Call me! French reggae group fans dial the right, wrong number

Have some sympathy for Anthony De Sousa.

The 24-year-old plumber from the town of Evreux in the region of Haute Normandie in northern France has been inundated with telephone calls and text messages these past few days and it's not because suddenly clients have discovered his talents with a wrench.

Nope.

Instead fans of the French reggae (well that's how they're described) group Tryo have been calling, hoping to be able to talk to one of the band's members.

(screenshot from video clip for "Greenwashing")

That's because the group included De Sousa's number at the end of one of the tracks of their recently released album "Ladilafé" with singer Guizmo telling listeners to 'Call me".

And that's exactly what fans have been doing according to the regional daily Paris Normandie.

"Often when I answer, the fans simply hang up immediately because they realise it's not Guizmo the other end of the line," De Sousa told the newspaper, clearly not amused that his number had apparently been used in a song but also feeling compelled to answer just in case it was a business call.

Tryo appear to be more than contrite for something which their record company said was 'an innocent mistake" with Guizmo simply coming up with a random number while in the recording studio without thinking of the possible consequences.

"We meant delete the number from the album but we simply forgot," said another band member, Bibou

According to Europe 1, they've apologised to De Sousa, offered to meet the costs of changing his mobile 'phone number and help out in any marketing campaign that might be necessary to inform existing clients and find new ones.

That should be the solution to De Sousa's problems although he's not too keen on the idea.

"I've built the business up over the past three years and clients know that they can reach me on this number," he said.

"I don't really want to have to change it."

A great media buzz for Tryo's new album (in the sense that any news is better than no news at all) but at the expense, albeit inadvertently, of poor ol' De Sousa.

Oh, one last thing. Tryo is the very same group which on their 1998 debut album "Mamagubida" included the track "France Télécom", a satirical song thanking the communications giant for the omnipresence of the mobile 'phone in everyday life.

Ah - the irony of it.

Incomplete faction: French mobile operator Orange to launch a new service "guaranteeing bugs"

After France's largest mobile 'phone operator and Internet provider, Orange, treated its 28 million users - and then some - to a total 12-hour blackout from Friday afternoon until the early hours of Saturday morning, the company says it has hit upon a new marketing strategy.

It has promised to increase its current list of easy-to-navigate and simple-to-understand subscriptions with a new limited-availability only offer.

(screenshot from Orange commercial)

Called "Way-you-go" it will apparently guarantee a minimum service to mobile 'phone users at a maximum price, ensuring that subscribers have absolutely no service for at least 12 hours every month at a time which the company promises will be "totally at random" and "most inconvenient".

"It's the future of telecommunications," says a release on the company's website, issued at the same time as an apology for the bug that hit the France Telecom subsidiary and thereby guaranteeing that nobody would be able to read it.

"Friday's crash was such a success and touched so many people that we've decided to make a regular thing of it."

In addition the company says it plans to launch a new "Up yours" subscription for customers taking advantage of its combined mobile 'phone and Internet offer to "ensure that we are able to continue to provide the kind of service our customers have come to expect."

"We'll also be transferring our helplines to non French-speaking countries just to make certain that anyone having problems will have as much difficulty as possible finding someone who can provide them with an immediate solution."

Full details are expected to be released by the end of the month.

Pure genius and surely proof, as Orange said in a recent advertising campaign, that it is only satisfied, "when able to offer a service the customer appreciates."

rnet provider, Orange, announces a new bug-laden service for customers.

EDF's seasonal electricity bill greeting overcharge

Electricity doesn't come cheap, even in a country where most of it is produced by nuclear power stations.

But in a couple of cases this past week two customers of the French utility company, Electricité de France (EDF) had rather a nasty Christmas surprise.

Perhaps the energy giant was peeved by the French telecommunications company, France Télécom - Orange (FT), hogging the national headlines for presenting some of its mobile 'phone customers with astronomical bills, and although the Yuletide "gifts" it sent its two users pale in comparison to the €159,000 FT charged one of its clients, EDF almost managed to put a dampener on festive spirits.

