Staff Reporter

The judge at Kingston Crown Court ruled that Sandhu serve an additional five years in prison should the amount not be paid.

Sandhu (37) of Great Barr Birmingham was convicted of missing trader fraud last October.

The confiscation order was based on the amount of VAT fraudulently obtained. Over a 27-day period in June and July 2001 more than 110 million passed through his bank account.

He was buying phones VAT-free but reclaiming the tax back as if bought in the UK. The phones were being purchased from Luxembourg without VAT being charged.

In its annual study of customer satisfaction within the UK mobile industry JD Power and Associates polled 2000 mobile users and found Virgin Mobile the best network for customer service in the pre-pay sector.

Virgin Mobile which featured in the poll for the first time was voted top in four out of six categories in the pre-pay segment. They were customer service cost of service handsets and promotions.

Virgin scored 738 out of a possible 1000 for satisfaction among pre-pay customers in the poll compared with second-placed Vodafone which scored 719.

Virgin has exploited its showing in the survey with a brief advertising campaign in The Sun and the The Sunday Times. Virgin will also send out an e-mail with a video attachment in the hope that word of its achievement will spread.

The attachment is a short film of an over-eager toilet attendant who finds himself forced into a compromising position in the name of customer service.

Vodafone scored 730 out of 1000 in the contract segment ahead of Orange on 724. In both pre-pay and contract O2 and T-Mobile scored less than the industry average with T-Mobile coming bottom of the heap with 680 and 699 in the respective categories.

Its very disappointing said a spokesperson for T-Mobile. Weve set ourselves the objective of topping the survey. We want to be the best and obviously JD Power is an indicator of that.

By next year we want to show improvement against everyone else. It is important because regardless of what we focus on we have to get customer service right. Without good customer service the other stuff wont work. We will move in the right direction for next years poll but it may take a while to clear negative opinions.

T-Mobile pointed to a good showing in an NOP poll in February and said customer service problems have been addressed since the JD Power survey.

Dealers will be able to offer customers the Phoenix Talk Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS) service.

This allows the customer to select an alternative carrier to BT but without dialling extra digits. Different carriers may be selected for local national international and special tariff calls as well as those to mobile phones or pagers.

The Phoenix Talk CPS deal is what our dealers have told us they want to include in their offer to business customers commented Avenir sales and marketing director Tanny Price.

Both they and their customers will benefit from the Phoenix Call support network. Dealers will receive the additional bonus of an excellent commission arrangement.

The network had been criticised by dealers experiencing problems when trying to put connections on using the O2 Gateway.

Paul Leonard managing director of Sprint Communications originally described the system as being a bag of worms.

But O2 seems to have responded positively to his concerns.

There was no training in place on the O2 Gateway but since I spoke out to Mobile News Ive been contacted by my account manager who is arranging for training to take place said Leonard.

Ive been pleased with the way O2 has responded he went on. The network is acknowledging the glitches and is trying to fix them. We both want to get the customer connected so its in all our interests to have the O2 Gateway working properly.

Ian Robinson managing director of Kent-based dealer/distributor MoCo Cell Net agreed that the situation was improving.

My O2 account manager came to see me after the story appeared in Mobile News he said.

Ive been promised a better service. It looks as though O2 is determined to deliver on that. There were quite few glitches but it seems determined to iron them out.

O2 has now set up a separate team to handle the queries from the big retailers who were jamming up the phone lines. Previously we could spend up to 40 minutes trying to get through. Thats now down to about 15 minutes.

An O2 spokesman said: We have been focusing hard on fixing the recent problems with the Gateway system.

With any large IT project teething problems are to be expected as the system beds down. We have put a dedicated service improvement team in place to bring the service back to an acceptable level of stability.

Some of the issues have not been caused directly by problems within O2s systems but we have already seen some improvement from action we have already taken. The system is now used by around 1000 outlets. It has processed around 350000 connections and uptime has exceeded 97 per cent.

Axxent won the Best Commitment to Customer Service Award ahead of competition from Kings International Language School and UK visual health organisation SAVI.

Axxents win follows its award for best B2B dealer at the Mobile News Awards in March.

Orange has abandoned its controversial downward migration policy that enabled it to claw back commission when customers downgraded.

From next month Orange customers will no longer be able to downgrade the initial contract they sign for at least six months thus ring-fencing the commission earned by the dealers.

