How Long Does it Take?

How long does it take someone to unlock a phone?

Answer:

Black market: 15 minutes

Cellcom: 1 hour

Orange: 2.5 weeks and counting

Of course, we have the Complaint number for the phone call in which they said they would not unlock the phone until we had paid our bill.

Of course, they would not listen when we explained, AGAIN, that we did not owe them any money.

Of course, they messed up enough to unlock ONE of the iPhones, but not the other.

Of course, of course…they are violating Israeli law by refusing to unlock the phones.

We called on a Thursday, two and a half weeks ago. They said tomorrow, or Sunday at the latest.

That Sunday, they said…no, we meant NEXT Sunday.

On Sunday, they refused unless we paid our bill. Then they reversed themselves and said they would open it…tomorrow.

Today, they said…tomorrow.

So, how long does it take to unlock a phone – at least as long as it takes to get an Orange manager to actually call you back after Orange promises they will…and we have the names of 25 or so people who have promised this and never delivered.

So, tomorrow my phone will be unlocked…or maybe not.

A Message for Gal

It was so interesting to meet you. You are so charming, so helpful. You were helpful when you promised that Orange would not bill us until we had completed our dealings with Cellcom. You lied.

You were so helpful when I told you months later that Orange was taking money and I didn’t know why. You said they shouldn’t have, and you would check it out. You lied then too.

You told my husband that he needed to sign the contract and he gave you his electronic signature. You were so helpful when you put it on another 40+ pages that he didn’t sign. That’s apparently called fraud.

You were so helpful when you stamped my corporate stamp on the places you wanted me to sign. Except the one that you must have missed. But it’s okay, apparently “someone” signed the page with my signature anyway – of course, that’s called forgery.

You were so helpful when you offered to give us new SIM cards to replace the confusion of which phones went with what SIM card. Of course, you then activated both sets and helped Orange to charge us for 66 lines as compared to the 16 we had ordered. That’s called deceit.

Yes, you were so charming and so dishonest. And now we find you’ve done the same thing to others. And we’ve told Orange this…and yet, you still work there. Isn’t that proof that Orange rewards dishonesty?

I wonder if you cheated anyone else today; if you took someone’s account and began someone else’s cellular agony today as you created mine a bit over a year ago.

I wish you could read English. I wish you could understand this blog or that someone would read it to you. I wish, truly wish we never had the misfortune of meeting you or the company you work with.

The good news, I keep telling myself, is that soon the lawyer will deal with this. Soon, I think, very soon, you’ll have to appear in court and explain yourself. That will be interesting. I wonder if you will be charming; I wonder if you’ll smile. More…I wonder if you’ll lie.

Probably.

Adi’s Latest Lies

We spoke to Itzik – someone new – at Orange. He is the manager of the Customer Connections division (whatever that is). He’s a manager. He’s got little time, but he wants to solve this. No, just kidding.

He says that Adi, God knows what her position is, offered to cancel all the unused lines a while back. “What does that mean?” my son asks. “Does it mean you will refund the money you took for those lines?” My son explained to Itzik that we didn’t order these lines. This was Orange’s incompetence at best – outright fraud at worst.

“No, it doesn’t mean that,” Itzik counters, “and anyway, it doesn’t matter. That deal is off the table.”

That deal, that Adi supposedly offered to us, was never on the table. It was never offered to us. Adi lied about that – what a surprise.

Itzik has no solution for us and no, he doesn’t want to resolve this. He understands that there is no where to go but court. “If you want to go to court,” Itzik says, “go ahead.”

Gee, Itzik – what in God’s name makes you think we need your permission?

And so – we look forward to our meeting with the lawyer later this week. Our wonder workers will be there at the meeting to explain to the lawyer all that they have discovered.

Orange was offered, time and time again, to resolve this. They leave us no choice and with that realization comes relief so grand. I wonder how a judge will respond when he hears of all that Orange has done to us; all we have suffered.