The first case involved a retired woman in the south-western town of Orthez, who just days before Christmas Eve received a letter from her bank informing her that a payment for her electricity bill of a whopping €10,000 (and 23 centimes to be exact) had been rejected because of "insufficient funds".

An understandable shock to the woman (who wished to remain anonymous) especially as she said that her "annual consumption amounted to around €650" and made all the more unpalatable by the fact that she pays her bills by direct debit.

"Luckily I was sitting down when I received the call (from the bank)," she said.

"I started shaking and was completely disoriented," she continued.

"It's the sort of thing you see on television happening to others and all I can say is that people check their bills," she said.

Sound advice without doubt, and even though EDF has admitted there was a "rare error" in its calculations guess what?

In the very same week another customer - again in the south-west of France, but in a different town, also made the headlines when he received a bill for... wait for it...just over €69,000.

It was an annual bill but one that nonetheless surprised Matthieu Moulierac, a pâtissier in the town of Saint-Émilion, who said he was used to paying far less.

"On average the annual bill is between two thousand and two thousand five hundred euros," he told French news, seemingly unworried at being massively overcharged as EDF had also enclosed a letter apologising for the mistake and informing him that he would shortly be receiving an amended bill for the right amount.

As far as Moulierac was concerned, the story should have ended there, except when he took a look at this bank statement, lo and behold the amount had already been deducted from his account.

He too pays his EDF bills by direct debit and the bank had apparently already authorised the payment.

A quick 'phone call rectified the error initially made by EDF and then compounded by the bank.

But although Moulierac's Christmas and New Year were not soured by the prospect of having to battle to correct a mistake that was in no way of his making, those words of wisdom from the woman at the centre of the first tale ring rather true - and not just at this time of the year.

Happy Holidays.

France Telecom's new monthly phone bill record: €159,000

If you've been following the story of astronomical mobile 'phone bills here in France, you'll know that in the past week two cases have made the headlines: One for over €45,000 and another for €39,500.

Well, if you thought you had heard the end of it or that those amounts were as steep as it gets, think again.

Now comes news of a bill that makes the others all but pale into insignificance - as if that were possible - one for over €159,000.

It's a case that dates back to May this year but has only just been made public and is hardly great public relations for Orange, the mobile 'phone network operator and Internet service provider of this country's main telecommunications company, France Telecom.

It involves Jean Spadaro, an accident and emergency doctor from Fontainebleau, a town 70 kilometres south east of the French capital, who back in November 2008 chose a subscription based on €30 a month which would allow him an Internet connection using a 3G key.

But as the months went by he noticed that both his use of the 'phone and naturally the size of his bills were increasing, so he decided to change his subscription.

"By April this year I saw that my monthly bills were as much as €860 so I opted instead for the business 'unlimited access' option at €50 a month," he said.

"But when I received the bill at the end of May, I couldn't believe my eyes: €159,212 for one month's worth of connection."

Just as in the other two cases that have filled column inches and airwaves in France this week, Spadaro had fallen victim to that "unlimited access" clause for users who had signed the Orange business contract, which in fact is anything but "unlimited" in that it only refers to the time spent using the 'phone and not the maximum one gigabyte volume allowed each month.

Spadaro insists that nobody had ever explained to him that "unlimited access" didn't exactly mean what it implied when he signed the 10-page contract complete with obligatory small print.

So what has France Telecom got to say about this and the other cases that have hit the headlines over the past week?

The man charged with that thankless task was the company's director of business markets, Jean-Paul Cottet.

Speaking on France 2 television's lunchtime news programme on Wednesday, Cottet once again explained the real meaning of "unlimited access" admitting that there was probably still work to be done in clarifying to business customers exactly what each option available offered, and the limits contained within each contract.

But while acknowledging that in Spadaro's case there had been an error in issuing the bill that hadn't taken into account the request to change the terms of the customer's contract, the problem of exorbitant bills wasn't a widespread one.

"There have been problems with only one per cent of the 4,000 users who've opted for the business formula with the 3G key," he said.

