orange mobicarte taking another day's credit from prepaying customers

[frank b]

Hi all,

I' have a pay-as-you-go, 15 euros per month Orange mobicarte phone in France.

I wasn't happy when Orange started giving you a free 5 euro's worth of calls some time ago because,at the same time, they were forcing you to rtop-up your phone within 20 days, whereas, before this so called "special offer", you had a whole month to use up your credit. So, in effect they were giving you nothing!

Now they're taking another day's credit from me in a manner that must be illegal.

After each top-up I check how long I have before I have to top-up my phone again. I dial #123# which tells me the date that my credit is available to. For example, this time the message tells me that I have until 26th February inclusive. But yesterday (the 24th) I had a text from mobicarte saying I had one day left, which was wrong. This morning (the 25th) I had another text saying that this is my last day and I have to top-up today or lose all my credit. Again if I dial #123#, it still says my credit is available until 26th, which is tomorrow.

So now I being forced to top-up today which means I've only had 19 day's credit instead of 20. It's not much but this isn't right surely. If I'd not read the mobicarte texts and topped-up tomorrow (as the original #123# message said) I would have lost almost 100 euro's worth of credit.

This is the second month in a row now that this has happened so I assume it's not an error.

Anyone else come across this? If so, were you able to do anything about it? (bearing in mind that there are no English-speaking contacts for Orange Mobile in France).

Thanks,

Frank