One thing I used to love at Orange was the amazing flexibility of its billing. You could add options, cancel them, add them back, and the bill was always 100% correct according to my calculations. And trust me, I like checking these things just because I would have loved to find an error.
The second thing I used to love at Orange was the power that the customer service reps have in matters of adjusting your options etc. In the (distant) past I worked as a customer service rep for a few months at an Internet provider and even when the customer was obviously right we could do nothing but have the case transfered to somebody in the back office who would check the error and answer back days later.
Back to now.
I guess we are all aware of the issues that appeared with the bills since February, when they migrated to a new billing platform. I personally received no bills for almost 4 months...
Regardless of the delayed bills, my contract was ending on June 29 and since I was going to leave the country, I called two months in advance (in April) to ask that they change it to prepaid.
Indeed they did on the correct date, however:
1. They charged me 100 francs for early cancellation.
2. They did not apply the monthly discount of 15 francs for the last month (the discount is for signing up for the contract without receiving a subsidized phone).
3. A contact-only option (Go Europe) I had activated on my contact is still there in the prepaid program. I cannot cancel it online and they cannot cancel it through the customer service. As soon as I toped-up I was charged 5 francs for this option.
My conclusion is that the new billing platform is a complete mess, thus I cannot recommend Orange to anybody right now. I hope they bring it back to their previous standards but I won't be there to vouch for this.
On the bright side, I talked to a bloke from the customer service and he told me I am right about both points 1 and 2 (I did not mention point 3 to him because I wanted him to focus on the wrong bill) and he told I should pay the amount of the bill -115 francs, that is 100 francs for the early cancellation fee and the 15 francs of the monthly discount that was not applied.
He was also nice and joked politely, because I pointed out that the discount should only be about 10 francs instead of 15 because my last month was only about 20 days (June 10-June 29) and he said "ecoutez, comme je ne suis pas bon aux calculs, je vous fais 15 francs" (listen, given I am not strong at maths, I will do 15 francs).
Anyway, he assured me I can pay the amount of the bill -115 francs, which means that at least their customer service still has the power to correct obvious mistakes right away and not go through a complicated process of approval.
I am happy to have chosen Orange for my contact two years ago and to have extended for a second year last year, because of the good prices, the 4G coverage in Lausanne and the customer service that was quick to admit and resolve the issues with the last bill being wrong, but I am very disappointed by the fact that because of a rushed migration they are still struggling to offer the smooth customer experience I used to enjoy from them.