paging Burnt, or anyone else who knows about phones

I'm sure they could. However the SIM is their property and you've lost
their property, not yours. The insurance covered your property.

It's *not* increasing margin, it's decreasing expenses.

That's a simplistic view, sure at the end of the day you've got to pull
up an admin screen on the HLR and swap the IMSI mapped to the MSISDN but
you've got to have put a process in place to do it:

- Take customer call, agree that new SIM is required: 5 minutes
- Organise for SIM to be despatched: 5 minutes
- Receive customer call confirming SIM has been received: 5 minutes
- Open session on customer management tool, 'activate' SIM 5 minutes

So, say 20 minutes labour plus the cost of the SIM and postage and
packaging.

15 quid is hardly a rip for that.


FWIW I've no association with Orange but in this case I don't think
they're being outrageous.

 

I don't miss the point...

In any case, I'm pretty certain that profitable customers and 'the rest'
get treated very differently.

 

Not really; in this case the complaint isn't that Orange didn't replace
the phone but that they didn't replace the SIM.

The insurance was *phone* insurance and not SIM insurance, the two
things are very seperate even if the customer treats them as a unit.

Orange may choose to take the hit on the cost of the SIM and admin for
someone spending 50+ quid a month on the basis of goodwill. Someone
spending 10 or 15 quid a month on a prepay tariff is (probably) of
marginal profitability so if they're persuaded to churn off this will up
the Average Revenue Per Subscriber which is a key metric phone companies
are judged on.

Now, if Orange choose to look after one group of customers differently
to another with regards to the SIM based on the customer's profitability
I don't see how that negates the whole point of the phone insurance.

 

Well Orange sold them to me as a unit.

I'm a contract customer and I've been with Orange about 4-5 years. My
average monthly bill is about 30 quid.

TBH I wasn't really that bothered about the 15 quid. If the phone had
been stolen they would have replaced the SIM as well, but because it was
only 'damaged' they expected me to retrieve the SIM. It just seemed a
little petty to charge for it. FWIW I'm still with Orange and I've
learnt to zip the top of my tankbag up now.

 

Sure, dad.