Stupid France Telecom, the 2nd

France Telecom again shows its incompetence!

I suspend my phone line during the summer holidays, since I'm not there for 2 or 3 months. Usually it goes off quite well, but this year, I've been here for 3 days and I'm still unable to use my phone!

To reactivate my phone line, I called the France Telecom customer service number. That was Saturday, the day I arrived in Lyon. I had to go to a phone booth to make the call, since my phone line was still suspended. Now, even that was hard. The number I called was the 1014, but after making my choices (you know, if you want this, press 1, if you want that, press 2... that kind of thing) they transferred me to the 3000 (another customer service number, I don't quite know what's the difference) And the problem was that that number kept telling me to call the 1014 instead! They use voice recognition or something like that; you have to say what you want to do. But I have no idea how they sort through the replies. My reply musn't have been in their "library". Then suddenly they (the automated voice, I mean) said that I could talk to a conseiller (sorry, what's it called in English?) anytime just by saying "conseiller". Why didn't they say so before? So I finally managed to talk to someone (it wasn't that easy though, the first time they said that all the lines were busy and that I had to call back, and to call back I had to go through all the maze of automated voices and choices till I could again get to a human voice) So finally I got through and that person told me that my line will be reactivated by the end of the day. First ordeal over. (it was over, but it's worth mentioning that when I went out to make the call, it wasn't raining, but by the time I finished, it was!)

BUT, right up till the next day (and night) I still couldn't use my phone. I figured, okay, it's the weekend, and they probably don't work on Sunday, so I might have to wait till Monday. Monday morning (this morning) the phone wasn't working, so when I went to Part Dieu (the commercial centre) I dropped by the France Telecom shop and tried asking them again to reactivate my line. But after checking, the guy there told me that my line was already working. Fine, I thought to myself, so they waited till Monday to do it.

BUT (again), when I got home the line was still not working! So I went online and sent an e-mail to France Telecom through their website. A little later, having nothing much to do, I went out to call the customer service number from a phone booth again. This time, the person who answered told me that I would be able to use my line by tonight. When she was trying to reactivate my line, she came across some problem and she said that maybe the other person had the same problem on Saturday (I only told her that I had already called on Saturday) So I really hope that this time I'll get to use my phone!!