Orange Telecom

France
https://www.orange.com/en/home

Most Loathsome customer service in the world

Orange Holiday is a scam

This would have been a great Eurozone sim except for one big issue: it will suspend services in 15 days if you don’t register the simcard either by mail or online. The most annoying this was that when we first used it, it gave us a bunch of very unnecessary links nd sms that did not inform us about registering it to keep it working for more than 15 days. The shop where we bought it did not inform us either. I bought an open packet of Orange holiday, the staff took the card out and handed it to me to put it in my phone. I asked if I can easily top it up online (because if not, I would have bought a voucher right there) and he said “Oh, it is easy. You can do it online.” I handed my passport to him because normally, in places like Singapore, Thailand and other countries, they will ask for my information to encode it in their system. The staff said, he doesn’t need it so I only paid 50 euros and got going. I just learned online today that shop staff where you purchased it could have helped you register it to avoid this issue. That staff was not helpful at all.

So I was in a hotel with no wifi because my husband booked it and missed the wifi information. I went to a restaurant to get wifi to register my Orange sim online. It went through successfully and said we will receive a confirmation SMS soon. It has been 8 days now and I still don’t have the sMS and can’t still use my simcard. I sent them a separate email to call me and help me to get it to work. It said agents will try to reach me within 24 hours about my case and it’s been 20 hours now, no one has called me yet. I kept sending email through their website, still nothing from them. Totally ignored me. I did get 1 reply that it takes 10 days to activate the sim. For 30 day traveller, 10 days is a lot to wait. To simply activate after you sent them all your information takes that freakin' long??? Please do not support this network provider is they are this unsystematic, rude and ambiguous. Like a con artist. Even the network providers in Vietnam does stellar support compared to trash service of Orange.

Note that UK and France doesn’t have that huge time difference for them to have huge delay on calling their subscribers. I wonder why.

The packet of Orange Holiday looks like this.

There is no information about importance of activating it within 15 days (before it gets suspended) if you plan to use it more than two weeks. Front and back of the packet did not say anything about it. The card that actually says something like ‘mail this if you want to keep using your card for more than 15 days’ is inside the packet. People normally don’t open manuals and such. I know I should have but it was not very considerate of Orange to NOT remind us at all many times in other ways about registration. We were in other country trying to find our way to places and suddenly our internet stopped working for mapping. The worst part is that, it was all going ok and in the 14th day of usage, we even went online to top up 15 euros so we can keep using it. It went through! The next day, we lost our coverage. We could not make calls or be called. This could have been avoided if Orange were kind and designed better to remind us in the following manner:

1. Put a “activate online within 15 days if you want more than 15 days of coverage” sticker outside the packet.
2. Instead of sending us bunch of unnecessary SMS like links that we can’t open anyway, send us a reminder that “if you plan to use Orange Holiday for more than 15 days, register your sim immediately”
3. Why let us top-up if you will suspend the card the next day? Before letting us top-up, put a reminder that “For Orange Holiday that will be used for more than 15 days, please register your information at Orange.com before putting more credits.”

I felt betrayed because I knew that I can use it for 14 days until the credits expire. I topped it up to be able to use it longer. I spent 15 euros and wasted it because it got suspended the next day. Moreover, before suspending my account, it said “register your orange holiday if you plan to use it for more than one month”. WTF. They suspended mine in 15 days. They were giving out wrong instructions. I hate them.

Please consider this improvement. Orange Holiday will then be the best EU network provider for tourists. It is hard to recommend it because of what happened to me. It almost spoilt my trip.