Multithreaded

133 Comments »

1. Am about to flit from Demon, due to slow speeds after the 8Meg upgrade, and was thinking of Orange. Not sure, now.

   Comment by donny — December 6, 2006 @ 1:47 pm

2. I’d definitely look elsewhere if I were you. There are plenty of ISPs who get great reviews on the various DSL sites that are probably worth looking at instead.

   Comment by Doug Clinton — December 6, 2006 @ 3:37 pm

3. I too am having great problems with Orange Broadband exactly the same as Doug.
   My problems started on October 3rd 2006 and after 5 or six escalations I am back to square one and waiting for the results of the sixth line test which they already accept there is a fault at the exchange. It all stated when they transfered my line to LLU. Every night around 7pm my Green ADSL light starts flashing until about 1 am then I get a solid green light and connection.

   Before this I have NEVER had any problems with Freeserve/Wanadoo for 7 or 8 years but since Orange took over I have nothing but problems. The say “The Future is Orange” God Help Us!!!!
   This website makes interesting reading www.orangeproblems.co.uk it makes one feel we are not alone!!!!

   I agree STAY AWAY FROM ORANGE.

   Leighton.

   Comment by Leighton — December 18, 2006 @ 2:00 am

4. Leighton,

   Thanks for the pointer to the orange problems forum.

   Comment by Doug Clinton — December 18, 2006 @ 7:50 am

5. Orange are presently busy; digging their own grave.

   Comment by dog with a bone — December 18, 2006 @ 6:09 pm

6. Yep

   I totally agree,Orange are crap.Ive been through exactly the same experience,you go in a very big circle culminating in nothing happening at all.The fact they can actually get away with charging you for a service they cant provide is almost beyond belief,until you actually find out its true.
   However if you ever want a nice chat with very polite people who are absolutely useless,then this is the company to deal with

   Comment by Paul — December 19, 2006 @ 4:32 pm

7. Today I had a phone call from Orange to tell me they sent a engineer at 2am to the exchange and fixed the problem…asked me to try my broadband…..guess what.. it was as bad as ever and I could not get synch with modem to exchange so they told me to phone back in 24hrs to get update, I did and was told by the indian call centre that it was impossible to get update as their own system was “down” and call again in 4 to 5 hours.(middle of night).
   “The future,s bright, the future is Orange” who are they kidding?
   Leighton.

   Comment by Leighton — December 20, 2006 @ 12:27 am

8. Interestingly enough, there seems to have been a (relative) improvement in the service in the past couple of days, coinciding with the automatic upgrade to my live box. The line still drops fairly regularly, anything from every 10 minutes to hour-and-a-half, but seems to reconnect immediately without problem, rather than taking minutes or hours.

   This gives me some hope for the first time that I might actually get a decent service at some point.

   Comment by Doug Clinton — December 20, 2006 @ 8:43 am

9. I thought I was the only one…

   Been with Orange for more than a year. Started with 512Kb - fine, upgraded to 1Mb - fine then finally to 3Mb - problems. Random disconnects with my USB Speedtouch modem showing flashing ADSL light.

   I thought I had rid of the problem with the Belkin Wireless G+ MIMO Modem Router to network 2 computers. Connection and Web Surfing worked fine until 2 weeks ago on Sunday. Strangely with the Modem Router I could connect online alright and opening pages like Google, MSN was quick but others were far too slow or wouldn’t even show up.
   I had rebooted, restored factory settings, configured every possible setting with the Modem Router re-installed my entire PC but still Internet wouldn’t work properly.

   Plugged back my Speedtouch Modem and random flashing ADSL lights again. It seems to happen often at about 18:30 in the evening for me.
   It gives these error messages:

   Could not connect to computer so port used for this connection was closed.

   PPP Link Protocol was terminated.

   Any ideas?

   I phoned Tech Support - 50p per minute right? Told them what problem was and they kept on asking me all these questions of how many phone sockets I had, where the main one was, which one was I connected to, have I used phone filters?
   It was all working before with the same setup and I had already checked it.

   3 days of wasting time with re-installing PC software, changing Windows Network configurations, the Modem Router.
   Finally they put in a request for a line test. Had to wait 2 hours with PC on during the test then phone back the next day for results.
   They told me that BT engineers found a possible fault and was currently trying to find out what caused the problem. Phone back again the next day they said. So I did and they said that BT had not given them a status update yet and I was to phone back 24/48 hours. Asked them if they could ring me back they said they did not have the facility to.

   So I am still waiting before calling back and I’ve had enough. I’ve already wasted enough time and money calling them. I’m thinking of switching back to AOL. They might be restrictive with their own browser and settings but at least they offer free telephone support.
   What you guys think? What bout Pipex?

   Comment by Dave — December 21, 2006 @ 4:00 pm

10. i agree with above comments i started with freserve which was good then they were taken over by wannadoo not so good i then signed up for talk wireless with oranfe who took over wanadoo since then my link has dropped off continually technical support peopre are inept unable to resolve the fault which they call an isssue! soon as my contract is up they can whistle stay away from orange try someone with support that can speak english

    Comment by c hris coleman — December 23, 2006 @ 10:37 pm

11. Things we’re starting to go a bit better this week. The line would still drop at least 4-8 times an hour but at least it would reconnect immediately and I was no longer suffering the extended downtimes that I had previously had. Today, however, the line has been down all day. The status page on the router says that the PPP server is down, which I have not seen before. I can only hope this means that someone is trying to fix things at the exchange, but somehow I doubt it.

    I’m fortunate in that I signed up for the Orange line to replace an expensive, but reliable, business broadband service from Easynet which is still in place so at least I can fall back to using that.

    Comment by Doug Clinton — December 23, 2006 @ 10:59 pm

12. I have had my Broadband with orange drop out at bang on 5.00pm and returns approx about 10.35pm every night this has happened now since 9th December.

    As your self I am making lots of call to ther etechnical guys lots of line checking lots of promises and guess what nothing.

    This seems to be happening to a lot of people any one know whats going at exchanges.

    Dave

    Comment by Dave — December 23, 2006 @ 11:04 pm

13. I have had this broadband from Freeserve to Wanadoo then to Orange and since the major outtage a while back we have had nothing but problems. The internet is constantly dropping off and I restart the Belkin router it seems to come back. The Noise margin (dB)changes all the time. I rang up and went mental at Orange. After lots more calls they said a line fault and they would fix it. They eventually fixed it they said.

    I never lost the internet totally I just could not surf for certain web sites ie ebay microsoft. Some googling at work and found out they had given me the wrong mtu settings. Used Doctor TCP to change my computer mtu settings and bobs ur uncle I was back surfing.

    Defo something not right though as its up and down quicker than I dont know what. And saying I am paying £23.99 a month its shocking. I was also told I could not move to another provider as there was no one else in my exhange. Now I think he might be right my exchange only has Orange in it. I wanted sky but I am not sure I can get it.
    I hope it all gets sorted soon its doing my nut in.

    Comment by Catherine — December 27, 2006 @ 11:53 pm

14. Yep, I’ve really had it with Orange. The more I use it the more I’m getting a pattern of being disconnected at times of between 5 or 6pm and then back online at about 10 - 11pm. I’m paying for an always-on broadband service here? This is terrible quality of service and unreliable.
    I am also expecting a phone call to me after Christmas from Customer Support to check up how my Internet Connection is doing that I have not even recieved yet.

    I’ve phoned their Customer Support on Boxing Day and the women told me that I had to give them 30 days notice of service termination because it was just recently stated in their amended Terms and Conditions.

    Since my monthly payment ends on the 1st of each month I couldn’t put forward the termination request yet otherwise I’d loose out on days that I would have already paid for.
    She said I had to phone back on the day when it calculates up to 30 days.

    I’ve phoned up Pipex to ask them if I could switch providers but they told me that Orange seems to do it their own way and have their own network. She also said I could try asking them for a Migration code. However, when I’ve left Orange for good I’ll be signing up to Pipex.

    Comment by Dave — December 29, 2006 @ 12:04 am

15. I’ve just been through this big fat loop with Orange at my parent’s place. They use their broadband for their business, so it’s important.

    We haven’t had auto-DNS for about 18months now. Not a problem - I just specified the DNS on the desktop.

    In the past few months the service has just dived, so I said ‘get to another ISP’, my parents, being loyal old sods stuck with Orange. They did a lot of digging though and started ploughing through the escalation channels.

