Orange Broadband woes

simonthegeezer

Orange broadband....Up until the start of May 2011 I was happy with the speed of my orange broadband service. I live very close to the exchange and was getting around 16meg on a 20meg service. I was using a netgear 300 router. All was fine.
Then one day I got the red light of death of the front of my router. 45 mins later after speaking to the lovely foreign call centre i was told that Orange were changing there linesand i was being upgraded from an old llu line and I should have had an e mail about it. I was told that I would be without the service for 10 days.
Not impressed but further calls achieved nothing. Couldnt even move the service as the had an order on the line.
10 days later the service was resumed. I thought well pain in the neck but all was now fine.
Needless to say I didnt notice any difference. Now i got the e mail saying I would be possibly without a service for 10mins and that would be at night.
Then at the end of June red light of death again on the router. Again time spent on the phone to orange. I was told that my line was being upgraded and would again have to wait 10 days. Again not impressed.
Tried to speak to someone in the UK. Might as well have driven to orange HQ as now joy. Now insisted on a MAC code. this was duly sent
but again couldnt change as the line had an order on it (the upgrade!)
Eventually I waited until the 10 days elapsed but no return of the web.
Rang orange and they stated the upgrade was complete now problems. They were next to useless just saying wait another couple of days. Might be
"interference" on the line.
So I tried out of frustration an old belkin router. Low and behold web returned. Oh and I got the e mail again telling me I "might" experience some
connection issues!
I took my netgear back for replacement (as luckily still on warranty).
New netgear router installed.still red light of death. Belkin still worked.
Took router back and exchanged again but same red light of death.
Went back to Maplins and they stated they had never had the netgear 300 returned.
Have tried to contact netgear helpline...useless
Orange no help.....
I will be moving as soon as I am able now hoping my netgear router (£70 worth) will work with another ISP.

Moral of the story...Orange..Great when it works.back up service completely useless

sam_jm

My orange broadband tale of woe is as follows:
Broadband speed went excessively slow over past few weeks, carried out a BT speedcheck found my ip profile stuck at 500k. Orange were clueless when I rang and said I must have fault on my line. I checked with BT and the online check of my line seemed ok so decided to jump ship and leave orange and join IDnet, requested MAC code on Saturday.

Now the fun has really started, the MAC code which they provided is incorrect for my phone number. My new provider says orange must have mixed the codes up, but orange are adamant its the right one and wont look into the problem and send me a new one as their records show its the right one.

I cant even leave orange now, I have sent an email to their exec office but I'm not holding my breath. It could end up that I have to wait 30 days to request another MAC, which may still be incorrect.

The service was good up until recently and I only pay £5 per month but this is rediculous.