This is a horror story. The real kind of horror. The kind where you imagine you're going to be without Internet at home for three months. Except you don't have to imagine it, because Orange has made it come true.
This is a story that is not happening to me in first person, but in second person, and I tell it to you in the blog with the sole purpose of exercising my right to complain because, in view of what I have seen, it is the only thing I have left. Unless someone has a better idea -no torches will do- or someone who works in a certain telecommunications company reads it and decides to do something out of embarrassment. Or because, as I believe, nobody deserves to have this happen to them.
This story begins on December 29, 2017 with a call to Orange technical support. In the middle of the Christmas holidays, on a Friday before a long weekend. Bad timing. What we didn't know yet was that that was simply going to be the first of dozens of conversations with 1470. "Look, the Internet is not working, the router light that should be on doesn't come on".
I know we are in the XXI century but there are still places in our country that only have Internet access through a Telefonica line -sorry, Movistar- that promises to connect you to the world at a speed of 3MB. Even if you only get 1MB at home, which, by God, is not next to the switchboard. Downstream, of course. Trying to synchronize a text file in Dropbox with the upload speed they offer makes the connection completely blocked. These lines are also offered by Vodafone and Orange as indirect coverage.
These places are not isolated caves as some might think. They are in rural environments, next to a road, with all the services one can imagine and, unfortunately, sometimes in places where the orography makes the connection via 3G/4G is not good (so no, a pin to pull mobile data does not work as a solution, cross it out next to the torches).
After making basic checks over the phone with Orange customer service to make sure that everything was plugged in correctly and, seeing that it was not solved, they decided to send a technician. The first of several. I'm not going to detail every call and every visit over the next few weeks because I've lost count but as you can imagine, none of them found the problem. The router was changed. The router was repeatedly configured. Different devices were tried. "This has to be a line problem". It seemed that the conclusion was clear.
The line belongs to Movistar but you have a contract with Orange, so they are the ones in charge of opening an incident with the first ones and that they worry about fixing it. As you do not have anything with the blue company, the only thing you can do is wait for the technician to come and check it.
What if he doesn't come? Well, he will come, you think. And the Orange technician who had made an appointment with him thinks so too. And the customer service guy who answers you for the fifth time that the incident is open and they are aware that they have to fix it, too. And if they don't? You keep calling Orange or they call you directly. Estamous trabajandou en ellou.
As an aside to increase the degree of indignation, I would like to remind you that the bills continue to arrive month after month without fail. More than 50 euros for a telephone line (which works although with some interference) and an ADSL that does not work. "When the incident is closed and fixed, we will refund you the part corresponding to the amount paid during this time". Nobody knows how much is the corresponding part. Nor what will happen if this incident goes on for months and months. "Don't worry, we will refund you", says the same company that told us that everything would be fixed by the first week of January.
We tried face to face in a physical store, so that we could make a face of pity or indignation, to see if someone would make that tremendous effort to solve the problem for a customer. "It is better to make an internal complaint, they are obliged to provide a solution in 3 days. Fantastic, thanks for the information.
3 days later you receive an SMS stating that the incident has been successfully closed.
Successful.
The fact of closing the incident had been a success, yes, but we were still without Internet, nobody had called to ask and everything seemed to be a joke. We call again and they open a new incident. After a while we went back to an Orange store to make an official complaint to Consumo. We are talking about the end of February. We had trusted in their good faith and their interest in giving us a solution knowing that the bad guy in the story was Movistar who did not want to fix the line. But we had already put up with too much.
I had never been to a consumer office before and did not know the process well. It turns out that you put in the claim and then you have to wait a month to deliver it back to that office, in that time the company must get back to you in writing with a solution.
The letter arrived fifteen days later."... the information provided by you regarding the incidents was passed on to the department in charge of carrying out the necessary steps... we have taken note again and you will be contacted shortly to inform you of the solution..."
What do you say, well, we will be informed of the solution shortly.
Just when the 30-day deadline was about to expire, that same afternoon, after being a whole month without giving us any solution or concern, what a coincidence, someone must have seen the post-it with the notice of the deadline and decided to call to give a solution. "Movistar keeps saying that it is not their problem and we say that it is a problem of the line, so the only solution is that we do an administrative cancellation and a discharge to makesurethat Movistar gives the Internet that it should give".
Let's think about it for a moment.
If I unsubscribe, what will happen with this open incidence, with the claim, with the money owed to us? If I unsubscribe, who can assure me that the cable that supposedly does not work will really work? Isn't this very strange and hasty, and also just when the deadline for the Consumer Affairs claim is over?
For the time being, we are going to hand in the sheet to see if this way we can put more pressure on them to give us the solution they promised us and have never given us.
Then we call again to inform us. They tell us that it is either that or put another claim of failure that Movistar will surely knock down again. If we want the conditions in writing we should go to a store, they can't do it over the phone. In the store they tell us that what they have told us could be the solution but that as it is a new subscription it would entail a 12 months permanence. How? We call again by phone to be assured that there would be no permanence as they told us at the beginning. Yes, yes, there is a permanence and also when you cancel and register, you lose your phone number and they give you a new one.
BUT LET'S SEE, WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME?
But how can we want to lose the phone number that has been the number of that house all our lives, that you have given it in a thousand places, that is working, to fix the tortoise ADSL we have. See why we had already thought about the torches?
The Consumer Office has not been of much help either, since the only thing they tell you is that they will contact Orange and give you an answer within a period of time... that does not exist. It's either tomorrow or six months from now.
In the meantime, here we are, almost 100 days later without Internet.
It seems that Movistar is finally putting fiber in that rural area and in the next few months the situation will change. Everything will be magical and fast. And, probably because of that, it won't pay to send anyone to check old and obsolete cabling. And if I were a Movistar customer I would be camped out there until they do. But since I'm not, it should be Orange who should do it, that's what they are being paid for. That we are just as much customers as the metropolitan with 300 megas and TV.
That the only solution they give us three months later is to wipe the slate clean is outrageous. That no one has been able to enforce the agreements and contracts that I suppose they have between the big telecoms for this type of indirect offers is outrageous. That everyone tells you something different over the phone and you can no longer trust anyone is outrageous. That in the end we are going to have to go chasing miles of cable through the air to see if there might be something broken or disconnected somewhere is outrageous. And the abuse of elderly people who do not use the Internet for work but for many other things, the abuse of people who live in rural areas with a precarious network and that they tell you "they are doing all this so that you switch to Movistar, if you do so you will see how quickly they will fix it" is more than outrageous.
Please give us back our ADSL and our money, and wake us up from this horror story.
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