At some point, I hope he will turn to the Orange lawyers and say quite simply, “you are idiots.”

One Light in a Dark Orange World

My son called Orange to report yet another problem. Once again, they transferred him around; once again he was promised they would call back. This time, by yesterday.

Today, he called again – usually it takes him about an hour to get to a manager, who then promised they will call back tomorrow. They never do.

He is currently waiting for three managers to call him back, who promised they would call him back “tomorrow”…and my son is still waiting. I think maybe the problem is that tomorrow is always a day away.

My son has a lot more energy for this than I have. I can’t stand talking to them anymore; I can’t stand the aggravation. My husband’s blood pressure is up; I’m exhausted from fighting the windmill known as Orange Customer Service (and isn’t that an absurd contradiction of terms because from what we have experienced, there is nothing at all that connects the words “Orange” and “Customer Service”), but leave it to my son. He was in the army for three years; a commander in the artillery. He learned perseverance, and so he called Orange again today.

We are still trying to get Orange to unlock my iPhone. They are still violating the law by refusing to give us the code we need. Some day, I hope, there will be justice for this too.

This time, the woman, from technical support, answered my son’s call and looked up our account. She was astounded. she was shocked. And then, she refused to transfer him to another department. She could not believe at how many “open” complaints we have. Open complaints are phone calls never returned – tell us about it! She said she used to work in the field and this was unacceptable. What can we do but agree?

She said she was going to investigate and call my son back. He said he didn’t believe she would…but amazingly enough, she did.

She called back to say she was still checking into it, but at least, miracle of miracles, she called back. My son says he understands why she is in tech support and not in sales. She’s clearly too honest and doesn’t know how to lie nearly well enough to work in Orange sales.

Bezek and Customer Service

About a month ago, Cellcom’s infrastructure almost collapsed. Tens of thousands of customers were left without phone service for several hours. A short time after it was restored, Cellcom announced that it would credit each subscriber the previous week’s calls for free. It doesn’t wipe out the frustration (and believe me, after almost a month without our phones because of Orange’s incompetence and corruption, I know what that feels like), but it goes a long way in helping mend the feeling that no one cares.

Last week, Bezek’s infrastructure also collapsed and took many hours to be repaired. Their compensation – one full week in which every Bezek line can call any cellular network line for free for up to 1,000 minutes.

For the last 11 months, Orange has been abusing us, overbilling us, harassing us, threatening us. For all this time, they have refused to answer the simplest of questions – HOW MUCH DO WE OWE YOU? They have billed us ridiculous numbers – over 37,000 shekels on lines we never had. And the answer to how much we owe them has finally come clear – we don’t owe them…they owe us.

Perhaps they knew this all along and thus were delaying? Who knows? But I’ll let you in on two other secrets that you’ll be hearing about in the next few weeks. The first is that we have taken a lawyer who will help us see justice done and bring about the compensation that Orange was too stupid to offer on its own. The second is that we have identified other Orange sufferers and amazingly enough – they have the same story to tell, of inflated SIM card use, inflated bills.

I’m not surprised that Orange is not rushing to compensate us…it would be a truly unique experience were they to actually care about their customers.

A Prank Worthy of Orange

Someone who knows of our cellular agony posted this video to their Facebook page and recommended I watch it. It is brilliant. It is funny. I so would love to do the same here in Israel. Of course, it would likely cause a major security problem as police would break in to confirm it was not a terrorist attack but you can’t help but smile when you watch this.

If you ever dreamed of frustrating a company as they have frustrated you, here’s a point for the little guys!
 

Malice or Incompetence?

Orange is still not giving us the codes we need to unlock the phones. Latest is that they are now telling us it will take yet another week.

We asked them on Thursday – they told us they would give us the codes on Sunday. Nothing – no calls, no SMS – typical Orange.

My son called until he had a headache and couldn’t deal with it any more. This too is damage and harm they cause. We are all physically worn out by having to deal with their incompetence and lies.

Today, Orange called –  a day late. Good news, says the woman. I have the code to unlock your phone.

