Internet Woes

Orange is also the new commercial name for France Telecom, the nationalized phone and internet provider. This institution is much less impressive than the Roman architecture in the city of Orange. It has been a two-month long struggle to get service to our apartment. In their latest salvo of incompetence, our internet was disconnected due to an error in our service profile.

The problems began immediately, when Mary Ann informed the store clerk that she could not register for a full year-long contract. Then we waited and waited for the technician to show up and wave his magic wand. We waited again for the connection to start, until Mary Ann returned to the store and learned that they forgot to schedule the service initiation. Even after that mistake, the store clerk announced that it would be another 10 days.

Sadly, this story continues. A miscommunication about home computer installation (you know, like Geek Squad, “this is a mouse…”) resulted another cancellation of service to be scheduled without our knowledge. So today, Mary Ann was back in the Orange store trying to explain the situation. Their solution: set us up as new customers and repeat the entire process. The best possible scenario is internet in 10 days.

As a result, my blogs over the next few weeks are going to be intermittent. I’ll have to go to McDonald’s for their free internet. Yes, I’d like internet with that.