My experiences with Orange!

Meant to post this earlier, but just slipped my mind.

On 16th of April, a person from Orange called up asking me to convert to billing.
Since, my bro is getting a cellphone, I decided to shift my number. So I asked him to get me a number which contains the AJAY, which is 2529, when you dial the name on the number pad. (Melody sparked off this idea. Thanks 🙂 )

Didn’t really expect his call, so I was kinda stunned with he called back on Monday the 19th telling me he got a great number for me, but the catch: Take it on that day itself.
I pushed the meeting on to the next day and so paid them the 500/- and got the receipt. Proposed date of activation: Saturday 24th.

Changed my sim on Sunday and found out that the number is not activated. So I call the Orange helpline and waited for 15 min before I got someone on the line, only to be informed that an activation request hasn’t been received :-S

So I decided to drop in at the Orange showroom at Vile Parle. Since I had gone through an Orange dealer, I was conveniently informed that I have to contact him and Orange can’t do anything about it!

Lost my cool and screamed at the poor girl at the counter. My argument is valid, because Orange has “authorized” dealers, who they have no control over. So a dealer can easily con a lot of customers to taking connections by making false claims.

Anyway, I was able to get in touch with one person of the dealer and he told me, they were able to submit the form and it would be activated by Wednesday, the 28th.

Since my 28th was spent at the Grand Hyatt, I was unable to follow up the case.

Till the 29th, no activation. So I called the accounts in charge of the dealer (Dealer is Alpha Telecom), who gave me the number of the director of the company.

So, I called him up and spoke to him at length about this. He put me through to another member of his team and finally after a lot many reminder calls, and with everyone in his office knowing who Ajay D’Souza is, my number got activated on Monday morning (Orange lists it as Sunday the 2nd!), which is after a period of two weeks and having spent a lot of money on phone calls (used my cell as my landline is locked:(()

Sent over 50 smses to lots of people on my list about the change in number.
I have 200 sms free per billing cycle for 5 cycles as per the plan I’m on. I just hope they don’t mess up again with this!

I have also signed up for My Orange service on their website, through which I can recieve SMS via email and lots of other cool features.

This has been my first rather bad experience with Orange in the last 2.5 years of my being them. I hope it is the only!