“My phone?” my son asked.

“Yes, your phone.”

“My PHONES,” my son said, “I have many phones that need to be unlocked, not just one!”

“Oh,” was the intelligent response of the woman who had taken almost 5 days to accomplish what Cellcom had done in one hour. “Oh.”

“That could take up to five days,” she responded.

“Five days from WHEN?” asked my son.

“From today,” she answered.

And so, we are, as usual, waiting for Orange. Their incompetence simply astounds me. Maybe, I’m thinking, maybe it isn’t pure malice that has caused this situation. Maybe, must maybe it is astounding, unparalleled, incomprehensible stupidity and incompetence.

Now there’s a thought.

Mother Russia

A song has been going through my head for the last few days. It is a song I remember from long ago, when I was involved in protests against the injustice of the Soviet Union. I joined thousands demanding that they let the Jews emigrate.

As Anatoly Sharansky was finally freed to come home to Israel and become the Natan Sharansky we all respect, the song, “We are leaving, Mother Russia” was released. It is so silly that such an important subject and song should be the tune that goes through my head as I think of Orange and our cellular agony, but there it is.

We are leaving Mother Russia,
We have waited far too long.
We are leaving Mother Russia,
When they come for us we’ll be gone.

After 11 months of cellular agony and more lies that we can count, today we successfully pulled part of our lines out of Orange.

We didn’t pull out all the lines and we still have a long fight ahead of us, but no one can say we didn’t try to resolve this; no one can say we lied, forged, cheated.

The numbers are coming in of how badly Orange tried to cheat us. They promised to reimburse us for the exit fees from Cellcom. These amounted to about 33,000 NIS. Of this amount, Orange has paid us only a bit over 1,500 NIS.

They promised us a rate of 27 agurot per minute (we have just signed a deal for 25 agurot per minute with another company), but even the 27 agurot was a decent rate. Only, Orange didn’t honor that fee from the  start. No, they charged us over 70 agurot per minute – an absurdly high rate for anyone, let alone someone who supposedly had 66 lines.

All this is to be sorted out in the future and likely in court. For now, I have been liberated. I am free. I can call anyone; anyone can call me. It is my company that has succeeded after weeks of damage to liberate ourselves. The damage continues on some of the lines, but at least mine is free; my parents’ numbers are out.

My mother and father will no longer be alone and unable to call someone when they leave their home. We are awaiting confirmation whether we succeeded in pulling out younger daughter’s phone out. One son is clear – we don’t know about the other lines.

And one last frustration – our Orange phones are still useless to us. In violation of the law, Orange is still refusing the codes to unlock them. On Thursday, we were told we would be called on Sunday. That they did not have the codes and had to get them from the manufacturers.

On Friday, we took 15 phones to Cellcom and got them unlocked within an hour.

Today is Sunday, and as expected, Orange did not call us with the codes. When we called them; they argued and transferred us from department to department.

Agony and lies to the end.

And the tune goes through my head – I am leaving, Orange. I have waited far too long. I am leaving. When you come for me, when you realize what damage you have caused, I’ll be gone!

 

The Tide Turns

The tide has turned on our fight with Orange. Until now, we have been alone. Suffering the agony of dealing with a company that lacks ethics, hires people who are encouraged to lie, rewarded by how many SIM cards they sell or swindle the person into taking.

The tide has turned.

We have gotten enough reports from Orange (not necessarily with their cooperation) to have determined that at the current moment, even using their mistaken and inflated figures and charges, even ignoring the promises they didn’t keep, after all this time, they actually owe us money. And we are talking about thousands of shekels, not a few pennies here or there.

We had a great meeting today with a representative of another company. The timing could not have been better. In the middle of the meeting, we got an SMS from Orange. They are cutting off the 7 lines they opened for us two weeks ago. They only opened them for incoming calls. The idea was to give us two weeks to resolve this issue. Of course, it was assumed they wanted to resolve it too – but to date, they have not given us the reports that we requested – in writing and by telephone.

