Orange customers can leave contract thanks to September price hike

If your love affair with Orange has turned into an animal-shaped ball and chain, perk up your ears: Orange customers can bail out early on their contracts when the network increases its call charges in September.

Mobile News reports that on 1 September, Orange is upping its call charges -- the minimum cost of a call outside your inclusive minutes skyrockets from 5p to 15p for the first minute. After that, the rate for subsequent minutes stays the same. Orange will also be increasing data charges to 60p a day for 25MB.

Orange's terms and conditions say you can break up with it if it varies the contract's terms, resulting in "an excessive increase in the charges".

Orange admits that its Ts & Cs "do allow customers to terminate their contract as a result of this change," but it's "confident that the majority of our customers will not be affected by this because of the nature of their talk plans and their usage."

Based on our experience, the hard part of getting out of your contract will be convincing Orange that the change will affect you. Check out our forums for a discussion about locking horns with 3 about its change to worldwide roaming charges, which has some great advice about toughing it out with 3 call-centre staff until you break their spirits.