Orange Broadband woes

creativetags

Copy of email I wrote to Orange CEO Tom Alexander: Tom.Alexander@orange.co.uk (he hasn't replied).

I'm writing to tell you of the experience I have been having with your home broadband service. I signed up at the beginning of May this year and was surprised when my previous broadband service was switched off before the new router arrived after being told that there wouldn't be any downtime while switching. Thankfully the router arrived later that day so I was without service for about 2 hours. Then when I got setup I discovered that my connection was only 8 Mbps instead of the 20 Mbps I had been told on the phone I would receive. After calling to check I was told that my exchange would be upgraded to 20 Mbps on 30th June and I was given a refund of 2 months worth of service as compensation. This would have been fine except it is now 5th July and we are still connected at 8 Mbps.

Meanwhile, we spent 3 days without a connection at all during June which we were told was BT's fault and initially not offered compensation (and I had to call you to find out why I wasn't able to connect and had to go through troubleshooting many times before I was told they would send an engineer out - who arrived after the service had resumed). After complaining twice I was offered 1 week's worth of compensation.

All the time we are experiencing problems with the netgear router that you supplied. It often blocks access to random sites or refuses connections from some devises until it is restarted. So when I received a courtesy call asking how my service was going, I thought, great, an opportunity for you to put things right but no. I was passed through to your lowest level technical support where I have to explain the problem again and they don't know what to do as some other department is unavailable. Several calls later someone finally agrees just to send me a new router. 10 days later the router still hasn't arrived so I have to call you to check why. I'm told there was a problem, could they give me a call back within 2 hours to tell me what went wrong? So I agree and they don't call me back. I call again, explain everything again, and am told you'll send me one out within 2 days or by Friday at the latest.

I can't help but feel I should have stuck with O2.

--

I have now been told that the 30th June was hearsay by another of their advisors. I'm attempting to leave without paying out the contract.

kwikbreaks

> I can't help but feel I should have stuck with O2.

If only you'd asked here before moving....

spike7451

The speed you will receive will be on par with what you got with O2.No ISP can provide 20MB speed on a line that is only capable of handling 8MB.The are two main factors that determine the speed you get.
1-Distance from the Exchange to the main phone point in the house.This is by how the cable runs,not straight line of sight distance
2-Age & condition of the copper pair drop cable from the Exchange to the main phone point.
The are other factors but they are the main ones.
O2 tried to get me to sign up to the 16MB one,which I refused as I know for a fact,6MB is all my line can handle.
Put your phone number in the link below,that'll tell you what you can get.

Do you know what service you are on with Orange?...IP Stream Max or WBC?..Orange are binning their LLU based service & putting everyone back on the BT network.

https://btwholesale.com/pages/static/Community/Broadband_Community/Coverage/ADSL_Availibility_Checker.html

stilltheone

Surprised that the executive office hasn't responded. O2 do so promptly.

Inclined to agree with kwikbreaks.

creativetags

Good news is they agreed to let me terminate my contract early without a fee. Spent an hour on the phone insisting before they offered. Will probably go back to O2 as we were actually getting 20 Mbit with them previously (we're next door to the exchange). I think Orange was LLU.

kwikbreaks

The problem with leaving and rejoining O2 is that the older contracts were a lot less restrictive than the new ones in terms of fair usage limits and it isn't possible to just return on your old deal. If you are a light to moderate user this is probably of little consequence.

To be honest I'm surprised they've let you leave so easily. True they mis sold the product as ADSL2+ when they could only deliver ADSL, failed to deliver essential equipment on time, and still aren't supplying what you were promised but this is Orange we are talking about and all that is to be expected.

What I wouldn't have expected was any compensation as home ADSL doesn't come with any service level agreement. Orange have gone up in my estimation (from abysmal to dire).

creativetags

Just signed up for O2 All-Rounder 20 Mbit with 100GB/month cap + Home phone for £20/month minus 3 months free broadband @ £8.50 and £100 cashback through quidco.com (hope that works out!)

creativetags

I just got a phone call from the CEO's office. A nice guy looked into my complaint and gave me £20 credit on my orange mobile. Hopefully they can learn from mistakes and improve in the future.

stilltheone

creativetags wrote: »

I just got a phone call from the CEO's office. A nice guy looked into my complaint and gave me £20 credit on my orange mobile. Hopefully they can learn from mistakes and improve in the future.

So they did the right thing in the end. As I wrote, I was surprised when you wrote that there was no contact.

kwikbreaks

creativetags wrote: »

.. gave me £20 credit on my orange mobile

Excellent. Perhaps they really are improving.

bod1467

It's really a matter of getting through to the right person. I had a similar issue last year - whilst it was mobile phone, not internet, the principle is the same. You can read about it on my blog if you're bored. :rotfl: