I would really have preferred not to create this blog. Today, for instance, I'd hoped to knock off to Heathrow to see off a good friend, who's just completed his D.Phil. viva. We'd been students together, and I'd rather wanted to send him off with a few dosings of champers in beautiful Terminal 5 (that sad ode to the efficiency of our nation's corporations christened in the pages of Hansard as a 'National Embarrasment'. This is not prefiguring.) But today was meant not for seeing off my newly doctored Josh, nor chasing down interviews for a piece I'd been meant to file today. Today was destined for the pursuit which replaces the Ashes as a communal folkway in our island nation. Today was for having my day wasted by Orange.
I'm an Irish journalist and academic; I'm bugging on with a doctorate at Oxford, and as a correspondent, cover the Middle East and South Asia. I'd recently thought to change my mobile package, which for a princely 400 voice minutes a month, was charging me on average monthly £160. This is, on average, about 1600 words, which with a good bit of coffee takes three hours to mash out. Several months ago, it ran to £450. I must have met a girl; this takes more words and coffee.
I rang Orange on the 12th of this month, to ask for a Port Authorisation Code to enable me to switch to a svelte, penny-saving programme at Vodafone. I'd been with Orange for nine years, joining up as a fresh-faced student in their shop in Oxford's Cornmarket Street, and had some trouble a bit back, when they were utterly flummoxed in repairing a wonky mobile of theirs after I'd had it serviced in both London and Northern Ireland; in fairness, against such complexity, how could they cope. But after a few months of writing off to them, and in general not being answered either by their store in Islington or their customer service staff, their front office very decently replaced my mobile. I was a happy customer. I stayed Orange; I glowed Orange. Even if in Northern Ireland it did carry certain connotations.
The chap I was put through to, in Orange's Customer Loyalty department before they would agree to release my number and me, sounded decent enough; he asked if I would stay with Orange, if they offered me a comparable bargain to Vodafone, and I of course said I'd be happy to. This was working out rather nicely, I thought. He went away and came back, and offered me the same programme, for a fiver more a month. Fair try to him, really. It was only later on that I realised, taking into consideration his company, he probably thought he'd matched it.
The PAC never arrived. I twaddled to London from Oxford a few times to look for it. In the end, I found a plan on Orange's website which was roughly the same as Vodafone's. Fair play, I'm happy always to be a loyal customer. (And Orange, loyalism, it's all of a piece, really - see uncomfortable associations above.) I'd thought I might for my team spirit get something along the lines of the rubber ducky you get from Virgin Airways. That alone kept me going to America for a few years, and scribbling my dissertation in the bath. Happy times for my fledgling academic career (and personal hygiene).
I was sure now I'd be overcome by affection and gratitude from Orange UK, perhaps even an invitation to a small drinks some evening with Tom Alexander, to show loyalty to their particularly loyal customers, and have canapés. So, bygones be bygones, not a bother if they didn't send me the PAC code I'd asked for, all was well now. A small niggling problem crept in when I received back an email which confirmed my order, not to the address I'd entered, or one near it, but an address that looked like it might once have been my address, before a gigantic Orange landed on some keyboard in Orange Country, U.S.A.
I was sure this was rectified easily enough by my new, old friends. I plopped out an email to the address given on my order form for difficulties. Odd, it seemed to bounce. But I'm sure this is something my longstanding friends, Orange, could easily sort for me - I'm a longstanding, and renewing customer. I plonked out an email to Customer Service. And receiving no reply, thought I'd helpfully resubmit it - emails do get lost. And again, just for the benefit of the doubt; I'm sure it wasn't their fault. I started to get a mite worried when I received a text telling me my new mobile would be dropped off the next day, somewhere that if it existed would be the other side of the Great Erotic Gherkin. (Like the Maypole - very neo-Iron age. I approve.)
I submitted this email a few more times, pointing out my correct address; and even helpfully submitted a copy to the Orange front office, and the deliverers. The deliverers first told me (yesterday) to write back today, then today, they told me nothing.
At the moment, devouring an Orange, listening to Orange anthems, I realise my friend is departing Heathrow without my having had the chance to bid him my warm congratulations, and gentle roads. I've knocked off an entire day in hopeful anticipation of my mobile, despite every odd, somehow making its way to me, by a proper human reading one of my helpful notes pointing out my correct address. I didn't really need to make my way to the V&A to file my article on the Jameel Prize; work, friends, they all take a happy back-seat to the torpor, sloth and idleness of a company populated with staff of above average illiteracy and disregard for their customers.
I read that Orange's new advertising slogan, no doubt keyed in from the same crafty hands that processed my order, is 'I am.' It's catchy, memorable, and absolutely void of any discernible meaning whatsoever. I'm afraid I'm not. Not today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