    While doing this they found out when their service went out with the DNS issue and they were offered an alternative courtesy dial-up service there was a new direct debit set up on their account for the dial up service…. guess what - it hadn’t been cancelled and money had been debited for the dial up and broadband service every month for 18 months.

    The LLU thing was something of a Great White Hope about three years ago - everything would be amazing cos those rural areas that BT didn’t want to get into would get other service providers ‘mopping up’ customers (a situation mentioned above). What’s actually happened is that there are now a number of DSLAM boxes in many exchanges, so when you swap to Orange (or Talk Talk) a BT engineer has to swap your connection out of the BT box into another (possibly not as well specced) box. This seems to be when the biggest issues are occurring.

    We’re about to find out what happens when you swap out back to the BT DSLAM from Orange. We will be using Zen for our ISP. Why? They actually offer a 16hour Service Level Agreement (SLA) if there’s a problem with your service. It costs an extra £12 per month, but minimum contract for the SLA is one month, just like their DSL service, too. Depending upon how things go I may also commit to them for £150 router plus £180 per year for them to manage it - that way they are responsible for everything up to the RJ45 connector out the back of the router and if it all goes titsup then we’re only a month away from another ISP.

    I DO hope Zen work, because I live 100 miles away from my parents and I’m utterly fed up with their pathetic attempts at customer service that usually result in a 200mile round trip to solve the problem.

    Good luck with your service, folks.

    Comment by Diamond Hell — December 29, 2006 @ 10:16 pm

16. I’ve had it with Orange. The more I use it the more I find there is a pattern with disconnections between the times of 5:30 - 6:30 pm then back up at
    10:00 -11:00 pm.
    I am paying for an always-on broadband service here. Their service is utterly unreliable. I’m waiting for a phone call from Customer Support to check up on how my Internet connection is doing after Christmas that I still havn’t received yet.

    I’ve phoned Customer Support on Boxing Day and requested a termination of service. She said I had to give them 30 days of notice before termination. Since my billing period for each month ends on the 1st of every month I couldn’t put in the termination on that day yet as I would lose days that I would have paid for.
    The women told me to phone back on the day that would calculate up to 30.

    I’ve phoned Pipex up to ask about switching providers. I was told that I could try asking Orange for a Migration Code because they seemed to have it their own way, including their own network.
    However, once I’ve rid of Orange I’ll be signing up to Pipex.

    Comment by Dave — December 31, 2006 @ 12:53 am

17. I totally understand your frustrations having had many problems with “Lack of Technical Support Departments” if you ever manage to get a MAC code from Orange please consider who I use now; their Technical & Customer support is great, I have been with them for 13 months without a hitch and if you check out the forums in ADSL Guide you will see complaints are virtually nil! then see what users say about other ISP’s in the forum! I use Madasafish (formely Freenetname) I have recommended them to several people & none have had problems.I also use this for my Business, BT had ripped me off to long at £29.99 month plus VAT now I have rock solid 8MB Max for £11.99 for first six months……got to say something! Good Luck, Paul.

    Comment by Paul R — January 2, 2007 @ 12:00 am

18. I understand everbody’s problems. Ever moved house with Orange? I moved on the 31/10/06 and was only connected on 12/12/06 which I run a business with this service. After much shouting and alleged Managers I was told that the provision team kept asking for the wrong connection speeds to BT which BTs response is to throw away the order and they only find out it has not worked is when the customer, Me, calls to find out what is happening! Along with this everytime they re submitted my re connection they opened a new account causing more problems with BT and billing at Orange with further delays.
    I can go on and on with this. I with others now have a intermittant connection fault. I notified Orange 3 times of this and the response is that my account is such a mess with the incomplete accounts that they created in error, they are unable to do a line check. No customer service, nobody cares, I have lost faith in Orange and all is staff. The whole situation gets you down till you just give up!

    Comment by Ian M — January 10, 2007 @ 8:32 am

19. Orange? Absolute shite more like. I upgraded to the 8 meg service and connection has been dropping ever since.

    Comment by Jake Case — January 10, 2007 @ 11:03 pm

20. I have been with freeserve/wanadoo/orange for 5 years and had not had any problems until 2/1/07 when i lost my broadband connection .I have been dealing with tec support every day and 3 line tests done i have now got a service but it drops after about 2 mins and only returns if I reboot my computer.My live box was working great up to this point but I cannot cancel as I signed up with orange pay monthly for 18 months to get free broadband BIG BIG mistake.

    Comment by sheila hawks — January 14, 2007 @ 6:51 pm

21. I too am having problems with orange. Well its actually my parents, but they don’t quite understand the whole internet stuff. They have never had internet since joining orange in september. Not once has the little green light stopped flashing. I have been through all the normal channels, had engineers out fixing the line and the security compnay out making sure the alarm system isnt interfering, but nothing works. The line tests orange do always come out inconclusive…but the engineer tells us they are fine. When I phone up technical help all they suggest is another line test! The simple answer is to just cancel, but I can’t get to speak to anyone who will do that for me!
    Has anyone ever got to the bottom of this with serious results? Please tell.

    Comment by Bailey — January 15, 2007 @ 2:54 pm

22. well, i am suprised at the problems u people are having, my orange connection is brilliant, 3mb with no down time in the 4 months i have been connected, this is the best isp i have used, maybe i have been lucky getting such a good service and my previous isp was aol and they were appauling, maybe the future is bright after all?????

    Comment by alan higgins — January 21, 2007 @ 4:04 pm

23. i even get courtesy calls from orange from time to time asking if everything is ok with thier service and asking i have any issues to discuss, i mean i was with aol for 3 years and i never had any of that!!!!!!

    Comment by alan higgins — January 21, 2007 @ 4:08 pm

24. well i suppose i do have 1 minor gripe, the orange webmail is rubbish probobly 50% of the time my email’s dont reach thier intended destination, however problem easily solved as i opened a postmaster email account, no problems with that at all, am still a happy orange customer.

    Comment by alan higgins — January 21, 2007 @ 4:48 pm

25. I have never had a problem with my Broadband connection, and have been very pleased with it. However, their customer service is very poor. I did have a problem with ‘My site’ when the server to my homepage dropped out. The service staff in India kept me on the phone for 15 mins trying out various things, when the question I asked was “Is the my site server down?” Simple enough question. After 15 mins, there answer was “There are problems at the moment with the My Site server” The problem just disappeared after 3 days.
    I also use the VOIP ‘Talk’ service, which has been pretty good to be fair, but I was allocated a ‘0845′ number (by default) and now would like to change it to a ‘01′ or ‘02′ number. Apparantly, the number cannot be changed ‘at this time’ for existing members. No suggestion as to when I will be able to do so.

    Customer service was very poor when ‘Wanadoo’ had it, but ‘Orange’ are no better, and probably worse!

    Comment by Paul Yeoman — January 22, 2007 @ 3:23 pm

26. Here’s another dissatisfied ex (I think) customer. I tried to cancel Anytime in July, 2006, here we are on 24th January, 2007 and Orange are sending me snail mail threatening legal action for non-payment and telling me my account has been suspended (not they do not spell out their policy that suspension means you are still obligated to pay them).

    After unauthorized sums were taken out of my VISA account during the course of 2006, I put a block on Orange and got the amounts refunded.

    They are very slick about cancellation and do not like it when a customer wants out.

    Those of you who think you are free of Orange, I warn you, check your Bank and credit card statements carefully. Orange will go two months without a withdrawal, then with no warning they will start taking money out again. This is what has happened to me.

    Put it in writing to them you have canceled. Register or use “sign for” at the Post Office so Orange cant wiggle out of their contract and when speaking to CS on the phone, ask for a registration number for the call so you can quote it in your letter. They record all phone calls (without your knowledge)and register them.

    Write to your Bank and Credit Card company blocking any further payments to Orange, stating that you are no longer receiving or never received a service from them. They are obligated to you in that they pay for services received. I had no problem getting VISA to block payments. The best thing is to cancel your account totally.

    A really charming lady from Orange phoned me in December and I explained I had received refunds from VISA and had blocked further payments to them. She apologized for the CS rudeness and said she would take care of the rude employee???

    She then said: as a Goodwill gesture Orange will give you a cheque for a certain amount. This cheque did arrive the first week in January, 2007 and 2 weeks later a threatening letter.

