hosted within my website. However I’ve decided a name change is pertinent, to better fit with my personality, and the tagline for this blog. But please rest assured that this name change won’t in any way change the inaneness of my ramblings – indeed, this very post is quite apt in itself.
Some of you may find this title familiar. If you do, and can identify it, then have 20 bonus points. It is, of course, the title of one of Ozzy Osbourne’s albums from his early solo career. So if you’re also an Ozzy fan (from his Black Sabbath days onwards) then look out of the window, Bark At The Moon and seek help from Mr. Crowley.
(I wish I still had hair so I could do some proper head banging).
Comment SPAM Revisited
Nice to see that the SPAM merchants don’t even bother to read the posts – they just SPAM their comments in the hope they get link-backs … WHICH ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN ‘COS I’M NOT GOING TO APPROVE YOUR SPAM-TWAT POSTS!
Wurd!
Posted in General