Orange connection charge

elainesuzy

I am an orange mobile customer and have their £5 per month broadband with BT line. I recently upgraded my mobile contract and was asked if I would also like to have their line rental with off peak evenings and weekend calls at a cost of £18.50 per month. I agreed to go ahead but now find they want to charge £60 connection charge which was not mentioned to me on the phone and does not appear on their advertising. Has anyone else been charged for connection?

Phones4Chris

How long ago did you say yes, check how long the cooling off period is and if you are still within it, then Cancel. Confirm by email and clearly state why.
Don't be persuaded buy any sales patter to continue with the order.
If they want to offer you a better deal tell them you are not agreeing to it as you are going to look at all other options, and do so.

elainesuzy

Have already rang BT and told them to put a stop on order. Rang Orange this morning to tell them we were not happy and wished to cancel. Apparently the £60 fee was for Openreach engineer to call. Was told we will now lose our £5 per month BB and it will now be £13.50 per month if we cancel. Said would discuss with partner and Orange would ring back at 1.30. Well they did not. Spoke to them again and now they have cancelled the order and if we keep broadband it will be a new 12 month contract at £13.50.
Bit of a dilemma now as don't know what to do and could end up with no broadband for a while as £5 monthly broadband ends 19 April. Would BT BB be best option?

Phones4Chris

Sorry,. I'm not clear if you already had £5 month BB with Orange and you've upgraded your mobile (with Orange) why you should lose your £5/month BB!
Why won't they continue that after April 19th.? And now by saying it will cost you £13.50 if you cancel the phone order, that sounds like mis-selling if they didn't tell you the full costs in the first place.

If they told you an Openreach engineer had to call, that's Bull. If you already have BB with Orange any changes are done remotely at the exchange.
Even if you continue with Orange at £13.50 for BB, you should not lose service as you already have it. It's only the billing that is changing.


Alternatives, not BT for Broadband, expensive!
How much BB do you use per month?
I'd phone Orange back and ask for your MAC and start looking at alternative suppliers. That in itself may provoke Orange to offer you a better deal.
As to the best deal it does depend on usage.

macman

What are your LLU alternatives?
https://www.samknows.com
Or look at Plusnet over BT if you want a non LLU service.

thistledome

Not trying to hijack OP, but we are in the same boat and when I checked on SamKnows it came up with this:

According to BT Wholesale, your phone line should be able to support a 8Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max.
Standard ADSL RAG results

• You can receive 2Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 1Mbps ADSL
• You can receive 512kbps ADSL
• You can receive 256kbps ADSL

However, there is another service on your phone line (e.g. ADSL, LLU, DACS, etc) that would prevent you from ordering a new ADSL connection.

So does that mean we can't change to another ISP? I don't understand what it means.

EDIT:
THANKS FOR REPLIES

Phones4Chris

No, it doesn't mean you can't change. It is a bit confusing, it means you can't order a new ADSL connection, because in this case you've already got one. Any of the existing services mentioned would have to be removed to enable anyone to order a new ADSL connection. This is not the same as changing an existing ADSL service to a new provider.
If instead of putting your phone number in the box, you use the Exchange Mapping page (select on the LHS), put in your postcode and then click your location on the map (zoom in first) before clicking on BT ADSL, you may get a better estimate of the sort of speeds you should get.
HTH.

macman

Post the LLU info from your samknows search-those are the providers who will offer the best deals on your exchange.

elainesuzy

Updating with the progress of transferring my line rental to Orange.
Well we agreed and went ahead with the them. However we have been totally let down. Not only have they given us a new telephone number which we were told by an engineer who called last Friday the13th (unlucky for us) that it would be temporary for only a few hours but we have no internet connection. We had a brilliant connection to the internet after the engineer left but later in the evening we lost it. Then my son called our mobile to say our landline was ringing but we were not answering. On Saturday we phoned Orange to find out why our landline was not working and eventually told we had this new number. Diverted to Customer services when I said we wanted to keep our original number. Told it will take 10 days to have our number back and our BB will not be connected for 10 days also. As we are an existing customer I cannot believe they have done this and the sales girl we spoke to never mentioned we would be disconnected from the internet. Wished we had not bothered to change!

Phones4Chris

Frankly, I don't think you should have been. Orange have totally *'d up by the sound of it. The transfer should have been seemless but Orange clearly did not get the ordering correct with OpenReach or OR have messed up the order, which ever, it's Oranges problem. If you have an Orange shop near you I would go in a make a formal complaint. They can contact the relevant department)(s) direct whilst you are there. I'd be asking for compensation for not having "your" phone number for the 10+ days and no broadband - when you originally had Orange BB this is inexcusable, also make sure your new billing (for BB at least) doesn't start until it's working!

elainesuzy

Thanks for your comments Chris. We have made contact with the original sales person who took our order and she has agreed that Orange have totally mucked up. It should have been seamless as you said but apparently we have been treated as a new customer instead of an existing user. She said she would give us 2 months free as compensation. We will be checking our bill to see everything goes through correctly.