Talk:France/@comment-82.173.141.114-20110513185051

Hi. Just spent a few weeks in France. Bought an Orange Mobicarte SIM for phone calls and SMS, and attempted to set up the Internet Max option as well. Buying the SIM was easy, but all the woman in the Orange store would tell me re setting up the Internet Max was to phone a number where I would get assistance in English. Well, I tried this unsuccessfully for a few days - the office hours for this service were Mon-Fri 9am-5pm. The next time I called was a public holiday, so no luck there either. When I did finally get through - after being on-hold for some 15 minutes and chewing up my Mobicarte credit, the guy on the other end of the phone informed me that they ONLY dealt with landlines and home internet! I agree that most of the Orange staff in the stores are pretty clueless. This woman could have easily gone through the #123# menu and set up the Internet Max option for me. Instead, she gave me completely incorrect information and wasted days of my time (and my money) trying to get connected. When I got to Caen, I went to a local Orange store and managed to get the woman there to set it up for me. I was told that it would take 48 hours and NOT to access any data until I received an SMS advising me the data option was active. Nearly three days later, I still hadn't received an SMS. I went back to the store and after much to-ing and fro-ing, and a call to customer service, it was discovered that the data option had in fact been active for some two days! Once activated the data worked no problem, when I had service (not always great)... Then I had a friend with a French credit card do a Mobicarte recharge for me (for SMS and phone calls) - 10.Euro - as the online Orange.Fr Boutique would not accept my Australian Visa, even though I had the "Verified by Visa" security option! Immediately after, the credit showed on my account, but then about an hour later, I received a message from Orange saying I was out of credit. So, 10.Euro gone in an hour and I made no calls and sent no text messages. The only thing I can think is that somehow - even though the Internet Max option was active - the data I accessed came off the Mobicarte credit instead of the Internet Max limit. As an aside to this - yes, topping up is easy in France as you can go to a Tabac or similar, but I've since been in Denmark and now in the Netherlands and it is impossible to top up the Mobicarte anywhere except online (that I'm aware of) - and as it won't accept my c/c, that's kind of difficult. All in all, I think Orange are pretty crap - and all of my French friends agree :)