PART THREE. Business in Israel. Number Five. The Color Orange

Shloimy,

I have a colorful story to tell you.

Well, it's not exactly colorful. It's just orange.

Why orange?

Because there's a phone company here in Israel, and it's named, "Orange". Like ATT, or Verizon? This one is, Orange.

The organization that helped us plan our coming/moving to Israel held a "fair" last Thursday, so all the new immigrant families could meet, under one roof, some of the businesses, banks, insurance agents and gov't offices that they would normally have to run all of the city to meet--but do all of it in one day, in one large room.

Great idea, right?

So one of the tables we went to was for this phone company called, "orange". Since we had already heard from others that this was one of the better companies, we were happy to sit down with them.

We ordered our phones, an internet service, and other pieces. Fine. They told us that someone from Orange would deliver the phones on Monday Aug 9, and we would have to stay home to sign for them, between 9-2pm.

Fine.

Then, the next day, on Tues, Aug 10, the main person that day talking to us said that he would call to walk us thru the process of setting up all the issues involved in internet service.

He would call himself?  Yes

That was very nice.

He said, thank you.

We had heard about horror stories new immigrants run into trying to do these set-ups, and we were delighted  that such service was being offered to us. What a change from what we had expected!

Ha!

The phones never showed up. We stayed in our apartment until 5pm. Nothing.

That, of course meant, that no one could call us the following day, on Tues, to walk us thru the more difficult part of the set-up process.

So now what? Since we've come, we have had no phone and no computer; and when we thought our phones were coming,  we spent an entire day practically imprisoned in our apartment, waiting.

So I find a way to contact the organization under whose roof this contract-signing event took place, and an earnest young man contacts me to say he had a solution--I should call Orange, and speak to a specific, named person, and if she were not there, leave a message, and she'd call me back.

I get back to him  (with a borrowed computer) to thank him for his time, and and I remind him that I did not have a phone.

He then emailed me and asked if I had any friends who could call for me.

I answered no, I was new here, didn't he know?

He then emailed me back to say that his organization could not interfere with disputes between other parties.

Nice guy. 

I hope that one day he gets married, and then tries to treat his wife the same way.

And I'd like to be there when he does.