Orange to introduce ‘overdrawn facility’
Orange is to be the first phone network to allow customers to overdraw their phone credit.
The operator has followed the lead of high street banks by allowing customers to continue making calls even if the have run out of credit.
The Telegraph reports that it will be providing phone users with £2.50 worth of credit and will allow them to send 25 more texts or make 14 minutes worth of calls if their credit has run out.
Orange UK’s head of pay-as-you-go Jeremy Morris said that the overdraft may be extended for high spending users.
However, she added: “We don’t want our customers to build up big debts they can’t pay back.
“It’s not part of our philosophy and as a business we obviously don’t want to build up bad debts.”
Last month UK banks and credit card agencies passed on £6.5 billion in unpaid debts to money collection agencies, according to the Sunday Herald.
This meant that total debt being defaulted could reach more than £8 billion by 2010.
Consumers worried about the state of their repayments may wish to seek debt help.
Leave a Reply