    THANK YOU ALL FOR POSTING ABOUT ORANGE, I cant imagine what strife I would have been in had I taken up their continual offers for free everythings and gone on broadband with them.

    Warning to everyone: Don’t have Orange as your ISP. You will go grey overnight.

    Comment by B. Anthony — January 24, 2007 @ 7:50 am

27. Don’t choose Orange! Having had similar problems to the ones described here at my old flat, I can sympathise. But, after much arguing with them about the fact that I work from home, they gave me a refund for the internet even though I don’t pay for it because of my phone contract.

    That, however, was before the move. We moved in the beginning of December. It is now the end of January, and they still haven’t moved the broadband connection! After 2 iterations of ‘wait 10 days and it will work,’ I just had a shouting match with them demanding to leave because of lack of service. At first he said it should be no problem, but then called back and said he cannot cancel my account without 30 days notice, and without cancelling the account, he cannot cancel the re-order to move the connection.

    So, to make a long story short, I cannot even switch providers until they get their act together and provide me with a connection, yet it has taken them TWO MONTHS to move my connection, during which time I have to PAY for crap dialup, because I can’t order broadband.

    What kind of service is this? And they won’t even listen to you complain because they insist you’re not paying for it. But I am paying for their stupid dialup because I have no choice, not to mention the phones.

    Whatever they did back in October, they went from being a flawless ISP and decent mobile phone provider to being absolutely crap at both.

    Comment by Catherine S — January 24, 2007 @ 4:32 pm

28. Raise the flags….my original thread responding to Doug (Number3) having problems with ADSL green light flashing and going off line every night.
    At last February 1st 2007 I am back on line…problems since October 3rd 2006.
    I phoned India every day and just got sent round in circles. The sooner Orange fires them and relocate call centre back to UK the better.
    Three weeks ago I phoned Head Office as my final and desperate try at getting this Broadband fixed…..to be fair I had the best attention from them, and had several phone calls from them every week.When they were unable to get the problem fixed at my local exchange, after a complete rebuild on their system they imformed me they were taking me off LLU and migrating me back to the original BT system I had before the upgrade in September.
    The whole process took 12 working days . I was told of this time when they asked me if I agreed to go back to the old but more reliable connection.
    They told me this will be monitored for six weeks to make sure it is successful and I will get a refund from 3rd of October 2006. Tonight is the first time since then that my connection has not dropped, I shut my PC down several times to test it to see if it would reconnect and sure enough it has, ifI had done this before I would have been off line for up to 16 hours.
    Before I got transfered to LLU I never in 7 or 8 years had any problems at all.
    So I suggest to anyone who has had problems since going on LLU to do the same as me and ask to be put back to the other system when it worked ok.
    I only hope I have not spoken and rejoiced too soon.
    Incidentley….if you phone Orange Customer Support…use your Orange mobile not your house phone..that way it will be free….dial 150 then select the prompts for broadband …..this is what I have done for the past 4 months.

    Comment by Leighton — February 2, 2007 @ 1:29 am

29. please ignore my previous posts, the service has gone from not bad to absolutly diabolical, i rarely get a connection these days and my voip has stopped working, i have rang orange several times now and each time i get told by the indian call centre that escalations are dealing with the problem, its been nearly a month of this, i have sent a threatening email to orange asking for a mac code as they have breached thier terms and conditions, i have also instructed my bank to stop paying them, i will keep u posted about what happens.

    Comment by alan higgins — February 8, 2007 @ 11:06 am

30. Alan,

    Really sorry to hear that your service has gone downhill. It took me three months of talking to technical support and customer complaints to get my account cancelled and they finally did it. The key is to convince someone in tech support that they should raise a cancellation request as the other departments can do nothing until this happens.

    Even when they did that, Customer Care (an Orwellian name in the extreme) tried to not honour it and it was only when the supervisor in the escalations team took personal charge of the situation and persuaded them that they had to complete the cancellation, that it actually went through.

    I found it very effective to calmly and persistantly point out the logic of the situation and always as “how can we progress this?” Keep pointing out that you do not have a working service. They may well give you a lot of hassle for cancelling the direct debit and not paying but this gives you an opportunity to talk to accounts and let them know about the situation, too.

    Also, ask tech support to transfer you to customer complaints each time you do not get satisfaction. Complaints can’t actually do anything but they are paid to listen to you and will note all the complaints on the account record so that everyone can see the history of the thing.

    Good luck.

    Comment by Doug Clinton — February 8, 2007 @ 11:46 am

31. ORANGE IS NOT THE ONLY FRUIT!!
    DO YOURSELVES AN ENORMOUS FAVOUR AND AVIOD THIS DISGRACEFUL SERVICE. THIS COMPANY USED TO BE EXTREMELY CUSTOMER SERVICE CONSIENCE. NOW THEY SERIOUSLY DON’T GIVE A DAMN AND ONLY SEE MONEY SIGNS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES. THERE INTERNET SERVICE IS AT THE VERY BEST BLOODY AWFUL, AND THEIR TERMS AND CONDITIONS READ LIKE A COMEDY.

    DONT BE FOOLED AS A CONSUMER YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO ASK FOR A REFUND FOR THEIR FAILURE TO PROVIDE A SERVICE AND YOU SHOULD WRITE TO ORANGE ENDING YOU AGREEMENT. DONT BE SCARED OFF BY THEM GO AND SPEAK TO YOUR LOCAL CAB OFFICE OR CONTACT OFFCOM.

    HOW SAD THE ORANGE IS ROTTEN

    Comment by Mark O' Donnell — February 8, 2007 @ 10:40 pm

32. Hi
    Itoo am experiencing appuling customer service from orange. Was previously a wanadoo customer with broadband and everything was fine with Orange until I purchased an Orange mobile, where you get Free broadband.
    That evening, my service kept randomly disconecting and my landline will not work when plugged into the filter.
    BT have tested the line and it appears fine, Filters have been replaced and modems reinstalled several times. After 3 weeks of calls to india customer servives and going over the whole problem everytime, Orange are now agreeing to a line test.
    The problem now being my landline is constantly engaged on incoming calls, and totally dead on out going calls.
    Everything was fine, upto the evening where i signed up for FREE broadband, obviously an inferior package, cos its FREE!!

    Comment by Neil Birney — February 13, 2007 @ 2:11 pm

33. Just giving an update…..so far so good been back on line sinceFeb 1st exactly 4 months to get fault fixed they took me back off LLU and put me on streaming. But my speed is terrible 448/512 kbps however I am just glad to be able to switch pc on and get connected. I dont think any one in our village has a good connection speed because of the distance from exchange.
    I would think Neils problem is with the BT line or at the exchange if BT done a check then surley they would have picked up the engaged fault. Make then do another test.

    Comment by Leighton — February 16, 2007 @ 10:22 am

34. 8meg broadband…..in reality downloads of 0.8mbs and uploads of 0.2mbps.
    Customer service is pathetic.
    I called the helpline to a call centre God knows where last night, and they were useless, they couldn’t wait to get rid of my call.Told me to change the filter (big joke) and call back.
    When I called back (within 5 minutes) I got a message sayong that the helpline was closed.
    In my contract it says that the helpline is available 24/7.
    I’m looking elsewhere for my broadband, any recommendations?

    Comment by Stephen — February 17, 2007 @ 11:12 pm

35. Family memebers have been using Orange Broadband for around 14 months but after a free upgrade to 8 meg broaband they no longer get any connection -merely “PPP Protocol Termimated”.

    Is this due to the LLU services ? I am also with Orange but as yet havent been upgraded from 2 meg… even though we lives less than half a mile apart.

    Any one got any suggestions apart from the usual re-install the speedtouch software ??

    Comment by Jason — February 18, 2007 @ 7:19 pm

36. Just a quick rant of my Orange experience to date…….

    I ordered 8MB with Livebox on 14th November 2006. On the website, it clearly stated that the line would be active withing 10 days. After 14 days, i decided to call and see what was going on. I was then told that the order had been canccelled!!! I asked by who? They said it had been cancelled because of a problem with the line..Nice of them to contact me, the new customer and let me know’. Anyway, i was then told that it would be re-ordered and to call back in a few days… I didnt call back until before xmas, because i didnt have time to wait on the phone trying to get through. When i called, they told me they were having trouble trying to get me 8MB and were going to put an order in for 2MB…And to call back - again!!!

