Orange Hell: Part II

Continued from yesterday…..

I updated the chap from Orange Business Services who was giving me a helping hand and he promised to try and verify the scheduled reconnection. At this point I’d probably spent somewhere between six to eight hours of my life that I’d never get back chatting to or trying to chat to someone at Orange. Little did I know at this point that I’d be spending many, many more hours!

Tuesday dawned and the big question was whether or not at 15:00 hours as promised my WiFi service would miraculously resume. Now, I’m not a girl who bets, I’m an accountant remember. I know the House always wins!

The lovely chap from Orange Business Services had promised me his undivided attention to resolve the issue. But, more worryingly, when I touched base with him he told me that my service had never been “disconnected” and was in fact okay, or would be were it not for a technical problem!

Just to be on the safeside, I rebooted at 15:15 only to find, still no service. Surprising, no one, no where.

Wednesday I was back on the phone to the helpful chap at Orange Business Services who sounded more frazzled than I did about the problem. He had however got to the bottom of my issue. Our Fibre connection had been cut and as we spoke Orange engineers were trying to get to resolve the problem. He would call me as soon as normal service was resumed. Meanwhile engineers were checking the lines to our area, Domaine and building.

Thursday I read that the government had severely rapped Orange’s knuckles. Customers had been unable to connect to the emergency services and, as a consequence, people had died. The issue had been identified as “lack of maintenance.” This rather put into context my own issues. Neither I nor my beloved were likely to die though I couldn’t promise there wouldn’t be a bloodbath at Orange if I weren’t shortly reconnected.

Finally on the Friday evening, the helpful man at Orange Business Services, who I sensed had been avoiding me all day and was bitterly regretting his offer of assistance, confirmed there was nothing technically wrong with our line. It had been switched off in the belief that we were transferring to another operator. If that were the case why had no one been demanding return of our Livebox and associated equipment?

My beloved who as the named account holder has access to our Orange contract on line rechecked it and confirmed that everything was as per contract. However, when we ran the diagnostic tool on our fixed line we were advised it had been cancelled by a mysterious third-party.

I decided to have another run at the Orange shop in Cap 3000, and booked an appointment for Tuesday afternoon – it couldn’t hurt, could it?

Saturday morning I was back on the phone to Orange’s helpline. I made my beloved sit and listen to the conversation so he’d appreciate that this was a Herculaien effort.

Purely by chance I spoke to the woman I’d spoken to the previous Saturday so was able to ask her why hadn’t I been reconnected on Tuesday as she had promised? She managed to wriggle out of it by saying there had been something she couldn’t verify, then put me on hold. Ten minutes later I was mysteriously connected to another person and went through the whole process once more only to be disconnected, again.

I was now beginning to think that all over the country Orange’s Pro call centres had my number warning their operatives not to talk to me! Finally, I spoke to someone who confirmed my reconnection was programmed for 09:00 on Monday morning. She apologised for our issues but basically said that Orange had been in meltdown. At last, someone who was quite possibly telling the truth.

Monday dawned and at the appointed hour………still no internet. I rang Orange once more. Clearly I was in some sort of Groundhog Day scenario but every 48 rather than 24 hours.

Again, I was batted back and forth until I chanced upon a sympathetic soul who guaranteed me connection within 48 hours as my dossier had been elevated to Level 3. I’m not sure what you have to do to get to Levels 1 and 2. Furthermore, her boss was going to ring me between 15 – 16:00 to check that I had indeed been reconnected.

Meanwhile I kept my appointment with Orange at Cap 3000 who said they could neither confirm nor deny that I was going to be miraculously reconnected the following day as they didn’t have access to that bit of the system. However, they did offer me a mobile internet Airbox, which I subsequently gratefully accepted.

Well, the big question is was it fourth time lucky?

To be continued………..