Well, I guess, in every country, Telecommunication companies, should be the head of technology, but when it comes to Jordan, it’s a little bit different, they are so humble, they don’t like to show off at all, they can always show you that a school kid can beat them, but laws will forbid him.

Let’s start with the newly named company, Orange, well I wanted to see the new technology (Only new in Jordan) Of a 2M/512k ADSL connection, so I went to their offices to do the upgrade, so I had to pay the upgrade fee, and another fee for changing my provider, well till this moment don’t understand why, I used several providers usernames and passwords on my modem before, and they all worked fine, and I don’t know what is their relation in which ISP I’m using, but what the hell, money has been paied, and now I need to make a contract for the subscription from orange, as they are the only ones who provide such speed, the girl at their office told me, that there is no need, everything is set up, I just need to call a number, and they will give me a username and a password, I asked about payment for the ADSL and stuff, they (the girl and her manager) assured me that it’s going to be by bills afterwards, I asked “are you sure?” and they both confirmed it.
For me it didn’t seam right, I felt there is a mistake, but what the hell, they know better, which turned out ; of course; that they have no idea about anything, and events came, it took another 3 visits to 3 different offices to make the contract, and by the day I got the password for my username (which a week after my first visit), I went happy home, to see the ultimate speed, I logged in, and start surfing the Internet, but something was wierd, the connection didn’t seam that fast, I checked the modem, and found out that the DSL speed was still 512K/128K, so I thought, the modem has been on for a long time, maybe it didn’t get the speed upgrade, so I restarted it, and it’s the same.
I called the customer service, the guy was really nice, and he told me that these kind of upgrades take some time, and I should check the day after. The day after, it was still the same, I didn’t call, I gave it another day, so Yestarday (which is tonight) I called again, another nice guy replied, and thought it was wierd, and gave me another customer support number that I should call, and so I did.
I called, and after waiting for that stupid waiting music, a guy replied, I told him so and so,
Support Guy: but your speed is 512.
Me: yes, and I asked for it to be upgraded more than a week ago.
Support Guy: No, your speed is 512, and you are with TEDATA. TEDATA doesn’t provide a 2M line.
Me (starting to really get pissed off): I was with TEDATA but more than a week ago, I transfered it to Orange, and asked for an upgrade.
Support Guy (Interrupting): but your speed is 512.
Me (Really pissed off): I know it’s 512, and I’m asking why it wasn’t upgraded to 2 M, I have the Receipt in my hand dated October-29th about me requesting an upgrade.
Support Guy: but here it says that your connection is 512.
Me (screaming): AND WHY IT’S NOT 2M
Support Guy: well you need to come to one of our offices, and check.

And I hang up, swearing of course, so I just tried to calm down a little bit, and called them again, hoping that a smarter one would answer this time. and this time it was a girl, I explained to her the situation, and after asking a lot of stupid questions, and putting me on hold, multiple times, she informed me that my area cannot have a 2M line in the mean time, I have to go to one of their offices and choose another speed.
Me: excuse me, and why I haven’t been told this before, why wasn’t I informed, I have paid for a 2M connection now, and the only reason I changed the provider is to have a 2M connection, what the hell should I do with them now.
Support Girl: we are so sorry, but you need to come to our office and check.

Of course, I thanked her, and hang up (and till the moment I’m pissed off).

I guess Orange New Slogan should be something like,
Jordan Telecom is now Crappier with a new name Orange.
or maybe
Orange, same old shit, with a new name.

So in the night, I remembered receiving a message a couple of days ago about zain‘s new voicemail service, I don’t know what’s new in that, but I thought it might be in a very good use for me, as for all the calls I cannot pick up during the day, so I called the number, and got through the wizard of saying my name, and my personal message, and that’s it !!!, usually in these first time setup wizards, they would ask me when would I like to forward the calls to the voicemail and stuff, but not a big deal, I hang up and checked the phone, and there was no diverts set, so I called 1234, and thank god that’s an improvement, I don’t have to go through that stupid Hala system they have, I now can go directly to the voice pressing thingy system, so I entered the featurs stuff, and to the voicemail stuff, and they said that’s it’s activated for my non-answered, cannot be reached and busy calls, alright then let’s check, na, none of them worked, alright, I tried once again, it still says that they are active, so I tried disabling one of them, telling me that my request was declined, alright, let’s check their website (which is obviously on .Net, so typical for a Jordanian High edge technology company), so I searched for what I need, and found the instructions, and I tried them, and always giving me the invalid command”, “request declined”, “couldn’t be done” errors, with no actual order, it seems like it was sent to me randomly.
So I tried to call customer service, , they informed me that the call is paid for (Like 3 piasters or something), no way, why should I pay, for crappy service, and with a very big chance to end up with some stupid customer service guy, the only solution he has is to came to their office, that won’t happen, I’m not paying.
so back to their website I go, Oh, there is a 1234 Online Help, cool, oh I need to login, so let’s start by making an account, getting to the register page, answering all their stupid requests, that I don’t think they need, ok press submit, the page refreshes, the only difference is the fields I filled is empty, I tried again, same shit.
Of course, those stupid programmers don’t know that there are other browsers than IE, so I ran my vmware, logged into windows, and got to their website using IE, I registered, they sent me a message, I logged in, pressed on the 1234 online support link, and there is nothing, just page with their header, tried again, same same, tried to login from firefox, went to the 1234 online thingy, same same, oh what a crap, I gave it one more time, it worked this time, I got into the services page, and press remove on the Voicemail Busy Forward service, and vola, a yellow .Net page telling me that there is an unhandled Exception, and the trace code was there of course, you know in case I want to take a look at the code that made that error, maybe a can log in to their servers and fix it, but I wasn’t in the mood for that, (I don’t know, but why do they keep this page, can’t they just not print out their errors on the website), well who knows, maybe the server was loaded or something, you know it’s 1:30 AM, everybody just goes to the website, and start making changes, so I waited a while, and tried once again, I removed the service, put it back again, and vola, the voicemail for the busy calls is working, cool, now I have to do this for the other 2, I clicked to remove the Voicemail cannot be reached service, and once again activated it, and a very pretty error showed up, “either an unhandled Exception, or command took so long”, what kind of error is that, and after that I couldn’t go to the services page, cause that is the only thing I can see.
alright no problem, I have the forwarding number, I’ll set it up from my mobile, so I set the cannot be reached to the same number, and when I tried to set the forwarding of the no answer calls, it told me “request declined”, ok check status, “request declined”, I checked the website again, still the same problem, tried to call 1234, and this time it worked, I removed it, and added it, and it worked.
So let’s check it, Na, it’s not working, ok check the busy once again, not working, what????!!!! I checked my mobile, and no active forwards where found, alright, this time, I’ll do it manually from my mobile, and what fails, let it fails.
Well I finally was able to set it up for unanswered calls, and busy calls, but not for the cannot be reached “you know, request declined”, and I just think of this as an achievement, I don’t know when they are going to remove it from me, but it’s good now.

Well to say the truth, installing LFS was much easier, less buggier, and more fun than setting up my voice mail.

I don’t know, till when are we going to live with such bad service, high prices companies. And they say that Jordan is an advanced country.