    At the end of Jan this year, i emailed them and complained like hell, almost three months since i ordered and still not on! I then got one back to say the ADSL line had been activated on 21st December 2006. I had no confirmation, letter email or anything to say this!!!! And still no live box!! So Last week(sat 10th Feb) they said they had put another order through for my livebox, and it would be here within 2 - 5 working days…and today, 6 working days later - still nothing! Last week i connected up with a netgear router, and connected fine, but i am barely reaching dial up speeds!!! I am going to cancel before my 30 days cancellation period is up - Absolutely crap - crap customer service!!!

    What gets me - they keep asking you to call back - on premium rate number…they say the havent got the facility to call you back….THEY HAVE WHEN YOU OWE THEM MONEY HAVENT THEY???????

    Absolute shambles of a service!!!

    Comment by Ste Middleton — February 19, 2007 @ 9:58 am

37. I am to having problems with orange. I signed up with Orange Free Broadband on the 6th of January 2007 and was told that my Phone Line connextion would be updated to allow my broadband connextion to work. But on the 19th of January 2007 i rang up orange to ask them if my Phone line has been updated to allow my broadband connecxtion but was told due to BT messing up i will not be able to connect to the broadband so i was told to ring back in few days time. IL KEEP YOU GUYS POSTED!!

    Comment by Gazellah03 — February 19, 2007 @ 8:20 pm

38. I wish I had found this page last December….

    I had no end of problems with Orange broadband hroughout December (yet I had few problems until then) in the end I decided to cancel (I was out of my contract period) but I couldnt even do that because when Orange issued me with a MAC code they were in process of upgrading my line speed - which was part of what caused the problem but when they upgrade the line they also use different MAC codes for the faster lines so my MAC didnt work…. in the end I spoke to someone who at least had half a brain at Orange and got a number of issues resolved… I subsequently ended up with the Orange broadband wireless package with free UK calls, 2 GB download max a month and a speed uf upto 4.5 GB and I pay £12.99 for that - Yep if you look at the Orange website there is no such package as they only offer the £14.99 basic broadband (2 GB, no phone calls, non wireless) or the £19.99 full package but you can get offers….

    I did have to agree to a new contract for that but even that was negotiable - they wanted me to agree to 12 months but I told them they had to be kidding so we settled for 6 months and after that I still keep the package I’m on at the same cost or upgrade if I want…

    Oh and did I mention I received a rebate for tiem my internet was down and a month free…. You an read more about the problems I had and some of the resolutions to those problems on my website link… ignore the main pages of the website unless you are interested in reading horrorand read take a look at the Blog page.

    I should add that just about most of the technical problems I had Orange were useless at resolving and at one point even told me they could not fix the problem… which I later managed to resolve myself. Do I still have problems… yes… te first seems to be that most weekday evenings I will find a problem with connecting to the internet between about 5.30 pm and 6.15 pm - why - I havent a clue… I guess people come home from office turn on computers and check their emails during that time and the Orange system can’t cope with it in my area (I’m just outside Glasgow) and the second problem is that unless I call the number I’ve been given by orange for my broadband phone prior to actually ringing out on that phone it seems to fail to connect… well on my end… the peole I am ringing are getting fed up with answering the phone and thinking I’ve hung up on them… and it was that problem that led me to this webpage today…..

    Comment by Alistair — February 19, 2007 @ 11:29 pm

39. Thank you for sharing your experiences .I am planning to switch over to the orange broadband but I have changed my mind after reading such ugly experieces.

    Comment by cliff — February 22, 2007 @ 5:26 pm

40. Started with Orange Free broadband on Dial up Speedtouch in October, decided to upgrade to Livebox, BIG BIG BIG HUGE MISTAKE, should have known there would be problems when it took 4 attempts to order the damn thing. Finally got it delivered in February it sat in box for 2 weeks due to faulty parts, orange tech staff are hopeless at trying to talk you through connecting it, promised faithfully it would work in wireless mode with both my laptop and pc (what a joke) I can get one working but not both at the same time, Tech staff very good at blaming everything under the sun for the connection not working eg the kettle boiling, pc problems wrong or incompatible wirless adapters, firewall on or off. And I have never been able to talk to the same call centre twice except of course call centre India where they are absolutely hopless at solving anything except for generating hugh telephone bills. Now dread my telephone bill coming last one was over £100, if anyone does decide to go with orange livebox i recommend you pay some one to come in and set it up for you, but not the ones recommended by orange their fee is over the top The futures bright the futures bright but not for its customers just for orange.

    Comment by Judy — February 23, 2007 @ 5:46 pm

41. Our Orange broadband has been down for over a week now and according to Orange tech support it will be almost impossible to change supplier because we live in Cardiff and have the dubious privilege of LLU Orange equipment in BT exchanges. What is OFCOM doing about this bunch of cowboys? It was exactly the same last October 2006 when large portions of the Orange network, sorry did I say network what I meant was Orange NOT-work,went down for days while they installed the LLU stuff. With Orange broadband no-one can hear you scream…

    Comment by Pierre — February 26, 2007 @ 10:38 pm

42. Ok here i am again, if you read my previous post you will know that i stopped paying orange due to thier inabillity to offer me the service i expect. So today those nice people @ orange disconnected me today, i duly rang them up to explain why i had stopped paying them, i was pleasantly suprised to be speaking to an english call centre, anyway i was put through to a guy in customer care, i told him the problem and i have to say he was totally understanding and very knowledgable, he went through every possible problem until it was discovered i had a faulty router, he was very apologetic and even gave me next month’s subscription free of charge, my connection is back on and it works great so i am willing to give them another chance, if every call centre worker i spoke to was as good as this guy i spoke to today then there would be no problems. The moral of the story is always try and speak to an english call centre (i am not racist).

    Comment by alan higgins — February 27, 2007 @ 6:54 pm

43. i would just like to thank you doug, u were right, by stopping payments to orange they finally moved thier arses and well hopefully have storted things out. It was radical action to take but i dont think i had a choice at the time. My internet has never worked so well but i will not take it for granted just yet, i will keep you all updated.

    Comment by alan higgins — February 27, 2007 @ 8:48 pm

44. Thanks all, I almost made the fateful mistake of moving over to Orange Livebox from AOL…..MMmm looks like I need to do some hunting around as Orange does no longer appear to be such an appealing move!

    Comment by Steve — February 28, 2007 @ 12:10 pm

45. After reading these genuine comments from genuine people regarding genuine problems with Orange, I don’t know what to think?

    At the moment I pay £15 for Tiscali Broadband which seems to be good, but like normal people who review their finances once in a while i realised that I could get Orange 8m broadband for only £5 per month, since I have a phone contract with them where I pay over £30 per month (incidentally their network is really bad in and around my house).

    So I called up Orange and a polite discussion from a nice lady based in UK (first test passed), who answered all the question and (unlike call centers in India) did not hang up on me. So after being tempted to go ahead with Orange offer with the Livebox I taught I’d do some quick research to see what the people on the net made of the hardware and what type of connectivity and connection the livebox has.

    Well well, here I am and totally confused, part of me is saying go ahead ad try them as its only £5 per month and you get free phone calls for landlines and orange phones, but the other part is saying don’t, and just wait because I really don’t want to be spending £0.50 per minute on phone calls to India or Tech dept. But I’m not sure if your are able to ring Orange tech support from you Orange mobile for free?

    I’m in two confused minds and I think I need some help, is there anyone who has had good experience with Orange and livebox broadband, or am I going to doom my self by signing up to them?

    Comment by Adam — March 2, 2007 @ 3:57 pm

46. I am normally a passive person, but I want somebody’s blood at Orange. I cannot believe what an appalling service they are offering us. I have been a happy Freeserve user for years. I am now lucky to be connected to my Broadband for more than a few minutes. It is unusable at weekends. My e-mails to work colleagues are bounced as spam and as I work from home quite often this is causing a major problem in communicating with anyone, I have had to resort to Hotmail. When I talk to Technical Support they say I must contact Customer Service, who then say I must contact Technical Support. I feel like Alice through the Looking Glass. Can someone tell me who I can tango over this fiasco?

    Comment by Lizzyk — March 3, 2007 @ 12:36 am

47. I’d like to add a pained ‘me too’ to this list. My Wanadoo/Orange connection had problems from day one, with the aforementioned PPP error. Any techies know the cause of this? Is Orange simply overloading its line? Surely it’s not coincidence that most peoples’ connections drop out at the peak usage time.

