The Godfather

After my latest problems with Orange (France Telecom's name to help you forget that it's France Telecom) I'm rejoicing and counting the days until our 12 month contract expires. Yes, I jumped at the chance to have fiber optic 100MB speed when they came calling. Everyone complains about the poor service by Orange/FT but I was blinded by that speed. Just imagine the fast connection!

The reality has been a bit different since most websites really aren't tuned to this level so pages don't load any faster. For downloads or sending large files, sure, it's great but looking back at the problems with customer service, I should have stayed with my old fashioned 24MB connection. The first sign of trouble with Orange was that the connection would not last. In the first two months I estimated (conservatively) that the system crashed 150 times. It wasn't just a normal failure, but one that had me walk over to the router and unplug everything. After 30 seconds or so, I then had to plug it back and wait for it to restart. Imagine over 150 hard reboots in 2 months.

The friendly Orange customer service - *when* they bothered to answer the phone - did the usual "I think it's your fault" that I've become accustomed to with customer service in France. No matter what happened, it's your fault. (The customer is not king, but a scum-sucking peasant, at best.) The upside is that they no longer charge 0.35 per minute for support calls.

The next phase was then the billing. Despite signing up for free calls around the world and a few hours of mobile phone calls in Europe for 48e per month (yes, a healthy increase from my 25MB connection at 30e per month) the first bill was almost 500 euro. (In most of Europe, mobiles are only paid when calling, not receiving but calling them from a landline is more expensive.) We dared question the incorrect invoice so they did what any company would do, which is to terminate us as customers. Immediately. After working through the maze of phone lines - whichever number you just called, it was the wrong one - I eventually settled on the 48e per month that we agreed upon and service was restored.

For a few months the monthly bills were all over the place. It was impossible to figure out what we actually owed since there were a few months when no bill even arrived. We sent 2 registered letters to the CEO or Orange and the response was even better. Nothing. Some schmuck sent us a form letter that explained nothing and they did cut costs from one month but still no apology let alone a clear explanation of what the hell we were supposed to pay.

After a few months of this and waiting for clarity again, they cut the service, again. This time is took dozens of calls to every Orange number available, none of which could do anything other than sign you up as a customer. Sure, if you had the secret code that you can only get from a working phone *at home* you could try, but since our phone was cut, no success. Friends lent me office space for a week and a few days ago Joelle finally met someone with a heart at Orange who accepted payment over the phone, so we're back. Now I'm just counting the months until this contract expires. They refuse to let you leave despite their own service failings. For anyone coming to Europe, avoid Orange like the plague and heaven help you if this POS service is available in the US. Meanwhile, it's the godfather of punk.