We are seeing red.
Yea, it’s us too, the ex-pat community who are tired of the expensive rates, slow service and extremely poor customer service.
We don’t even just get the texts to say pay the bill, we get a personal phone call from a human to remind us since you all know our phone Arabic isn’t that great (then you discover that ‘Oh, sorry! Yes, you did pay the bill last week!).
But when we have a problem, not an English speaker to be found.
My husband says “Well, they are better than Wanadoo”. He is resigned to substandard, under-par internet speed.
I say: “Do you really want the level of comparison to be with Wanadoo?”
Yeesh.
Let’s shoot for excellence, yella.
Sincerely,
Kinzi Jones
(Do you have an Orange story? Tell it now, maybe enough stories will bend the ear of the management)
Don’t you love it when you push the number for English on the phone and then when you get a live person they can’t speak English anyway??? The phone operators for Information are like that as well. The guy at Burger King delivery has better English skills. Maybe they aren’t paying as well as the fast food industry. Ha ha ha.
Oh, Um Omar, I am SO serious. I don’t even bother Pressing One For English. LOL at the BK delivery guy.
LOL that’s great. Everyone hates their phone company.
I like the ones who insist on speaking English even when I speak Arabic with them and my Arabic is better.
I once called them and pressed 1, The guy who answered spoke English, When i told him sorry i pressed one by mistake, He was happy, I could sense it.
About the red light, My router is shining with red as well, When i called them they told about a other way and it’s working and it’s faster to be honest!, But still THEY SUCK!
Kinzi, I added your blog to the facebook group
We paid a bucket of money for 512kb-speed internet. We routinely ran download tests that had us around 28 kbps. Repeated calls and visits to the Orange offices yielded no results whatsoever. Moses believed it was because he was a black African.
Was consistently disappointed, and never positively surprised.
check out this isp:
http://www.jcs.jo/
unlimited download
Last year many, many land lines went dead. It took awhile to figure out that I was not alone. In that time, I became furious and Orange employees became furious with me and recognized me or my phone number. They didn’t explain there was a problem in English or Arabic. They gave me other Orange numbers to call and finally just hung up on me when I called them back.
In the US when the electric, gas, or any other company is having technical problems, they ADD a simple statement to the beginning of their long, automated phone menu, e.g. “Please excuse us while we fix all the phone lines in Amman. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Your patience is appreciated.” Instead, what did Orange, do? They ELIMINATED an entire part of their regular menu, regarding technical problems! Simple, effective solutions are available … assuming their phone software allows one to ADD an emergency message.
Okay two thoughts. First, my favorite is calling Orange and having their automated menu say, “We’re experiencing longer than normal call delays, please call back later.” Then hanging up on you. That’s my favorite.
Thought two: in the US whn you have a government granted monopoly, you also have a watchdog Public Service Commission. I assure you they scare the bleeeeeeeep out of monopolies. In Jordan, we have a monopoly, only it was sold to a French company so now we pretend it’s free market even though every other provider must pay Orange for bandwidth. Some competition…
lol,why is it that every letter (almost ) starting with “Dear this-or-that” found to really mean “Dear /God I really hate- this-or/that” lol
I pay most of our bills online ,Orange fixed are the only ones who call me the next day asking me to pay the bill ! I pay in the same exact day though :/
I’m subscribed with Zain Internet ,its just great .
Thanks everyone!!!
Amjad, I will check out that link
the link amjad provided is a great link, JCS, but sadly they only cover certain areas in amman, like gardens st, um uthaiynah and rabyeh. anywhere else no. they keep saying they will expand since 2 years now, but it is only words, everytime I call them they say it will be 1 year before they will reach my area, this is their standard message, when I ask why or if I can talk to a superiur, they always say nobody else is here near by I am the only guy… they always say that, it’s the standard message as well.
anyway, there is still another option but it’s not suitable for me, it’s http://www.kulacom.jo , they have an independant line to italy totaly separate from orange, and offer some unlimited options as well, depending on the plan. but they only offer internet through wireless (3G), the same technology used by wi-tribe and zain wireless services, and they seem to have a decent offer if you make a 1 year commitment, but for me I am not willing to make 1 year commitment, as it’s a new company and I thought I would stay with orage for now, and maybe just wait for JCS to cover my area. but if you are adventures you can try calling them and asking for offers.
