Our Victory Over Orange

Based upon anecdotal evidence, it seems that cell phone customers here in France must engage in running battles with their providers.  Certainly that has been the case with us.  Shortly after we came, we managed to obtain three phones and a relatively inexpensive subscription from Orange, the mobile service trade name of France Telecom.  Unfortunately, about two weeks later, we received a letter and text messages telling us that our service was being discontinued because we had failed to provide certain documentation.  This came as a bit of a surprise, since we had gone to the Orange office just up Avenue du Général Leclerc, and the sales staff there had processed our paperwork.  So we made another trip to the Orange office to discuss the matter.  They checked with their back office, who told them that they needed a copy of my California driver's license for identification (why they needed this since they had my debit card info is a bit of a mystery).  So the staff made a copy of my license and faxed it in.  To no avail ... a week later, still no service, so we made another trip to the Orange office, sat through (stood through, actually) another call between staff there and their back office, and made another copy of my license to fax yet another time.  Again to no avail ... a week later still, no service.  So back a third time to the Orange office, this time with ... hmmm, how should I put this ... a more energetic and focused Suzie, who forcefully told the staff that she must speak with the manager to take care of this problem, which produced, miraculously, the manager, who spoke again with the back office and was told that, indeed, identification was needed, but it must be in the form of a passport, which I did not then have, necessitating a trip back home, then a return to the Orange office, and another fax.  Since we'd gone almost four weeks without service, we asked the manager to make sure that we didn't have to pay for our service during that time, and were told that we'd have to send a letter to such-and-such an address.  After our service was finally restored (a few days later) we decided that it wasn't worth the 30 euros to get into another conversation with the good folks at Orange.

Also at the time, we were told that it was very important to give at least 2 months notice of our desire to terminate our subscription, and to send the letter by registered mail.  Which we did (ahem, Suzie, actually) in late October, requesting that our subscription be terminated effective December 31.  So, of course, we received a letter (and a text message) 10 days later informing us that our subscription would be cancelled effective November 21.  So yesterday we made yet another trip up Avenue du Général Leclerc to the Orange office, armed with a copy of our letter.  By this time we knew the drill -- wait, wait, wait, then speak with a salesperson whose job is selling phones, not customer service aprés-vente.  We were lucky to get a very kind salesperson, who dialed the back office, got us to the right person (the phone tree is very much alive here in France), but unfortunately then handed the phone back to Suzie, who was stuck speaking with a person trying to be helpful but whom Suzie could not understand.  Here we were lucky again; there were in the store two ladies, an older American and a younger French woman who worked with the older woman in a company as an English translator, with whom we had commiserated earlier about the wonders of Orange service.  The French woman was still in the store, and Suzie convinced her to help us by speaking to the woman on the phone.  End result -- it seems that Orange immediately cancels subscriptions upon a receipt of a request for cancellation, even if the requested date is sometime later, but in our case they had only canceled one line immediately (mine), so we were able to cancel the cancellation of the other two lines, and convert my line to a "mobicarte" (a prepaid plan), which will get me by through December.  And it took less than two hours!

The whole experience seemed much less interesting this time than before.  I'm sure the next trip to Orange (and something tells me there will be one) will be even less interesting still.