    Long story short, I spent 9 months of the 12 months with an intermittant connection, and countless hours trying to deal with the absolutely useless technical support team. By the time I got to month 11, the connection wouldn’t work at all, so I cancelled with the intention of moving to another provider. I’m now with Be, and I’m simply amazed to find I now have a connection that works all the time. I’ve not had to try their technical support yet, but I really can’t see how they can be any worse than Orange - and the three-month contract suggests that they are much less likely to disregard customer complaints.

    Comment by R Clark — March 3, 2007 @ 4:14 pm

48. Orange is totally useless. ADSL light keeps flashing and the connection breaks randomly, sometimes it drops for hours at a time, sometimes not even a minute. I am sick and tired of ringing customer services, as they keep bouncing me between two different branches, who each tell me to phone the other. They tried to blame my modem for the problem as i still had my one from Wanadoo. So they send me a new one which was broken. They said they would send out another, I waited and waited and it did not come. So i had to phone again and it arrived. Even still i get the same problem over and over. I am changing ISP as soon as i can but im sure they will try and block me. Even as i am typing this my connection has dropped 3 times. What a heap of crap. Orange should not be allowed to charge people for this usless heap of shit.

    Comment by Tom Kane — March 3, 2007 @ 5:39 pm

49. Hello all.

    I have today ordered my MAC code from Orange. I was told to expect it by email within 5 days… We’ll see. I have been completey unhappy with Orange broadband and have read some real horror stories on www.orangeproblems.co.uk - and I mean real horror stories. Anyway, I am currently soon to be off of Orange’s 2Mb connection because I am aware that they are upgrading all of their exchanges to LLU to offer 8Meg connections and it is this that causes all the problems. When I asked Orange the date for LLU’ing my exchange, all they say is there is no date yet set to update that exchange… What they mean is we know roughly when it will be but we’re not telling you! Why would they warn me of potential “Orange Problems”!!!

    Anyway, to others, I suggest you look at orangeproblems as there is a wealth of information there and quite frankly, it tempted me away while i still can get away!!! I’m moving over to Be Broadband. And should go from 2meg to 24meg (or there about). I’ll feed back and let you know how i get on. Good luck all

    Comment by liverpool_lad — March 8, 2007 @ 12:18 am

50. I have been trying to sort out my connection speed with Orange for about 3 months now. I normally get 1.5Meg during the day but come evening, around 19h30, and my speed drops right down to 190 to 450k if I’m lucky. I called the Technical Support centre and they asked me to do a few things which didn’t change anything. I called them again. This time I couldn’t understand the person on the other side of the line, not his fault. After 10 minutes of not understanding I hung up. I e-mailed Orange instead. They came back to me saying that I should contact their Technical Support centre, which I reluctantly did. They suggested to run a line test but couldn’t because their system was down. I called BT and they informed me that the line is fine. I called Orange’s TS centre. This time the sytem was running and they ran a line test. The results came back clear, my line was fine. They then asked me to go throught the same steps as before. I said that I had already done these. They couldn’t figure out what the problem was. I e-mailed Orange again. They replied. The same old story. Call the TS centre again. I wrote right back that I wasn’t going to do that because I would be asked to do what I’d done twice before. i explained what my problem was. They replied yet again that I should contact the TS centre and run a line test. I replied saying that I had done so and that I was very unhappy with the service I was getting. They replied again apologising for the inconvenience and that I should call the TS centre to have the line tested!!!! I replied saying that there is nothing wrong with the line and that I wanted the problem solved or I would cancel my contract as they are not the only ISP around. They replied again, apologised for the inconvenience and asked that I call the TS centre to have my line checked. Are they taking the piss or are they just ignorant? I never had problems when Freeserve or Wanadoo were around. I wrote to them again saying that I wanted this problem solved once and for all. Let’s see what they are going to say in reply. I will just have to give them notice and cancel my direct debit with them. My advice… STAY AWAY FROM ORANGE! Walk away and look at other ISPs. I’m certainly looking.

    Comment by Mario — March 8, 2007 @ 11:22 pm

51. After waiting four months for connection fault to be repaired I have been up and running for six weeks.Gradually speed improving, though only half meg now over the last week its become painfully slow as low as 92kbps so Orange is still having problems. Incidentley you will find my first thread near the start of this forum and elswhere on these threads. If anyone has had problems since going on LLU then I suggest this the problem, they have put me back on IP streaming, at least I can still use the internet albeit very slow.

    Comment by Leighton — March 14, 2007 @ 9:08 pm

52. After waiting four months for connection fault to be repaired I have been up and running for six weeks.Gradually speed improving, though only half meg now over the last week its become painfully slow as low as 92kbps so Orange is still having problems. Incidentley you will find my first thread near the start of this forum and elswhere on these threads. If anyone has had problems since going on LLU then I suggest this the problem, they have put me back on IP streaming, at least I can still use the internet albeit very slow.
    Still think Orange are CRAP

    Comment by Leighton — March 14, 2007 @ 9:10 pm

53. Apologies to those people who have posted comments in the past month. I moved this blog to a new host and hadn’t noticed that the email alerts for new postings hadn’t been getting through to me. I’ve now moderated all comments and allowed recent ones to appear.

    Comment by Doug Clinton — March 17, 2007 @ 2:29 pm

54. Orange is without doubt the worst privider out there. I could write chapter and verse but i think everyone has covered it.
    I will say though that I ordered max servie in september last year which includes free telephone service. Suffice to say that it has never worked, So i am now going for compensation of 1) ALL my calls to support 2) All my telephone charges from BT.
    I spoke to Ofcom (number is 0207 981 3000) and raised a complaint. I will await the ombusmen (sp) to decide what happens.

    Comment by Rob — March 17, 2007 @ 4:02 pm

55. I am experiencing exactly the same problem and i expect that thousands of other Orange customers are going through the same. My theory is that this is all connected to Orange LLU and that they cannot rectify the problem at present. If they told us that then we could cancel our contract collect our MAC code and go somewhere more reliable. Imagine if they allowed all who complained of this problem to leave. They wouldnt have any customers. So instead of doing the decent thing they are stalling, hoping to find a solution and in the meantime sending us all round the bend.
    I would advise everyone to submit a complaint to OFCOM and let them deal with these sharks.

    Comment by Dave Eastham — March 18, 2007 @ 10:48 pm

56. Another unhappy Orange customer here. I didn’t choose Orange; I was a Wanadoo customer. In recent months SPAM has increased, but worse still, my emails are not being delivered to customers (and I’m not told of this). Other ISPs are blocking mails from Freeserve / Wanadoo / Orange and the technical people say it isn’t their problem. Hotmail doesn’t seem to accept email from Orange and I’m sure there are many others. Has anyone made a list of people we can’t send email to?

    Comment by Bill Roughton — March 19, 2007 @ 4:35 pm

57. Totaly agree, Orange are crap. No service, no support, no idea! Waste of time and money trying to deal with them. Whoever bought Wanadoo were in to make money and don’t give two hoots for customers.

    Go somewhere, anywhere, else but don’t touch this micky mouse company with a barge pole.

    Total rubbish!!

    Comment by Jack — March 19, 2007 @ 10:41 pm

58. Did anyone watch bbc1 watchdog programme 21/03/2007? It was about broadbrand providers, guess what? Orange were the worse, enough said!

    Comment by lan higgins — March 21, 2007 @ 8:45 pm

59. Mmm…feeling a bit Homer Simpson at the moment …I just signed up to Orange for their 8mb service with Livebox & VOIP. Doh!

    Having said that…it took 5 working days for the router to arrive, I plugged it all in, and apart from my PC having F: rather than C: as the system drive which partially tripped up the install software, forcing me to do a manual config of the router (simple enough if you know what you’re about)…it works fine. Speeds aren’t great as yet so I’ll log them for a week or two then try complaining about it. Moved the Livebox to it’s final home last night…and after powering it back up again found the VOIP line to have been activated and working fine. All in, that took 8 working days. Pretty darn good. Very early days yet of course and as I say, speed is way down on what it should be (BT offered me 6.5Mbps) but so far so good.

    ..and I happened to catch Watchdog last night. Lets hope the sincere sounding chap from Orange meant what he said.

    Comment by Chris Savage — March 22, 2007 @ 1:31 pm

60. Jesus, at last I am not going mental!!

    I have been with freeserve/wanadoo and now bloody Orange for years.