the last time I called http://www.kulacom.jo , they said they have a special offer, only 300JDs per yer, but you have to add tax. you get unlimited 2Mb. the catch is you have to make a yearly commitment, so if you cancel there will be some cancelation charges or something. anyway you can all them your self, but first you need to know if their wireless range covers your area or not, this is something else you need to know, for me I don’t like the wirless services, I prefer ADSL or Cable (JCS) , as they seem a bit unreliable sometimes, from what I heard and my own experience.
about orange, I had to change today from the old plan to the new one. my old plan was costing 39JDs ( inc tax ) per month for 1MB line. with a 13GB limit. I stated I wanted to extend my download cap, they said the only way is to move to the new plan. so I asked what are my options? how can I get the max download cap? they said you have many options, there is 20GB or 30GB, so I said I would like the 30GB how much does it cost extra? he said this is only limited for the 2M plan, so if you want 30GB download you need to upgrade your speed to 2MB. I told him this is ridiculus, I do not need 2MB line, I just need to be able to download more per month… why do they not have flexable options acording to how we use the internet? I mean some people just watch their e-mail or goto facebook, others watch youtube, for me , everything I do is through the internet, my work is based on the internet and often I need to back up my stuff, 1 backup for one of my sites could be upto 20MB, and I like to take a backup everyday and often I work from home and I work on multiple websites. my father likes to see youtube, and I like to download series and shows when I please, all that is fine if I have my 1MB which I am paying for, but I loose it the first week of the month usually, and if I can extend that a little it would help. so I had to get the 20GB option, so I have now 7 extra GB per month , while paying 3 Dinar Less that I was paying on the old plan. if I wanted the 30GB 2MB plan I would have to pay 50 Dinar!!! and if I wanted the standard 2MB plan, the limit is only 13GB which is my current limit on the old plan! and costs more than my old plan! I told them that being a monoply is not an excuse to do that to people, and they should be afraid of GOD because of what they are doing. our neighbour egypt , the internet there is so much cheaper, and if you pay 20% extra you get unlimited download on most plans…. in the US they might have some download caps but they are 60B…. sometimes 250GB per month…. but orange, some plans have 4GB limit…… this is crazy, I feel we should complain or do something but I don’t know what….. in egypt people actually protested when they tried to put the download caps, people went into the streets…. but here we have download caps since 5 years now, and nobody complains except in blogs, I think orange may have a certain deal with the govirment, let’s say to continue their monopolu for 10 years or so, when it is over things will change, but by then everything else will be different and it may be a different world that we live in, that is a very long time, it’s a shame about the whole situatiom, I just hope JCS gets their act toghether and do something, I hope that orange is not interfearing with JCS and not allowing them to expand or something, this is so frustraiting, I really hate orange but there is no other better ISP I can use right now, if there is, I would leave them without a second thought….
the other things I would like to add is about 3G, you might be wondering where is 3G in jordan right? well the reason it is not here is because of the TRC (http://www.trc.gov.jo/) , this is an except from an article that was deleted by TRC to cover up what they have done:
“Orange JO is the only company which submitted an offer for a 3G license in Jordan! the funny story is that this only offer was denied by the TRC! The TRC says that Orange failed to abide by the rules mentioned within the tender!”
Do you know why it was denied? if you know people in high places in TRC or Orange , they will tell you, that TRC asked orange to put 10 million JD as a deposit in the bank, they call it insurance, in order to let them bring 3G to jordan. orange agreed at first but later they tried to re-negotiate this deal with the TRC, but the TRC desided to remove the award from Orange , as mentioned above.
you can understand why the TRC would like such an article to be deleted, there is many more but they keep deleting them. if you need proof of this, try searching in google and type “3g jordan bid” and whenever it says artcile deleted, just get the chached version, what’s nice about google search, if there is an article that is removed for any reason but you still want to read it, there is a small icon called “cache” below the each result, which will try to give you a cached version before the article was deleted….
May God forgive them for their greed and monopolistic activities they so enjoy…. and that we one day may have a free and open country to live in.
i had a lot of issues with Orange Internet and Mobile, and talking about it with others who have suffered is a good start, at least a start so we can get them (Orange) to hear us, i already changed to another ISP which i’m happy with, and the fact that i hear someone on the other side when i call them brings tears to my eyes after i have been aggonised by 1214 .
and Amjad, i have checked JCS they only cover Gardens street, and after 6M thier speeds becomes Dialup.
i can’t help it but feel that your an employee with them and trying to promote thier service, if that’s true then ask them to at least cover three or four streets more