"Around 30 contested bills are currently under review and we'll deal with each customer on a case-by-case basis."

A new case of mobile phone bill madness in France

Just another news-making day in France for Orange, the mobile 'phone network operator and Internet service provider of this country's main telecommunications company, France Telecom.

And that of course can only mean an astronomical bill for someone, somewhere.

Or at least, so it would seem, based on recent evidence.

Following hot on the heels of the story of Eric Gernez, who received a demand for payment courtesy of Orange, of over €45,000 for one month's worth of Internet charges comes the case of Christophe Aupy-Fagues.

http://www.france-today.com/2009/11/one-frenchmans-monster-45000-internet.html

When the company director in the town of Saint-Herblain in western France opened the most recent bill for his firm's mobile 'phone just last Friday he too, just as Gernez before him, received a nasty surprise.

The sum charged was a whopping €39,500 a figure, which Aupy-Fagues said, represented almost 10 per cent of his company's annual turnover.

Just to make matters worse Aupy-Fagues pays his 'phone bill by standing order so the money would have already left the company account had he not immediately contacted the bank and blocked the transfer.

All right, so it wasn't quite as much as the monstrous bill Gernez had been sent, but the period for which Aupy-Fagues had been charged was shorter - just 15 days - which meant that he had run up daily costs of...well you do the maths.

So what's going on here?

Well, the "offender", if you will, had been his business partner who had been on a trip to Spain and taken the 'phone with him.

But as far as Aupy-Fagues was concerned the real culprits were the 3G 'phone, Orange itself and the "unlimited access" contract he had signed with the company.

It was - and is - only valid for use in France, a vital detail of which, Aupy-Fagues maintains, he had never been informed, and the astronomical charges accumulated were a result of that infamous "roaming".

"If we had known that unlimited access was confined to France, my business partner would never have taken the 'phone with him," said Aupy-Fagues, who also blames Orange-France Telecom for not providing its customers with sufficient information or alerting them when charges appear to spiral out of control.

"Nobody got in touch with us or sent us a warning that the charges we had accrued were of such enormous proportions," he said.

Aupy-Fagues is still waiting for an explanation from Orange and hopes there has been some sort of mistake, but in the meantime he intends to try to find other "victims of the 3G key" in France

What's the betting he and Gernez are not the only ones?

One Frenchman's monster €45,000 Internet bill

Those of a certain generation and background will doubtlessly have been raised with the idiom ringing in their ears, "If you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves."

Ah yes the lesson of thrift and sensible budgeting, universal surely in its application.

Sadly though for some the temptation to spend, spend, spend is just too great and the availability of credit makes it easy to build up debts that may prove impossible to repay.

This wasn't the case though for Eric Gernez who took over the running of a bar in Petite-Forêt near the northern French town of Valenciennes in February this year.

He took a while to decide which Internet operator he would use and eventually plumped for Orange, the mobile 'phone network operator and Internet service provider of this country's main telecommunications company, France Telecom.

Gernez signed a contract which, as far as he understood, allowed him unlimited Internet connection and 'phone calls 24/7 for a monthly tariff of €95.

Except when he received his bill last month for the period August 3-31 he had a nasty surprise.

Instead of the €95 he had been expecting to pay, he was greeted by the sum of almost €46,000 or to be exact €45.923 and 61 centimes.

"At first I had to laugh when I saw the bill," he said.

"But I'm not laughing any longer because I've been asked to pay up and have been sent me a reminder," he added.

"I've even received a proposal to repay the amount over a 40-year period."

Gernez says that not only was he not informed that he had a monthly volume limit, but the bill also included international calls which he "had never made".

"This obviously isn't an attempt to rip off a customer," said Laurent Vitoux, the regional director for France Telecom - Orange.

"For the moment we've frozen his account until we have found a solution," he added.

"The contract he signed is adapted to a certain type of user and this was perhaps not the case for Mr Gernez."

Given the circumstances perhaps something of an understatement and a warning to all of us that "unlimited access" doesn't always means what it implies.