Computers take over
All I needed to do was change the debit card used to top up my mobile phone account. The Orange website-when I found where to log in amid all the advertising-seemed to be able to do it. Until it turned out that it was impossible to change my address because they were "experiencing some issues at the moment". "The moment", not surprisingly, lasted 5 days, so I had to brave a call to their customer service. What baffles me is why clear evidence of a bug on the website is not passed to the administrators automatically: it was suggested that I should email them "if the problem persists".
I say "brave" because I still remember the call I made to set up the previous card almost two years ago: then me and my interlocutor, who seemed to be somewhere like India, spent a lot of time trying to understand each other. My fears were not unwarranted: the lady spoke perfect English, but unfortunately all she could say was "If you want to do this, press 1...". Actually, that's not quite true: every time I returned to the starting point, she would begin the usual sentence with "So,..." or "Ok,...", and even her intonation seemed to suggest that she was annoyed with me. After performing what is known as a depth-first search (the tree was three-deep), I did hit upon a human person. (Who would have thought that what I needed wasn't under "anything to do with crediting your account"?) Just before that, though, I found myself shouting "I CAN'T!" at the top of my voice when the lady said something like "You can do all this online 24 hours a day". Surprisingly, the human spoke excellent English, but I had to spell "Cambridge" out for him. My address still hasn't been changed (for reasons unknown), but at least there is money in my account, and the whole process only took about 20 minutes, so I suppose I shouldn't be so furious...
I say "brave" because I still remember the call I made to set up the previous card almost two years ago: then me and my interlocutor, who seemed to be somewhere like India, spent a lot of time trying to understand each other. My fears were not unwarranted: the lady spoke perfect English, but unfortunately all she could say was "If you want to do this, press 1...". Actually, that's not quite true: every time I returned to the starting point, she would begin the usual sentence with "So,..." or "Ok,...", and even her intonation seemed to suggest that she was annoyed with me. After performing what is known as a depth-first search (the tree was three-deep), I did hit upon a human person. (Who would have thought that what I needed wasn't under "anything to do with crediting your account"?) Just before that, though, I found myself shouting "I CAN'T!" at the top of my voice when the lady said something like "You can do all this online 24 hours a day". Surprisingly, the human spoke excellent English, but I had to spell "Cambridge" out for him. My address still hasn't been changed (for reasons unknown), but at least there is money in my account, and the whole process only took about 20 minutes, so I suppose I shouldn't be so furious...