What’s in a name?. Nothing. Orange proves it. Changing brand names does not affect quality. Orange can be a case study on the futility of dependency on brands. Today orange could boast of arguably the largest subscriber base in the country. They can also boast of having unarguably the largest unhappy subsrciber base in the country.
A Celluar phones user for the last three years can claim to have some knowledge of the industry. Orange when it was Maxtouch, those initial good days, stole the march over BPL simply due to their Customer Service. The Maxtouch Customer Care cell, when one does manage to get though to them, is still their biggest strength. But service does not mean just a few good words. Service is defined by the way the product functions consistently.
Orange can today boast of consistently providing no network throughout most of the city. Right from Churchgate to New Mumbai, One signal bar is a blessing in disguise. A phone with an orange sim card itself functions as a glorified pager. With one signal bar, one can only recieve a ring (luck), and call back though a landline, if of course one has Caller line identification (CLIP). Clip, of course, is a paid for feature. If one has not opted for CLIP, a pager scores over a cellular phone in this Orange world.
If you are an Orange user who has never faced network congestion, you are Gods most recent Incarnation. For those who dont know what Network congestion is...Next time you dial a number and instead of connecting, the display comes back to ’’Orange’’..Its happened to you. You are now one of us, an ordinary mortal in this very Orange world.
In this Orange World, Voice Mail is Gods Gift to the Orange User...When it does work! At Orange this is a USP. ’’One can access voice mail from a landline too’’ they say. This boon helps a cellular user get his messages when he is unavailabe (most of the time...remember?). It ofcourse has its share of problems. People complain that they cant get across to the Voice mail box. ’’ Are you sure he did it the right way sir’’ asks the strawberry voiced lady after 10 minutes of ’’ Your call is important to us...please hold’’.
The only adavantage that Orange has over BPL, probably still has is consistantly accurate billing. This is one area that orange has almost never let its subscribers down. Lets hand it over to them. Afer a month of terrible (an understatement) service, they send a very very accurate bill. And hey... The bill comes on time. PAY UP.
Orange has never let me down...so I trust them to screw up the billing too..And Very Very soon.
So my friend Talk Orange, Speak Orange and then my friend...CURSE ORANGE.