Orange (France Telecom S.A.) Spain is one of the biggest disappointments in my life.
After living in Spain and having been customer for Vodafone, I decided to change my mobile phone operator as Orange's sales rep walked in to my establishment and promised savings and new phones if we contracted their service. This was in summer 2009.
I did not want to change from Vodafone to Orange because we had a contract with some months to go - we'd be penalized by eur 100 if we changed operator before the contract time is up.
Orange's salesrep spoke so eloquently about the savings with their new call plan and PROMISED they would refund us the eur 100 penalization fee from Vodafone. OK, I thought it doesn't hurt to change the operator if they pay me back the fee and also I'd get couple of new phones on top of that.
All went fine but we started to notice the new call plans were actually as expensive as with previous operator. Also the eur100 fee was nowhere to be seen. We called the salesrep and demanded that they refund the fee as promised - this was the start of a struggle that is still ongoing after more than 1 year.
We have Faxed, Called, Emailed, visited Orange's phone shops, sent written SnailMail letters but still we have not received the refund as promised by their sales rep. We have mailed copies of the emails exchanged between us and the sales rep to Orange corporate HQ in Spain and after months we have no result.
We have been told to get in contact with a Governmental Authority for Consumers and lodge in a complaint there. Supposedly in a couple years we could finally receive out money since we have written proof in form of emails.
Orange's customer care by phone is abysmally useless, it's impossible to get a hold on anyone with authority and and I guess this is not a surprise for a company that oursources everything, from shops to even their billing (yeah, It's been said their invoicing is done in INDIA).
I would just like to warn anyone living in Spain to be careful with Orange Mobile and NEVER close any kind of contract with their sales reps (or sales guys of ANY mobile phone company!) - they even lie to you in order to get that phone deal closed.