Sick of Virgin - any views on Orange?

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2

Getting thoroughly fed up of Virgin (was with NTL) as they keep messing me about.

Firstly was signed up for £8.99 for 12 months. My broadband was cut off after 9 months for 3 days and was impossible to get an answer from the Indian call centre. Eventually found out that is was because they had been sending one bill which said I was up to date with payments and another saying I owed them money to a different address! The reason I owed them money was because although there retentions department had offered me£8.99 for 12 months they had been charging me £9.99 as apparently they didn't agree to £8.99 and £9.99 IS half of £17.99!? In month 9 payments went up to £24.99 unbeknown to me!?

To get broadband reinstalled I had to pay them this money by credit card and they agreed to offer me 6 months from that point at £9.99 but the next direct debit they took was for £17.99!

Also was cut off for another 3 days when they didn't bother to fix damaged box and despite having 2mb speed appears to be more around 350kb!

Anyway rant over!! I saw an offer for Orange broadband with their 18 month mobile phone package where I can get similar to what I'm paying Virgin for but for free! Or upgrade to 8mb a month with more download / free calls over the internet / live box etc for £5 a month. Sounds like a great deal as happy with mobile contract too.

Does anybody know what Orange broadband is like? Is this offer too good to be true?

reehsetin

firstly with bt you cant use your ntl line you have to have a bt landline
i personally dont think that bad dont get too many complaints, some people think its bad but with every company you get good incidents and bad, if you want to see the bad look at a site called orangeproblems

Alfie_E

Miss_Penny_Pincher wrote: »

…impossible to get an answer from the Indian call centre.

My last contact with broadband technical support suggests it’s been moved back to the UK. The Indian call centre was a problem. The chances of the operative, their friends or family using ntl broadband at home were slim, so naturally they had no experience of what they were talking about, as the following conversation shows.

Me: I’ve lost my connection, as my modem has died. Can I have a new one?
ntl: Have you checked your computer for viruses?
Me: No. My modem has died.
ntl: I will send you an email telling you how to check your computer.
Me: But, I’ve got no connection. My modem has died!

Ok, I called back after pretending to have read the email I couldn’t retrieve, and an engineer came, declared my modem dead and gave me a new one.

Many months later, my next call to ntl showed that they had now recaptured some of the tame British computer geeks they had unthinkingly released into the wild – this time 100% spot on.

karma_2

I been with Orange (formerly Freeserve/Wanadoo) for 7 years.Since Orange took over the service has gone downhill.For over 1 month now i should have been getting up to 3mps.I'm lucky if i get 1.8 and often as low as 0.2.The speed varies all day long.Engineer has called and could find nothing wrong.Not sure what to do now - all i know is i'm paying for a service thats well below what it should be.:mad:

trisha

I have migrated from Virgin Media after months of slow speeds and bad customer service.A month After I migrated they hadn't closed my a/c and tried to blame it on Newnet, not only that I was told to give another months notice and pay for it,which I refused, I finally sorted it out, I had been wrongly advised by CS

I am now with Newnet and very happy, speed is good and customer services are excellent and very helpful.

I pay £12.95 a month for up to 3GB as a low user

http://www.newnet.co.uk/

valli2

Avoid Orange :money:

Miss_Penny_Pincher_2

Now even more confused than ever!

Spoke to Mr Pincher about it and he reckons better to have rubbish internet for free than rubbish internet for £17.99 a month!

you_llneverwalkalone

Miss_Penny_Pincher wrote: »

Getting thoroughly fed up of Virgin (was with NTL) as they keep messing me about.

Firstly was signed up for £8.99 for 12 months. My broadband was cut off after 9 months for 3 days and was impossible to get an answer from the Indian call centre. Eventually found out that is was because they had been sending one bill which said I was up to date with payments and another saying I owed them money to a different address! The reason I owed them money was because although there retentions department had offered me£8.99 for 12 months they had been charging me £9.99 as apparently they didn't agree to £8.99 and £9.99 IS half of £17.99!? In month 9 payments went up to £24.99 unbeknown to me!?

To get broadband reinstalled I had to pay them this money by credit card and they agreed to offer me 6 months from that point at £9.99 but the next direct debit they took was for £17.99!

Also was cut off for another 3 days when they didn't bother to fix damaged box and despite having 2mb speed appears to be more around 350kb!

Anyway rant over!! I saw an offer for Orange broadband with their 18 month mobile phone package where I can get similar to what I'm paying Virgin for but for free! Or upgrade to 8mb a month with more download / free calls over the internet / live box etc for £5 a month. Sounds like a great deal as happy with mobile contract too.

Does anybody know what Orange broadband is like? Is this offer too good to be true?

I,m currently on the offer that you are quoting and yes the deal is too good to be true as you say...

I have had no problems whatsoever with Orange as of yet but i,m sure someone will correct me of this with their own experiences!

:beer:

rags2riches_2

Hi,

I have been a loyal customer with Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange for 7 years.

Today I requested a MAC code from them to move service as I so unhappy.

Since they upgraded my line in Feb (to LLU) so I could receive 6.5 meg free of charge my connection has only ever been a maximum of 2.6 meg during off-peak and only 0.1 (yes twice the speed of dial up) durring peak times (evenings & weekends)

Technical support have been no help, they carried out a line test which 6 days later they still tell me they have no results for - so today I thought enough was enough.

rocdrake

I have been with Orange BB for three years. My service had been fine while it was Wanadoo but within a couple of weeks of Orange taking over my problems started.

Firstly my 1mb connection kept cutting out and I was switched to 8mb LLU free of charge and was told that this was a more reliable connection.

I had 3 months on 8mb with no problems and then my connection dropped out every night for a week and then finally died completely. When I phoned technical support (soon found out those 2 words should not be used together) I was told that it was a temporary problem that would be rectified wtihin 6 hours. 13 days later when my connection finally came back on my speed had dropped from 6mb to 0.5mb, I phoned TS and was told that BT had capped my line because my cabling was unable to handle the speeds that I had previously received.

Having spoken to a friend who works for BT I have found out that BT cannot cap the line as they only own the cabling, Orange own the equipment and that they have been doing this to a lot of people. I have since found several websites with complaints from over 4 dozen people who have had exactly the same problem as me and have been given the same excuse. :mad:

I have now received my MAC code and am in the process of moving to a new service provider.

Quasar

I'm on dialup at this very moment because my Orange bb is up the creek AGAIN. This is the third evening running, and before that every few weeks there is an "outage" and the bb connection is off.

I depend heavily on bb for my online work, and I need a dependable ISP. Besides, going on dialup costs me money.

I've started a thread on this board a short while ago, precisely on this topic.