    Absolute disgrace of a service!! I am having the same problems as everybody else mentioned above. I upgraded, if that is what you can call it to ‘Livebox’, what a big mistake. Ever since Xmas I keep getting disconnected, 3 mins later I will be back up and then ‘poof’ gone again. I work from home so having this happen is a nightmare. Just glad I am not the only person.

    Anybody fancy steaming down to Watchdog and getting the muppets at Orange some bad press?? I am well up for it.

    Comment by RobbieB — March 27, 2007 @ 2:28 pm

61. Hi there everyone!

    I signed up for the 8mb unlimited service from Orange three weeks ago. Since then, I have had nightmare upon nightmare trying to sort out the dropouts and total loss of service (PPP Server Down). I have logged a number of calls with Orange over the problems but not a single callback or resolution to any of them. When I was first connected, I had a very good service of between 5.5mb to 7.5mb - this of course changed in the evenings when congestion would hit the networks. Now my problems have been getting worse, the ‘PPP Server Down’ incidents have become more frequent to permanent - I now have NO service whatsoever. I am a network engineer by trade so you can be assured that I have swapped out the router, filters, cables etc and my logon credentials/config are not the problem. Then I discovered www.orangeproblems.co.uk and this blog and I feel like the rest of you out there suffering from the same problems.

    Since my broadband service has been down, I have been using my trusted Freeola dialup connection. I have now paid more in dialup charges than I have paid for broadband!!

    So I have a few words of advice for you:

    1. When calling Orange support, NEVER select the ‘Technical Support Option’, you can be certain that the next person you will speak to will be some overly polite indian call centre who have very little in the way of technical knowledge and will script you though all of the ‘usual’ fault finding - then eventually just write you out a call ticket. Instead, I would recommend that you select ‘Customer Services’ and ask to be put through to ‘Technical Support’. Through this route, you will end up speaking to someone more competent and understandable …. and English.

    2. If you are considering Orange as a Broadband provider, I would recommend that you take very seriously the comments made by those in this blog and also have a look at www.orangeproblems.co.uk. It is very unlikely that they (Orange) will improve anytime soon due to the scale of their operation and their present state of ‘firefighting’ faults caused by their over failing over-subscribed equipment. Don’t let Orange blame BT’s equipment, much of the time it is their own equipment causing the problem and they need to reply upon a 3rd party to ‘bandaid’ it for them. Orange employees are not allowed in the exchanges so they have a contractor go in to fix thei equipment.

    3. Subscribe to a decent Broadband provider, have a look at the league tables and you will find plenty there. What is cheapest will not always give you value for money. Sometimes spending a little more on a connection will save you time and money in the long run. For example, how many of you Orange customers spent on the phone with ‘Technical Suppport’? Multiply the number of hours you have spent with them on the phone with your hourly rate. For example, if you normally earn £10 per hour but spent 5 hours on the phone with them per month, your broadband bill is £50 plus your subscription - very expensive!

    4. If you are currently with Orange and locked into a contract, research your rights as a customer and complain to Ofcom if you have been without any Broadband service from Orange. You will find you have more rights than what has been explained to you in their ‘Terms & Conditions’. If you can find an exit - GET A MAC CODE! If you can afford it, perhaps the penalty for ending your contract early might be worth saving your time and sanity.

    5. Complain, complain & complain - keep on the phone to Orange, ring them every day (not the indian call centre - see above). They will not call you back. If you keep the calls going into Orange, they will soon run out of people to answer the phones - this might be the only way to get them to realise that they cannot keep running a business this way. The BBC Watchdog program was helpful but the memory of which will soon fade away. You can keep the memories of that program fresh - keep calling them morning, afternoon and night.

    Thats it for me, I am getting rid of this turkey, it is my own damn fault for not researching this substandard Broadband service in the first place. Really people, we only need to look in the mirror for blame. God invented Google for a reason!

    I have been very lucky in the way that I have spoken to someone at Orange who has been sympathetic to my problems and has issued me a MAC code without penalty. I have signed up for ‘Be Unlimited’ who have an excellent reputation and do not use PPP at the exchange (no more PPP Server Down issues). They are £24 per month but I think that represents value for money compared to a £5 service that requires my time and effort to keep it running - when in fact, it does not run well at all.

    Best wishes to you all!

    Comment by DaranC — March 28, 2007 @ 4:34 pm

62. Problems with Orange Broadband since Oct 2006 very slow speeds since being given a free upgrade to 8 meg. My speeds have been between 85 and 5 KPS Ihave been on the Orange round about too and I am now feeling very sick. Orange Technical suppervion team are now calling me daily and last nigh I was told that they could still colud not solve the problem and we are back to square one!!!! I have asked for a refund of my last 6 mounth payments and not to be charged until the fault is finally corected. I was told that someone from thr CUSTOMER ACTION TEAM waould ring tonight and I was to be escallated ti VIP status, gues what no one called !!!! theres a supprise.

    Comment by RAY — April 3, 2007 @ 8:21 pm

63. Yes ORANGE Are CRAP and also LIARS.Anybody reading this who is considering going with orange i urge you to seriously reconsider. Now my experience -
    I was in my house when i received a phone call from orange.”would i like to upgrade my broadband speed to 8meg from my 2meg for an extra £5 a month”. I quickly went to orange website to check avalablity, it said upto 8 meg,so i got back on the phone,”it says upto 8meg how many meg will i get?” she replied “because of my area where i live i would get 8 meg and it would take between 24 to 36 hours for the speed to update” sounds good yes,”not only that you will get unlimited downloads and free phone calls ” so like an idiot i said yes. That was 7th feb 07 after about 100 phone calls of being told the same as everyone, problem with line,lets do a speed test,delete cookies,lets do a speed test,waiting for update,still not got update,will get a bt engineer to call you,when ever you phone them they never know what you are talking about,Like you will phone and say “the last time i phoned you told me a bt engineer was going to call” they reply lets do a line test” “no lets not do a line test, i know my speed as not changed” what about this engineer ” orange reply we dont do that, if you want a bt engineer phone one ! sorry if your bored already ,i am its now 4th april 07 and im still waiting,the last time i phoned they told me i was going to the priority dept, and it would take no more then 5 working days, GUESS what, phoned today ,the woman in india ,called “hilda” said in broken english ” lets do a speed test ,i will do a line test for you. i asked what about the priority dept ,she said “have you deleted your cookies,have you got a printer,what the f**k as a printer got to do with my speed upgrade. they state on there website speed upgrades take no longer than 10 working days, if i cancel they want £55

    please forgive my writing im dislecick

    Comment by steve — April 4, 2007 @ 9:06 pm

64. ARE THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE WHO IS GETTING 8MEG or ever had 8 MEG or is this false avertising. Who gets 8Meg ?????????

    Comment by steve — April 4, 2007 @ 9:17 pm

65. Hey there everyone, I wrote to you in paragraph 61. I am no longer a customer of Orange! Yay. I have been connected up with Be Broadband Unlimited - wow. What excellent service and I am getting a steady 20mb from my phone line - the same phone line that Orange claims that was the problem for my dropouts, disconnections and slow speed - what liars - it is obviously their equipment. My Be Broadband has been running for a week and NO dropouts, super fast and a full 20mb. My phone line is on fire! Message to everyone - quit Orange, pay £55 if you have to and sign up with Be. Where else can you get 20mb uncontended+reliable+superfast+unlimited? Their technical support is excellent - when I first connected I only got 8mb but a 10 min phone call got my line up to 20mb with a few tweaks (fastpath) - none of this ‘you could be waiting up to 20 days for the fault to be fixed’ or ‘we will do a line test’ or ‘call us in 48 hours’ rubbish. The Be problem was solved and I have not called them again. I did find out something very interesting with Be - your BT master socket truly gives you better performance and you also should check out the wiring in each of your telephone sockets and ensure that wires 2 and 5 are the ONLY wires connected. The additional connected wires cause extra line noise and attenuation. See http://www.dslzoneuk.net/socket.php for more information (note that this information will not help anyone with Orange problems).

    Comment by DaranC — April 7, 2007 @ 11:26 am

66. I agree that orange are complete liars and a waste of time. My boyfriend and I both signed up to wanadoo years ago for our broadband service, and so did not CHOOSE orange. Since wanadoo changed to orange we have experienced nothing but problems; slow connections, if connected at all, and poor customer service, when we’re not receiving automated responses!

