We live in a mobile phone "zone blanche" in the bottom of a little river valley in "La France Profonde". We are covered for mobile phone service by F-Contact, which until the beginning of June we thought was just another service provider. Then Virgin sent us a new SIM "to give us access to the 4G network" and deactivated our old SIM (two days before they activated the new one, but that's another story). As if 4G was anything but a dream out here! Now we have no mobile service at all. If we go into the village, all is fine, though we don't have a 4G phone - what was the point!
It seems that F-Contact is a consortium formed by Orange, Bouygues and SFR to give a minimal mobile service in Zones Blanches. Our only local "antenne" that we can see with any degree of consistency is Orange 2g. Virgin have changed their SIMs so that they look for the SFR network, although still under the Virgin name. Did they inform us they were going to do this? No. Has their help centre been able to do anything for us? No. They've said they were going to put us on the Orange network, but nothing has happened, at least as far as we can see. Except when it comes to selecting a service, "manual" is not available and the phone is automatically searching all the time. SFR bobs up for a second or two from time to time, so the phone is wearing out its battery at twice the normal rate switching networks. I suspect they've put us on Orange 3g or 4g, which aren't available here, but we can't tell.
Is anyone else in this position? Yes - lots, see this link to just one of the posts in the Virgin Community Forum, in French, often quite vituperative. If you have a Virgin mobile with an old (red) SIM and you use F-contact regularly, this could happen to you too. Have you been affected in this way, and what's your story?
On the subject of Orange upgrading their antennas, they placed one serving the next river valley to ours on a local fruit farm. The fruit farm changed hands. The new proprietor wished to renegotiate the contract for locating the antenna on her land. Orange hummed and hawwed. The antenna caught a cold. Turned out the contract didn't have a right of access clause. The antenna broke down....
There is now a monile temporary antenna on the next hill.
The tune has changed a shade. They now say that, since my domicile is not covered by a Virgin-linked service (i.e. SFR or Bouygues), all I can do is cancel the contract. They claim not to be able to put the SIM back to the way ir was originally, so that it worked in the village. Therefore, like a good little dumb client, I'm going to cancel the contract (resilier). Yesterday my husband and I toddled into the Orange shop and bought a contract each for an Iphone 4s. They work at home. We can make and receive calls and texts. OK so from time to time there's no coverage, but that's life, as Alex says. My husband wanted to keep his old LG, but we couldn't get the desimlocker to work, so we just admitted defeat. Virgin has won.
There's one way of looking at this that I really don't like. All we really used the Virgin phone for was the odd call and texts. We don't carry it about our persons wherever we go (i.e. down the bottom of the field) so it's not really much used as a point of contact, except by arrangement. WE WEREN'T EARNING VIRGIN ANY MONEY. This whole exercise by Virgin Franceof reissuing its SIMs has a look about it of a shakeout. Loyal customers (since 2006 counting UK as well as France) are being forced off the Virgin network. Could this be to render the company more profitable, in view of a takeover by Numericale? OF course not!
And just how do their customer support operatives sleep at night? Thanks for the form letter of resiliation, anyway, guys.
Hi Pauline,
Unfortunately not. The relay was a purely Orange affair until the government forced it to share its installations, and my contract goes a long way back with them, to the time when they were the only provider in the area, so at the time, service was pretty much OKish, considering. When the mutualisation system came in, Orange were forced to share relay power and signal transmissions with the other operators, reducing their capacity to serve the area as they did previously. This pushed me to take out a separate SFR contract in the hope of covering most eventualities, but as it turned out, the arrival of other providers has made things worse, especially since Orange hasn't upgraded the equipment to meet the demand. Ultimately, it is not the end of the world, it means I have a plausible excuse for not replying to my business phone calls when people try and ring me at all hours of the day, but it can be a bit awkward at times ;-)
Now that I've calmed down a bit - Alex, surely you knew there would be coverage problems when you took out the contract. I've gone from perfectly acceptable coverage to no coverage under the same contract. The contract is now worthless, but I'm paying for it. Virgin's stance is: the commune on your contract is covered by SFR and Bouygues, therefore we will be unable to attach you to the Orange network. I quote "Vincentm", Social Media Manager:
Votre commune (ou du moins celle de votre contrat) est annoncée comme couverte par SFR & Bouygues.... nous ne pourrons vous repasser sur les antennes Orange.
En tant que consommateurs, nous sommes donc parfois réduit à faire des choix en fonction de notre quotidien.
I translate that second sentence as "Tough."
My area is similarly covered by a mutualised relay, but fortunately actually owned by Orange. My business mobile phone contracts are with SFR and Orange, otherwise I have no guarantee of any service at any time of the day. Even with both providers, there are periods of complete dropout, just have to live with it.
The latest is that today I had to make three premium rate phone calls to Virgin help centres, explain who I was and what my problem was, talk to a technical expert, take the phone apart (twice), take the SIM out, replace it, start up the phone, select a network, find F-Contact 2G, try to access it, receive message "not registered" - non-enregistré. FINALLY I get a technician who tells me I won't EVER get F-Contact 2G again unless it's serviced by BOUYGUES as they have altered their business arrangement with Orange. All I can do is cancel the contract. Fine service I don't think. Perhaps I ought to contact Sir Richard, tell him what's going on in his business?