They have not set up a meeting date, nor have they answered any of our emails or letters. We told them they had 24 hours to turn our lines back on. We go an automatic response saying they would answer within 48 hours.

Our lawyer recommended we wait the full 48 hours so that they would have no excuses. It has been more than 96 hours – days of more suffering.

In the middle of today’s meeting, the SMS came in. I got up from the meeting and rushed to the telephone to call my parents, to warn them that once again, they might be cut off without warning.

I pray this is the last time Orange has such power to send me into a panic; that soon we will never have to deal with this company…except across a court hearing where we will explain to the judge that the power this company has to destroy businesses and endanger lives is unacceptable given how they wield this power so cruelly.

The tide has turned and amazingly enough, for once I am happy to see that Orange is too stupid to listen. I long for the day when this will come before the judge and I can describe the damage they have caused, the harm, the agony.

And amazingly enough – it has all been for nothing. We don’t even owe them any money. They owe US. We paid enough to offset our actual charges. The rest is their own inflated incompetence. If you charge someone for 50 extra lines, you probably shouldn’t be surprised that it will come back to haunt you.

The tide has turned.

The Black, The White and the Gray

You’d think, by now, that there isn’t much more Orange could do to surprise us and yet, you’d be, amazingly enough, wrong.

We have been trying to resolve this situation for months. We have all but begged Orange to meet with us. We wrote and called and explained that without an understanding of how, how in God’s name Orange got us to 66 lines and how they managed to charge us 4 times what we were paying…we could not see how we were being asked to pay to much.

Our last bill, before they shut our lines, had reached to a bit over 32,000 NIS. That’s about over $7,000 for those of you working in dollars. So they closed the lines and we hit the jackpot. We met a team of amazing people who understood that what Orange was doing was wrong. More, they understand how cellular companies work.

So they began to help us. We hired them to figure out the accounting. How much we owed Orange…or, amazingly enough, how much Orange owes us.

If you ask Orange, we owe them 32,000 NIS+. But why would we ask Orange anything? When have they ever been honest with us?

So our wonder workers asked Orange to give us some time to figure it out and asked for a series of reports that they know the phone company keeps. It’s easier to manipulate the numbers and output all that we have been asking for many months. What we thought was so complicated, is actually quite simple. It was just that Orange didn’t want to bother.

It’s a matter of calculating the black, the white and the gray. The black and the white are the numbers that are easy to calculate. How much we owe Orange for phone calls (less the virtual private network credit they promised us but never activated and less the strange SIM charges on the line we never received).

The black and white includes, according to our wonder workers, what any normal, logical mind would conclude. If you haven’t used a phone line in 14 months, chances are something is wrong and likely, when the person to whom you gave the phone line says they never got it…they are likely telling the truth. So, for now, our wonder workers want to calculate the black and the white. The gray is all that Orange lied about – or promised us verbally. To our credit, they have changed the billing in our favor in a number of points so they cannot retroactively claim something else. The gray is the virtual network, the iPhones, and other gifts Gal gave us. And yet, Orange will have to go to court with something that beats our Cellcom bill, or explain why any normal person would move from one company to another after 14 years…only to have their bill multiplied by 4.

So, our wonder workers asked for reports to get this information, to do what Orange has refused to do – to determine what is black, what is white, what is gray. But Orange strikes again…

Orange is not giving us the reports we need to solve this problem. Orange has ignored repeated letters demanding they open our lines, demanding they minimize the tremendous damage they are causing our business. Orange even refuses to give us the reports we need to prove our claims.

In the meantime, we are cautiously meeting with the other cell phone companies. We no longer trust salespeople. We will explain everything, they say. We don’t believe them.

We have a great deal…yes, Gal said that too. You’ll have a personal contact at the company that you can deal with. Oh, Gal promised that to us too. So many lies. It is so hard to trust.

They are amazed by what Orange has done to us. Amazed by the lies, the corruption, the fraud.