    When my boyfriend rang up to ask for a MAC code he ended up speaking to two different reps. The first had blaimed the poor connections on the fact that orange were updating lines so that he coud experience 8Meg for the same price he was paying (and currently receiving 1Meg!!!) Yet when he spoke to the second rep, she obviously didn’t want to give the code and tried bargaining, offering a free upgrade to 8meg connection. Isn’t that what the first rep said was happening anyway??

    When i rang up two days ago, the EXTREMELY rude and patronising guy i spoke to tried telling me that i have an unbundled line and so even if i have the MAC code, hardly any other ISP would be willing to accept it from me due to having an unbundled line….. funny that, because i know a few people who also got told the same thing by orange and yet have had no problems swapping to other, more reliable ISP’s. He also tried telling me that my problem was probably due to my line… which i know is bullcrap! Funny thing is, when i pointed out that many of my friends were also extremely annoyed with oranges poor service, and that it would hardly be likely that every single one of them has faulty lines, he kept telling me that i couldnt judge my problems compared to other peoples, and that they are all independent of each other… blah blah - one thing i will say - the reps are trained about how to waffle their way out of a paperbag!!!

    Basically orange are ripping people off, making the pay for a broadband service that they cannot provide. Im not in the least bit surprised about the watchdog report. Anyone reading this thinking of trying orange - DON’T!!!! It’s not worth the hassle or lies!!!

    Comment by Stacey — April 13, 2007 @ 12:48 pm

67. Nice to see comments, people can learn from other peoples mistakes, I wish I had. I would prefer to use a length of string and two bean cans than orange. Orange do not consider its customers needs. If you want to read my plight have a look at this site.
    http://www.orangeproblems.co.uk/mobiles/

    Comment by ora — April 13, 2007 @ 9:54 pm

68. I have had a similar issue although my internet has been entirely down for over 2 months. I have been round and round in circles with orange and have never experienced such poor customer support. Support is a misnomer - this is avoidance and stalling tactics - we have your money, go away. In addition I have repeatedly been told that according to their records I have not reported a fault or that I reported it only a few days prior to calling (when in fact it has been weeks, months). How can you win when these people do not appear to be inputting anything or worse still, deleting entrys in their system? Everything else mentioned has been the same - line test after line test, the promise of a call from technical support which never manifests etc etc.

    I have also been told that I will have to buy my way out of my ‘contract.’ A contract which was agreed, casually, over the telephone when someone from Orange cheerfully called me to offer me 8mb unlimited broadband for a fiver a month. My question would be - how binding are these ‘verbal contracts’ since at no time was I made aware of any terms and conditions and there is surely also no actual proof of me agreeing to any service at all. Unless they really do record the phone conversations, to which end I have requested the recording so that I might identify where I agreed to pay for something which categorically doesn’t work, a non-existant technical support department and unhelpful, deliberately misleading and evasive customer care.

    Comment by Liam — April 17, 2007 @ 3:43 pm

69. Orange broadband is crap, was ok when it was wanadoo. now i cant even stay online for an hour, complete pisstake. having virgin broadband installed next week, thank god.

    Comment by Simon — April 18, 2007 @ 5:49 pm

70. Been there, done that. They are just liars. Don’t waste your life trying to deal with Orange support - cancel and go elsewhere. It will be easier in the long run.

    Comment by Robert — April 18, 2007 @ 7:50 pm

71. Thanks to each and everyone of you who have made the comments you have. I am a deaf person, I rely on email and the www to help me with my Business and personal life. Went onto Orange Broadband 2 months ago and it has caused me to use swearwords I did not even think I knew. It is absolutely appalling that Orange can take so many people for the ride to nowhere and get away from it. Within 3 weeks I was almost tearing my hair out and asked my husband to cancel the whole shoddy set up. He telephoned and was told we would have to pay £200 to cancel? so HE decided to wait and see if things improved. They have not and I feel I have every right to unplug the load of rubbish that is supposed to give me faster and better access to the Internet. Ha!! Half the time I am unable to get on the internet and as for my email or serious lack of email, because it comes up time and time again, unable to send. If anyone out there would like to join me in a mass “send their bits back to them” I would be delighted to hear from them, that is, of course if you can get through.

    The biggest load of rubbish and the ruin of my social and Business life. CRAP CRAP CRAP They should be sued by a great big load of us together and see what happens then.

    Comment by rIita — April 22, 2007 @ 8:40 pm

72. same problems here. i’ve been a loyal customer of Freeserve since the early dialup modem days. no problems when i moved to broadband with them. then wanadoo - no problems either. but orange in recent weeks has been atrocious. major problems with connection reliability.

    Comment by mister scruff — April 24, 2007 @ 4:20 pm

73. Orange Broadband more like Orange B’s to me, 3 weeks and still my livebox refuses to pick up the broadband signal, strangely enough the smashed up old ‘ancient’ BT voyager 105 modem works fine on their service, but minus home networking, minus wireless and minus VoIP! What exactly have I gained from orange aside a huge phone bill to their 5000 mile away overseas tech support, FA! Please AOL take me back now I promise I will never ever, ever complain again after this…. BTW don’t bother calling Bollywood, AKA orange customer care, because India doesn’t care and India isn’t listening, but damn they sure are nice people…. only positive thing going for this joke of an ISP IMO.
    India advised me to change the filters
    India advised me to reinstall the software
    India advised me to wait a week for a line test
    India advised me it was BT’s fault
    India advised me to reset Pandora’s box
    India advised me to reduce my line speed to 1meg
    India advised me to use an old modem
    India advised me to call back next week …….u catch my drift!
    AVOID THESE CHALATENS AT ALL COST!!!!!

    Comment by sam — April 25, 2007 @ 2:00 am

74. nice to know that so many people are being stuffed up by the Orange broadband service. After 6 weeks of waiting to be connected to the orange server, nothing. i have been told that there is an exchange fault with the BT exchange. i rang BT technical who tested the line there and then. and surprise… no fault on the line or at the wallington exchange.
    however BT advised me to make a complaint to OFCOM regarding the failure of Orange to provide their broadband service in their stated time frame.
    ?? are Orange and BT talking to each other? i think not.

    Comment by chris hurford — April 25, 2007 @ 4:15 pm

75. ORANGE IS CRAP
    LIKE THE REST OF MOST OF YOU ,ORANGE HAS TOTALLY PISSED ME OFF.
    I HAD THE WORST SPEED TODAY THAT I EVER HAD, 9KB !!!!! IM SUPPOSED TO BE ON AN 8MEG CONNECTION ,THATS FIVE TIMES SLOWER THAN MY AOL DIAL-UP CONNECTION I PREVIOUSLY HAD,
    DONT MENTION THE INDIAN CALL CENTER,ALL THEY DO IS MAKE YOU GO ROUND IN CIRCLES,
    I AGREE THEY SHOULD BE SUED A SHED LOAD OF US ,
    ORANGE IS CRAP AND CRAP IS ORANGE ,

    Comment by RAY — April 25, 2007 @ 8:03 pm

76. Hi there,
    spent 45 mins on telephone to cure a fault at 7p/min only to find he didn’t have a clue what was wrong after setting up Livebox.
    I found out it had to do with the “timeout” button which had reset itself to 20secs or so.
    Fault was”error 0×800CCCoE”.
    Go to outlook express -tools-accounts-properties-advanced-
    alter slide to the right, Hope this helps someone,
    Peter

    Comment by Peter King — April 27, 2007 @ 10:40 am

77. Its me again as above,
    can anyone tell me what use is the voicemail option in Livebox.
    My messages go onto the phone I’ve connected just as ordinary messages did before when it was connected to BT.
    Sorry for being thickish, but I can’t get any sense out of Orange,
    Peter

    Comment by Peter King — April 27, 2007 @ 10:45 am

78. As above,
    just seen in Comp. Active the fault 0×088 etc which they say can be cured by putting in the correct smtp etc.
    That doesn’t work–neither did my answer work for ever.
    I do not know what the answer is apart from continually running my registry cure software.
    Signing off–that’s it–farewell to all,
    peter

    Comment by Peter king — April 30, 2007 @ 10:13 pm

79. Still the same 95k on a good day,
    is anyone else on the woodford exchange having problems ?

    Comment by RAY — May 2, 2007 @ 10:36 am

80. orange are crap. got disconnected on saturday (PPP server login failure. error 721) , and its still down. no feedback from tech support. no follow up despite numerous emails and calls.
    escalated to ISPA, my local MP, and Ofcom. will write letter of complaint to the CEO of France Telecom.

