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Ramblings of a retiree in France
I’ve had a number of run-ins with Orange, the worst of which was almost two years ago when we were without a fully-functioning WiFi service for over a month!
Settle back, this is going to take a while! In fact, it’s such a long and shaggy tale, I’ve split it into three parts.
I have long believed that you can separate the great [companies] from the good when something goes wrong. Great companies respond quickly, apologise, put things right and, if necessary, compensate you all before you’ve had time to work up a head of steam or even complain.
In my experience, in the former category, are Apple, BA, EasyJet and Four Seasons, while Virgin Atlantic, Air Canada, the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich (owned by Lufthansa) and Orange sadly fall into the latter one. I have told thousands of people about my less than satisfactory experiences. I like to give credit where it’s due, and where it isn’t……..boy do I tell everyone about it.
It was all going so well, probably too well, since we’d splashed out to extend the WiFi Fibre service to all over the flat and terrace. It had been great, particularly during lockdown, which is why the abrupt break in service was all so shocking. It’s the first time we’ve experienced a major outage.
My beloved was on a Zoom call to Tennesse which was rudely terminated at around 16:30. Leaving me (as usual) to deal with the problem while he went for a swim.
I had no joy with Orange Pro’s 24/7 support service. That’s the one that guarantees we’ll be up and running again in 8 hours. Clearly a pinky porky on a par with “the cheque’s in the post.” Unable to do what I’d planned, I cleaned my bathroom floor. That’s right my default mode is cleaning, largely because I’d recently started my late-Spring clean which I postpone until we’re over the worst of the tree pollen, the so-called Yellow Peril.
Every so often I’d reboot the WiFi but to no avail. Maybe it was a major outage?
Pretty much everything in our household is powered by the internet including my beloved husband. We ate dinner and listened to music my beloved had already downloaded from iTunes before retiring, more in the hope than expectation that when we awoke normal service would’ve resumed. It hadn’t.
As my beloved had worked the French Bank holiday that Monday, we were proposing a trip out on Wednesday but this was tempered by our need to get a prompt resumption of services.
Prior to leaving the flat I spoke to the Orange Pro help line again and, having gone round the houses a couple of times, they promised to call me back. We decided we’d still go out and headed into the Var to the medieval town of Les Arcs sur Argens.
Needless to say, no one rang while we were out, so we hurried back to try and resolve the issue. After spending several hours on the phone, speaking to various departments at Orange, I determined that our internet contract had been cancelled by persons unknown. Our contract basically bundles all the services into one monthly invoice. I’d already had two people from Orange confirm they couldn’t improve on the pricing of my contract so I was happy to continue it.
Bizarrely (and fortunately) only our office telephone line and Fibre WiFi were cut off, not our mobile phones. Of course nobody could advise me why this had happened but I was assured “normal service” would resume within 48 hours – yikes, so much for that guaranteed 8 hour turnaround?
Of course, no such thing happened and additional effort on my part was required. I had been visited by someone from Orange Business Services back in February who after running through our contract confirmed he couldn’t better the deal. He had (rashly) given me his card and said to call if I needed any assistance. I called him.
He was my first line of defence, he promised to do what he could but Friday evening he was still waiting to hear back from Orange HQ.
Saturday morning I decided to pay a visit to what I thought might be a second line of defence, the Orange shop in Cap 3000. Here I was roundly rebuffed. A consultation with a Pro advisor now has to be scheduled and the next available slot wasn’t for a week!<
I bade a hasty retreat and once again contacted Orange Pro by phone. I fortunately finally fell upon someone who seemed to know what she was doing and promised me reconnection within 72 hours ie 15:00 on Tuesday, almost a week since we were cut off. I should add that this wasn’t before I had been batted back and forth between their technical and customer services like a ping pong ball.
To be continued……
View from the Back 
If a master organizer like you had this much trouble, what chance do mere mortals have? Hope you were finally successful. Bet your Beloved was minimal assistance besides cataloging what went wrong. 😉
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Spot on!
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😎
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Thank you, Sheree, for this tale of caution and endurance!
I do hope for a happy ending!
Joanna
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All will be revealed! Thanks Joanna
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We have Orange wifi in rural France, thankfully the landowner is tho one to deal with them, but I can say the wifi is crap. The story is that we are at the end of a long line, which makes sense since we live in the middle of a cow pasture. Yet as folks who lived in Seattle, heart of high tech country just over a year a go, we are quite frustrated. So I get your frustration.
Not sure why, but when reading this in JetPak on my ipad all of your paragraph formatting was gone, thought you should know.
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Thanks for letting me know. I’ll check out the formatting. I live in a town of 50,000 near to Nice and have a business not personal contract (we work from home).
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I have noticed that when a blog is viewed in the wordpress reader it is often different than if you go to the site it is normal. I just checked your site on Safari and it looks perfect, oh the joys of technology.
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It’s bizarre isn’t it!
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How odd! The formatting is in place on my iPad, iPhone and Mac.
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Oh my! I don’t know anything about the company, but I do know that so much of our life and work involves these services! It seems too often, service reps only know very limited things and don’t or can’t see the big picture.
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Absolutely Dorothy
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So much for 24/7 technical support. I have no time for ‘it should be working.’ It either is or it isn’t! Oh, Sheree–I cannot imagine your frustration!
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It was dreadful
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I have read your tales and so sorry it happened. However, have Orange since 2003 and even thus there have been some issues on the technical side they have always responded quickly many times lending me an airbox while the line is repair never lost service. Now its been over a year smooth sailings. Hope your experiences improve with them. Cheers
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Thanks! It does have s happyish ending
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Good for you
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Yikes, what a nightmare. Has it resolved yet? Maggie
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This is a tale from 2021 and it was resolved but only after 34 agonising days
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Hate to say it, but that sounds like every big corporation nowadays. 😦 Part of the reason I hate how large Amazon and a few others have been allowed to grow.
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Sadly you’re partly correct
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Infuriating – and reminiscent of our experience with BT
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I hope things have improved…I actually thought you were talking about the fruit, lol
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Service was finally restored after 34 days!
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34 days! My goodness! A big FINALLY!
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Exactly
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