Orange Customer Service - VERY Disjointed

I've just had a painful encounter with Orange (Pay as you Go).

Saturday night my phone drops below 99p and I receive a text telling me to reply with last 4 digits of nominated card, amount and security code. Thinking "cool new quick way of doing it" I complied, and spent the next 30 mins worried that i'd been scammed.

Concluding that it's unlikely anyone other than Orange would know my account balance or the rest of my card details to actually make a transaction, I calmed down as Customer services (3rd attempt, first two offshore or onshore were completely useless) told me it was an Orange service, but didn't necessarily go through immediately. By today, Monday my phone balance hadn't changed, and on checking my bank account, the money was indeed gone.

Calling back to get help with this was like an NTL flashback. The first (free) centre I connected to couldn't check bank data, and i'm not convinced the second (paid) centre could either. At any rate, they couldn't check it tonight - "sometimes systems have problems". Usually when I call.

I won't bore you with the rest of the details. Suffice to say, my account balance now reflects reality, though I won't try to top up in this way again, and I don't recommend anybody else does.

Bottom line, if you take MY money but don't give me MY service for MY money, DON'T YOU DARE then call crediting my account that same amount of money a GOODWILL GESTURE! It is your BARE MINIMUM RESPONSIBILITY.

PS: As I wrote the final paragraph above my plugged in Nokia silently lit up - "From Orange. Thanks for topping up. Your card has been charged [n] and your new balance is [n x 2]." Figures.

PPS: They also asked me, a domestic customer, to fax my bank statement. What year is this? If I didn't work in an office I can't begin to imagine how I would have done this (and I'm sure as hell not doing it anyway).

PPPS: (last one, promise) Orange used to answer the phone immediately, with UK based people behind the headsets. Given that Orange appears to have left it late to get into call centre offshoring, i'd have hoped they might have looked around to see what a mess it clearly creates.