Origin Broadband - any good

Saeed

My BB went live 7 days ago and these are my thoughts:-

Connection: The line speed is a bit slower at 7Mbps than with TalkTalk which was 12Mbps but I am still in the initial 10 day training period and may not be using ideal settings (see below). The connection has been very stable and not dropped once.

Communications: were fine throughout the switch over, got both SMS and email messages, and line was switched on the evening of the due date.

Tech support: Answered call after ~45 mins on Sunday evening. I called their technical team for some help with using my own router, but they person that answered was not all that helpful with giving me the settings which may be fair as they probably don't want people ringing them later saying their connection is not working. So after reading their router set up guide on their help pages I managed to get the connection going using my own router. Also I'd like to report PPPoA settings work as my router didn't appear to have settings for PPPoE as their guide states. I think this may be the reason the connection is slow? Will see how it goes... Second time I rang support on Friday night, I was on hold for ~1hr15m and the call cut out after that.

Price: Like I said, this is the most I have paid for BB for a while, I was on Talktalk which was £7/m including line rental after their offers and the yearr before I was with Sky paying a similar amount. Origin is £~13/m so not sure what to say in regards value for money, I guess if the connection is stable and I get the same speeds I was getting with TalkTalk, I'll be relatively happy. I could have cancelled during the cooling off period and gone for the offer from Sky that Martin Lewis had on this site, but thought I'd give the smaller fish a try.

bristolleedsfan

Saeed wrote: »

Connection: The line speed is a bit slower at 7Mbps than with TalkTalk which was 12Mbps but I am still in the initial 10 day training period and may not be using ideal settings (see below).

I am 10 Months into mine --- Just under 6 Mbps ----OpenReach engineer called last week in respect of a BT Infinity line problem I had, whilst he was in attendance he tested phone socket from inside house that Origin B service is used from and informed me should be getting 16 Mbps

Jabba_flabba

Saeed wrote: »

Connection: The line speed is a bit slower at 7Mbps than with TalkTalk which was 12Mbps but I am still in the initial 10 day training period and may not be using ideal settings (see below). The connection has been very stable and not dropped once.

I had a similar experience in that my initial speed was significantly slower than with previous suppliers. After waiting the 10 day training period and no change, a quick email to support@origin-broadband.co.uk and it was back to normal speeds within a few hours.

Saeed wrote: »

Also I'd like to report PPPoA settings work as my router didn't appear to have settings for PPPoE as their guide states. I think this may be the reason the connection is slow? Will see how it goes... Second time I rang support on Friday night, I was on hold for ~1hr15m and the call cut out after that.

This was one of the points I made earlier in this thread: there is no KnowledgeBase item indicating the appropriate settings for "bring your own router" customers. The guide you were reading is for a specific router, presumably the one supplied by Origin. In any case I suspect using PPPoE only applies to a minority of customers, but I could be wrong.

It'd be a very quick win for Origin to add a KnowledgeBase item with typical settings required, so I'm not sure why they haven't done this.

Saeed wrote: »

Price: Like I said, this is the most I have paid for BB for a while, I was on Talktalk which was £7/m including line rental after their offers and the yearr before I was with Sky paying a similar amount. Origin is £~13/m so not sure what to say in regards value for money, I guess if the connection is stable and I get the same speeds I was getting with TalkTalk, I'll be relatively happy. I could have cancelled during the cooling off period and gone for the offer from Sky that Martin Lewis had on this site, but thought I'd give the smaller fish a try.

Sounds to me like you've done very well in keeping your costs down! Good work. I wouldn't kick yourself for paying a few quid extra per month for Origin. I think you've just become accustomed to getting exceptionally good deals!

glider3560

glider3560 wrote: »

Same for me. I emailed both forum@ and mse@, but no response to either.

Still no response.

z.j.c

Raised a complaint with Origin and still had no reply. Been forced to Contact credit card company for help. Need to get away from this very poor ISP.

Origin-Broadband

glider3560 wrote: »

Still no response.

If you check your emails you should see a message from us.

Origin Broadband

Origin-Broadband

z.j.c wrote: »

Raised a complaint with Origin and still had no reply. Been forced to Contact credit card company for help. Need to get away from this very poor ISP.

If you need any help, please contact us at forum@origin-broadband.co.uk

z.j.c

Thanks Origin. I have emailed just now

newtonflotman

Just completed 2 yrs with Origin Broadband. Was worried as unheard of company then but been excellent. On 76mb fibre. Never had less than 62mb. Use my own router. Origin sorted out one issue where Openreach had messed my connections up in the exchange ( after a year on fibre!!) Very quickly. I took up the two year saver deal back then. I've decided I've had no issues so just taken up another two year deal. I had used BT( never again!)Sky and Talk talk before but Origin service been far superior. Here's hoping next two years as good.

krisan

I saw MSE post about Origin Broadband and thought I'll give them a go. My contract started on July 19th and I was getting 7Mbps on a promised (at sign up) speed of around 11mbps. I thought its early days, it will get better. And then around end-July things went downhill. First I lost all connection to the broadband which I complained about - Origin said they were having network wide issues and it will get fixed. After 4 days, the internet came back to life albeit very poor speeds typically around 4mbps. I complained by email to which they responded that they will have it fixed. When that did not happen I complained again and haven't heard back from them for almost 3 weeks now despite their promise to address complaints within 10 working days. I have had to pull the plug and moved to another provider as the measly 4mbps was playing havoc with the family's ability to get much else done other than simple browsing - even watching a YouTube video at standard resolution resulted in constant buffering.

I have reminded Origin of my complaint no less than two times since then, yet all I have heard is silence. A terrible provider, and absolutely non-existent customer service. Unfortunately I paid my entire 12 months upfront and now I face the frightening prospect of having to claw it back from them.