Mark Tiddy
Website of Mark Tiddy | Musician, Christian, Youth Worker

So after yesterday’s post about Orange and various calls to them I decided it was still worth complaining to Ofcom simply because ifenough people complain then this clause in a contract which allows them to put up prices based on inflation may be looked into.

Here is the full e-mail response from Ofcom. Hopefully it’s useful…to make your own complain to Ofcom go to this page

(Also thank you to everyone who’s commented on my last post…it’s great to get some discussion going)

Dear Mr Tiddy

Thank you for contacting Ofcom on 29 November 2011 about increasing line rental charges.

I understand you have been told that Orange can increase their line rental charges from January but you were not made aware of this at the point of sale. When a provider sells a contract it is unlikely they will explain every term of the contract and will only explain core terms i.e. minimum contract period. Also, whilst costs may be increased during a contract, this may also not happen. Any provider is able to make changes to a contract at anytime.

However, it may be of interest to know that, if a provider intends to make changes they should give at least one months notice – as per Ofcom regulations. If the change could make a substantial increase in your bills (and thus a material detriment) it is possible you could cancel your contract without penalty. However, if the change will not have a substantial impact it is likely you can be held to your contract.

If Orange will not let you leave without penalty, you may wish to follow their complaints process at:http://www1.orange.co.uk/documents/about/Orange-complaints-code-20110118.pdf.

If you exhaust this process, or if your complaint has been ongoing for over 8 weeks, you may be able to take your complaint to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. An ADR scheme is an important piece of consumer protection as they are free and independent for consumers like you. Orange must abide by their decision but if you remain unhappy you are free to consider legal action

Orange’s ADR scheme is CISAS (Communications & Internet Services Adjudication Scheme). CISAS can be contacted at:

CISAS
24 Angel Gate
City Road
London
EC1V 2PT

Phone 020 7520 3827
Email: info@cisas.org.uk
Website: www.cisas.org.uk

Although we do not deal with individual disputes I can confirm I have made a full record of your experience. This feeds into statistics we collate to help monitor trends and, where appropriate, the information can inform future policy in consumer enforcement and investigations.

I hope this explains our position and is useful to you.

Yours sincerely

Consumer Contact Team

So Orange sent me a text this morning stating that:

Hi, from Orange. We’re increasing the price of your monthly plan by 4.34% from 8 January 2012. For more information please visit orange.co.uk/planupdate

Other than the rather cheery greeting to pass on some bad news the text didn’t tell me why and so naturally annoyed me…clicking to their link I found this:

Why are Orange introducing these price rises?

We know that price increases are never welcomed by our customers. Unfortunately, with inflation at a 20 year high it has been necessary to increase our monthly service charges.

Can I cancel my contract because you’re increasing my monthly service charge?

8 Years ago yesterday a band I barely knew played their last show in Denver, Colorado. That band was Five Iron Frenzy and in the last 8 years they have become one of my favourite bands and had a huge impact on my life. Their mix of fun ska-punk music blended with a mix of beautifully profound or cleverly funny lyrics made them such a good band to listen to.

Five Iron Frenzy had this habit of drawing you into the music and then hitting you with the most profound God-lyric ever! We even had the worship band at our wedding adapt their song ‘World without End’ adapted to be played as a worship song.

Over the last few months the bands website contained a mysterious countdown and their Twitter and Facebook came to life, building hype around something that would happen at 2am this morning (or 7pm in the USA!)…having toyed with the idea of staying up or sleeping through and checking out twitter in the morning I opted in for a 1:55am alarm and hoped that it would be something worth disturbing my sleep for.

And it was!

I’d spent my day telling myself that it would be a greatest hits or rarities album and not a reform or anything new but how wrong was I?

Five Iron Frenzy announced (with a slightly bizarre video of Reese Roper in the desert) that they were getting back together and would be recording a new album (to release in 2013…10 years after their break-up) and possibly playing some shows….oh and they put a new song online!

Now the latter doesn’t excite me as much unless they venture to the UK (I wish!) but the thought of a new album and a chance to hear a new Five Iron song really got me excited. To make this new album the band were asking for pledges in return for a variety of things ranging from a CD of the new album to the band writing you a song…I went for the former and amazingly the band aimed to get $30,000 to make, master and release the album and amazingly they got that within 55 minutes and less than 24 hours later they’re on $80,000.

Turns out I’m not the only one excited about the new Five Iron Frenzy.

I was also pretty excited about the new song titled ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ and it’s so good! It’s like a mix of ‘Electric Boogaloo’ and ‘Our Newest Album Ever’ and I think will please all FIF fans.

So why the blog?

This blog is simply to express my burst of excitement…share the word and tell you to listen to Five Iron Frenzy…they’re amazing and so much fun but also seriously challenging.

Go listen, support and download at: www.fiveironfrenzy.com

Note: I also had a worship blog in mind to write which also included some stuff about FIF so this blog might end up a little FIF obsessed for a week or so!

If you’re reading this then you’ve probably noticed there’s been an update to my blog!

Having had the last theme for a while I fancied a change to something a little more creative. This one takes slightly longer to load but I think it’s nice…Hope you like it!

New Song!

Over the last few months I’ve been re-recording, mixing and mastering ‘Escape this Town’ to fix some of the things that slipped through the net last year and I released the first new single from it a few weeks back.

You can download the fully re-mastered track ‘Escape this Town’ for free here or if you’re feeling generous it’s on iTunes and Amazon (You can also listen for free on Spotify)

Geography Rocks EP

Finally in half term Dave came up to stay and we spent 2 days trying to record, mix and master and EP of Dave’s geography songs (which he actually sings to his classes) and we did it!

Geography Songs is available to download here or on iTunes here

They’re pretty catchy and it was great fun to try and do something of good quality in 2 days…and I think we managed it. I also got to play drums and record some bass and guitars on the record.

You can watch a ‘Making of Geography Songs’ video below

The Making of Geography Songs from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.