who knew?

Here’s what I knew already for a while:

When I want to make an international phone call, I have to dial a series of digits before it that tell Orange, my cellular provider, whom I’m going to be paying for the call. That’s because the mobile phone companies in Israel don’t actually provide international phone service – or rather, they don’t charge money for it – international phone service is provided by the internet companies. But don’t be confused into believing that the internet companies actually provide internet service. That’s done by the phone company or the satellite television company (I think). The internet companies are only ISPs, which is to say that they only give out usernames and passwords to connect to the internet service provided by, in my case, Bezek.

Here’s what I just learned:

Anyway, I needed to reconnect my international phone service because it was disconnected last month (I’ll explain below). I called, began speaking to a nice-sounding girl in Hebrew before she infuriated me by saying something I know to be false, then she transferred me to another guy who tried calming me down, a big mistake because I know that calm people get nothing in Israel, least of all what they’re entitled to. He had to transfer me to the billing department, and it was someone there who informed me that when I make an international call and dial 017 in front of the numbers, Netvision, the internet company, sends a bill to Orange, the mobile phone company, and then Orange pays Netvision for my call, and then I pay Orange back on the next statement. And that is the absolute dumbest system in the world.

Why my international service was disconnected:

I bought a phone from Orange in February 2005, but decided against paying the monthly insurance fee. Why? I’ve been using cell phones now for almost six and a half years, never lost one or had one stolen, and never ruined one by being thrown into a lake or something equally terrifying. The phone was covered for repairs for the first year, and of course in the 13th month that I had it, it slowly stopped working properly. I dealt with the situation for a while until I couldn’t handle it anymore, then went to Orange and told them I needed them to fix it. They were, of course, snide – didn’t I know that they recommended purchasing the insurance (note: paying monthly for insurance on a phone, over the lifespan of the phone, is roughly equivalent to buying two phones instead of one)? The deal in their technical center is that they will charge anywhere between NIS 99 and NIS 300 to inspect the phone and to fix it, but they won’t tell you how much it will cost until it’s already been done, and you have to agree to pay up to NIS 300 before they will even look at the phone. I was very close to telling the guy and his whole company to go fuck himself, but I decided against it, and agreed to that outrageous deal.

Surprise, surprise, they had to recondition my phone and it cost me NIS 300, which they expected me to pay on the spot. But they guaranteed that it would take no more than 40 minutes, and due to the stupid mistakes of Orange employees, it took them three tries and well over two hours to get the phone working. I told them to put the charge on my next phone bill in the expectation that I’d be able to complain to someone in their corporate office about the terrible treatment I received at the repair center and have some of that NIS 300 knocked off. Instead, the charge on my next bill from Orange was over NIS 1000 for a brand new phone!!!!!!! Naturally I refused to pay it, though I preferred for someone from Orange to call me rather than me wasting my energy and time to fight through their crap menu and call them, and eventually they disconnected my phone line, preventing me from making any outgoing calls.

So I did call them, and I talked to a very helpful employee who admitted that there was a mistake and corrected the charge. Unfortunately, at that point I didn’t have enough in my bank account to pay the accumulated two months’ phone bills plus the repair charge. So I arranged with her to pay one month’s bill, have my phone opened, and then to pay the other bill plus the repair charge shortly after my pay day, which at the time was three weeks in the future.

Pay day came, and the money should have been deducted automatically from my credit card, and lo and behold, a day later my phone was cut off. So I called Orange screaming – how dare they how dare they! – and I talked to a person who told me that the charge had been declined by my bank!!!

Now, faithful readers know how I have gotten terrific service from one banker at Bank Leumi, snif 914 Emek Refaim, named Yael. So they will be shocked to learn that I called Bank Leumi the next morning, asked for Yael to call me, was told that she would call me before 2:15 that afternoon, and then didn’t hear from her! I called the bank again at 2:30 and yelled at them and they told me that there was a record of my request to speak with Yael but they needed to open an internal investigation into why she didn’t return my call (this is probably mandated by law for the banks), and of course the bank was closed until the following morning because what kind of a sucker works after 2:30 anyway?

One of my astute coworkers, overhearing my highly agitated screaming into the phone, advised me that as a veteran Olah herself, she knows that there are two types of frames, or limits, placed on Israeli bank accounts. The first is a limit of how far you can go into minus, or overdraft. This is a very important limit and it has everything to do with your monthly salary, expenses and – most importantly – your personal relationship with your banker – and this is why I insisted on speaking with Yael. But I was not even close to going over my overdraft limit, which is why I was so infuriated that Bank Leumi was denying the credit card charge from Orange. The second limit, my coworker told me, is simply a limit on how much you can charge on your card each month. It has nothing to do with how much you have in the bank or what your overdraft limit is (note: Israeli credit cards are basically debit cards linked to a person’s bank account, including overdraft)! So I called Orange and told them to take the bulk of the money from my credit card and the rest directly from my bank account, which they did successfully, and my phone service was restored.

Incidentally, Yael called the following morning, sounding very nervous, asking why I claimed that she had not returned my call, since doesn’t she always return my calls and didn’t she return the most recent call (I’d needed to speak with her the previous week on a different matter altogether)? I asked her if she had gotten the message that I’d called the previous day, and she said that she hadn’t, and that was the end, presumably, of the internal investigation. Also, I asked her about my credit card spending limit. It was NIS 500! I could easily spend more than that on groceries alone in a month, and I was outraged that I was getting a “declined” message simply because of that insanity. I told her that I wanted her to raise the spending limit on my credit card to reflect my current earning and spending habits. She suggested raising it to NIS 2000. I countered with NIS 4000. We settled on NIS 3500. Of course, this does not mean that I can spend beyond my overdraft limit. In order to spend more than my limit, I need to get personal and direct approval from Yael.

That all happened about, I don’t know, three weeks ago. About two weeks ago I wanted to call America to congratulate my friend from high school who secretly got married a year ago and didn’t tell anybody until her mother sent out notices last month, but I couldn’t make the call and I got redirected to Orange. A guy at Orange told me that I needed to have international service turned on. Duh, I replied, but he said that he couldn’t turn it on because I was set up to pay Orange by bank transfer instead of by credit card! So I got really angry at him – didn’t he know the bank payment was a one-time thing? And then I freaking blew up at him when he told me that the billing department was closed and wouldn’t open for another two and a half days, because it was a Thursday evening and they evidently don’t work on Fridays or Saturday nights.

So anyway, that’s why I was calling Orange today – I had to get them to confirm that I’m paying by credit card so that they can reopen my international service, for which I pretend to pay Netvision, but actually Netvision sends a bill to Orange, Orange pays Netvision, and I pay Orange.

What a country!!!

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