Roaming Requested - Roaming Not Delivered

In preparation for my honeymoon, I contacted the call centre to activate roaming on my mobile. I dealt with a very pleasant lady who gladly assisted and confirmed that all was in order via a follow-up sms. Upon arriving at my destination (French Reunion), it quickly become clear that roaming was not activated. I could receive sms's but no calls and although connected to the Orange network, I could make no calls nor send any sms's. I tried restarting my phone, removing my SIM card, etc - nothing yielded the desired outcome. This was a problem as we had accommodation and a number of tours organised with operators who had my number but could not reach me, nor I them (let alone not being able to dial out in the event of an emergency). We spent large parts of our honeymoon trying to find work-arounds for this mess-up. Unfortunately, nothing can be done to fix this but rest assured, I will not be renewing my contract or recommending Cell C to anyone I know.