The migration policy has been a bone of contention among Orange dealers for several years.

Downward migration and clawback have clearly been an issue within this industry for a number of years now said Orange commercial manager Adam Clarke.

We recognise that the intelligence of the customer has changed and downward migration is penalising the independent reseller. On the plus side of course it has meant that upward migration pays the dealer extra.

The announcement was met with a round of applause from the 150 Orange dealers that attended Oranges dealer conference two weeks ago (see report P18).

Jake Atkins of London-based dealership Busby Communications had 258 clawed back recently after a customer went to Orange directly and downgraded from a Talk 400 to an Anytime 60 plan. The customer walked away with a free Panasonic X70 on a 19 monthly contract.

Im glad to hear Orange has finally decided to stop robbing the small independent dealers he said. Its long overdue.

Its about time added Kamil Sayed of Findaphone in Accrington. It means the dealer can be confident hes selling the right tariff for the right margin. Before this it was a bit of a lottery.

There are a lot of smart customers out there. They come and ask what contract they can get a certain phone on and the alarm bells start ringing.

You could cover yourself to an extent by getting them to sign a contract which makes them liable to pay you back if they decide to downgrade and we suffer clawback. But in practice getting the money back is easier said than done.

Its brilliant news and its about time said Lee Edwards of The Phone Inn in Gravesend.

Every dealer has suffered clawback from Orange. Its an absolute nightmare if youre working out your margins at the point of sale and then find a month later that the carpet has been pulled out from under you.

In another move Orange pre-pay customers can now call the UK from abroad without dialling the prefix 044. Pre-pay roaming on Orange now works in 40 countries on 71 different networks bringing it in line with roaming services offered with Orange pay-monthly phones.

Nearly 44 per cent surveyed did not have a camera phone. A further 17 per cent said they dont know how to send an MMS.

The survey also revealed consumer confusion over the cost of sending an MMS. Of the sample 27 per cent thought it was 25p.

MoCo managing director Ian Robinson said he was looking forward to working with the network.

MoCo Distribution is pleased to have T-Mobile on board. T-Mobile has put the most investment in this channel and a lot of dealers have been asking about us to supply their products he said.

Its a network that offers good propositions for us and dealers alike. The contracts are signed and we are raring to go. We will be out there recruiting stockists and getting everything in place.

The others are Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings) Verne Troyer (Austin Powers) and Daryl Hannah (Kill Bill).

They follow Carrie Fisher Roy Scheider Spike Lee and Alan Cumming who have all starred in previous Orange cinema commercials.

Orange filmed four new cinema adverts in New York for the 60-second gold spot that appears before the title credits on the main feature.

We talked to a number of actors who wanted to do it but werent available said Orange brand marketing manager Jeremy Dale. It was a matter of timing because the shoot lasted only four days.

In the first advert Astin who starred as Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings pitches ideas to the Orange film board which rejects them all out of hand as it bids to typecast the actor in a new feature called Lord of the Ringtones.

In another commercial Patrick Swayze volunteers to be an action hero in a revenge story The Silent Hunter only to have the Orange film board twist the proposed script and rename it The Chatty Hunter.

In a comic aside Swayze says: Was mine the funniest? Dont let mine be the dud one.

Patrick Swayze was very keen that his commercial was the best of the four especially as the actors in this series are so widely known. said Dale.

But the joke is on the Orange film board really. Its self-deprecating humour and it adds meaning to the message of the advert: dont let a mobile phone ruin your film.

The adverts show that Orange is a confident brand that can ask its customers to stop using its product when necessary. We ask our customers to use our product in a respectful way and turn it off when the film starts.

The commercials will each run in UK cinemas for three months.

The popularity of the adverts has grown and grown so that people really look forward to the next one said Dale.

We had a tremendous response from our partners in the cinema industry. One film distributor thought the ads were better than the trailers for forthcoming films.

The deal completed at the end of April but not yet made public sees OpenAir fully disclose its subscriber base to Opal Telecom a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse.

The terms of the deal will remain confidential for the moment said OpenAir managing director Tony Lloyd-Weston.

It means OpenAir is working as an agent for Opal. There are a number of areas of common interest including mobile communications. Opal has aspirations in the mobile space and sees the deal as a meeting of minds. It is an opportunity for both parties to expand their reach.

Opals acquisition of OpenAir will involve no changes to personnel.