France Telecom

France Telecom is a confusing conglomerate of companies. We use them, under a variety of names for our telephone, internet and television connection. They go by the names France Telecom, Orange and Wanadoo.

During 2009, there have been more than 20 suicides by employees of this company. Job stress, lack of security, and a company that is partially private and partially public, are to blame, according to the press.

What about the customers? While I haven't considered suicide, France Telecom has given me a few more grey hairs on my head.

Yesterday's example is pretty harmless, but still it took an hour of my time to figure it out and fix it.

We had a power outage while we were out in the afternoon. We turned the power back on and didn't think too much about it, until I decided to watch the evening news last night. We have power outages quite often. I normally just re-set the decoder box for the TV or the Livebox (like a modem) or both. But, last night, nothing worked. A new screen, one that I've never seen before, popped up. It said to put in my 10-digit customer number and push OK.

We've had the France Telecom system for four years. I've never been asked for my customer number before. Into the files I went, found a very thick file (as you can imagine) and went through it. I tried every number I could find, pushed them all in, nothing. Finally a screen came up on the TV that said I had to go to the Orange.fr website to find out what to do. Luckily the internet worked! I did this and it told me that the customer number I was looking for was on my "welcome" letter when I signed up for the service. I found it and pushed it in, voila, another screen came up, asking for my password. Yikes. I put in all the normal passwords that I might use, nothing.

Back to the internet. The password should be with the customer number. Yes, it was, in it went, OK. Turned off the decoder and the TV. Turned it back on. It worked. But, all my settings for English, sub-titles, etc. were lost along the way. Back to the buttons, another 15 minutes later, the TV was restored.

If we had to call France Telecom, we would have been charged, by the minute, for the call. If they had to come to our apartment, they charge a minimum of Euro 77.

Compare this with our US system, Time Warner. When we have a problem, we call. They try to fix it over the phone. No charge, of course. If that doesn't work, they come out to the house, replace whatever needs to be fixed, no charge.