    Comment by mister scruff — May 2, 2007 @ 2:36 pm

81. And I thought that I was alone in the world ! I started having problems with my broadband 6 days after the LLU was added to my line. So far I can factpry re-set my box in my sleep and have spoken to both UK and Overseas based call sites and have not got anywhere. I have started to record my calls in the vain hope that if nothing happens soon I will pass then onto a TV prob / paper who can name and shame. Out of interest do any of you live in the 02392 area as this is where I am based out of

    Comment by Chris — May 3, 2007 @ 2:29 am

82. Oh God, why didn’t I read these messages before signing up to Orange’s shambolic 8MB Wirlesss & Talk offering. It’s been 11 days now without broadband, this is the second time this month i’ve lost all connectivity, the first time was for 5 days and i thought that that was the end of it. The error is the usual “PPP server down” and the Livebox just sits there with the @ light blinking slowly. I’ve done more factory resets than I care to remember, more out of blind optimism than any real hope that it’ll do anything. I’m going to try the Speedtouch 330 modem if I can still find it as I have absolutely no confidence that Orange will sort this out any time soon.

    How are they allowed to get away with this ? It wouldn’t be tolerated in any other service industry.

    Comment by Dean — May 3, 2007 @ 4:40 pm

83. i’m still down. PPP server error. no follow up or response from orange.
    my login is an ex-wanadoo one. as in username.wanadoo.co.uk@fs
    i’m on the 01256 basingstoke exchange. was that LLU’ed?

    Comment by mister scruff — May 4, 2007 @ 2:39 pm

84. I am not happy with orange broadband service since Feb 2007 I am with Orange I am having lot of problums. The speed is very slow. I am on 8 Meg but I am getting only 130 to 150 kbs. I called there customer service and help desk hundred of time but they are useless.
    The last e-mail I got from orange they said sorry we cannot help me but they are charging me the full fee.

    Comment by Faheem Ali — May 7, 2007 @ 11:17 am

85. i got my mac code from orange today! signed up to fast.co.uk. should have my broadband back next week. fingers cross.

    faheem -> sounds like either a severely high contention ratio, or they are speed capping you.

    Comment by mister scruff — May 9, 2007 @ 11:52 am

86. ditto orange suks, but unliek u with the slow conections i get the exact same conection speed but 3 times a day, for 2 hours i get dc from the net and this is pinpoint timing on the dc’s i eman its every 9 mins, i get dc for 18secs, i reconect for 6 secs n i get dc for another 18 secs, then its the same old crappy orange .. for another 9 mis that is, n the wierdest thing is the times it hapens , 4:30-6:30 , 12:30-2:30, and 7:30-9:30, im like wtf, i signed up with freeserve, and apart from the stupid call centers i dont no why they cant jsut admit the problem they are having … i mean FFS they have evan been on the news for being the WORST internet provider! now thats a nice title 2 have 4m the evening news… but oh well… orange seniors need to be saked they just dont cair about the people on the other end of their service

    Comment by Harrier — May 14, 2007 @ 4:41 pm

87. I forgot that i had posted here previously - and promised to feedback! Sorry for delay - i have been too busy enjoying my Be broadband which downloads at about 18meg (is an up to 24meg connection) and uploads at 1.2 meg!!!

    Sorry to you guys still with orange… If it helps, as it did me, visit www.orangeproblems.co.uk

    i found some really useful tips there and many people that were in a similar situation to me.

    I fortunately got the right MAC from them within 4 days (only because i phoned them, not because they emailed it to me - TAKE NOTE if you are ordering a MAC) but they are apparently/allegedly now giving out incorrect MACs!

    Move away from Orange asap - otherwise you will regret it!

    Good luck all!

    Comment by liverpool_lad — May 15, 2007 @ 8:38 pm

88. by the way - the bit i forgot to mention is that the website i linked to is on bbc radio 4 - i think it is tomorrow just after 12 noon — th you and yours programme - they are discussing orange problems - not sure which ones - i should think it would have to be a long show to get them all in

    Comment by liverpool_lad — May 15, 2007 @ 8:40 pm

89. AVOID ORANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME….THE ONES IN LONDON (CUSTOMER SERVICES…ARE SO RUDE) I can’t believe ORANGE even employ people with loads of attitude problems.
    Recently, orange have messed up my broadband and they are too slow to fix things and rude SPT team (provisioning team).
    -12 Apr. they disconnected my broadband (as I work from home…couldn’t work so I have to commute, costing me £12 petrol a day)
    -I have been calling them every Tuesday and Thursday since the disconnection
    -The customer service (technical support, guess in India) are generally competent. The ones in London are a nightmare
    -Got an email from Orange (on 10th May) saying they have finished upgrading my BB and now I can get 8Meg
    -My broadband still didn’t work, and contacted them to see what the problem is. They are adamant that this is a technical support issue.
    Called technical support, they say - Orange didn’t activate the account correctly
    -I checked my line with BT online and found out my phone line can actually ONLY SUPPORT maximum 4.5Meg
    -Confronted them with this information, and asked to speak to a supervisor (on 15 May)…they are still doing a line test and this could take another 48 hours
    -Contacted them after 48 hours, still claiming the engineers didn’t get back to them!!ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!
    In general, ORANGE are nightmare and planning to get a MAC code and change provider if this is not sorted by end of this week.

    Comment by Abel — May 17, 2007 @ 12:39 pm

90. Ive had enuf of orange. They promised that my line cud support up to 4 megs n for the first month i got this. Then gradualy this went down to 3 megs then 2 then 1 n now im lucky to get 20kbs download. My upload speed is faster at 100kbs. How is this possible.I know what it feels fellow orange customers. Ive rang technical and customer services so many times, i may aswell make friends with them. I was fine wiv freeserve, and wanadoo bcuz i got the service i was promised but since upgrading to the livebox in march the phonelines av been making loads of static noise and there is always a pernament echo on the line. Gess wat, iv bin told its a problem wiv the line by an indian (yet to speak 2 sum 1 english in customer services). However, when i carried out a line check with bt it was fine. Then i was told it was the filters, so i changed these, still no change. Then i was told it is because the livebox is on an extension cable and not the master socket. If this was the case how come it worked for the first month? Orange are a joke and for a 16 year old lad to be saying that, it must mean sumfink. I cannot send or recieve email. I mite aswell not have the internet due to the speeds im getting but i need it for GCSE revision. Contactiong OFCOM mite b a good idea becuse were being charged for something were not recieving. And as i study business, you will find that they are breaking their contract and the law. I am fed up n deperately need a way out. Ne ideas?

    Comment by Orangesuck — May 18, 2007 @ 6:37 pm

91. Same problems, so what me and my girlfriend done together (she is got some brain): we stopped calling orange because it is useless, canceled direct debit, called BT requesting side step procedure, send complaint to orange-if no response, to offcom as well, issued bill to orange with my fee of 30£ per hour talking with technical support and call centre staff + bt charges at 7.5 p per minute (around 22 p from mobile),so far they own me 150£ of my time+55 £ for call charges +5£ administration charge + 4.5£ payment processing fee, 2% per day late payment charge and if not satisfied or mac code provided in 30 days-small court claims procedure on the grounds of false advertising and breach of contract.If my invoice will be not satisfied i will be collecting signatures for collective claim and aim to collect minimum of 50, because than collective claim will be processed much quicker and easier and it will be satisfied. with regards Sly.

    Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — May 23, 2007 @ 3:14 am

92. WoW, this article could not have been closer to the truth of the experiences we have had over the last 3 months. Intermittent *apparently* 8 meg broadband at best, with downtime of up to 8 hours is the norm for us. We are on our third iteration of the cycle mentioned in the article and to be honest it is a complete joke. We are so frustrated with this rubbish.

    Downtime once a week is tolerable, but every day i a complete joke. Now, as for their customer services, what a joke as well. The seem determined to take you round the same cycle of things over and over again. We have spoken to 2 supervisors so far in escalations, the first of which was very sympathetic and offered a refund for the last 2 months. This at least counterbalances the high costs of phoning their various departments with ridiculous holding times. The second “supervisor” we spoken to, name withheld, was VERY obnoxious to us and in no way sympathetic, blaming us for not knowing what they were currently doing and suggesting the fact that we are currently getting the broadband for free that we should be satisfied, even if it is only working, no joke, perhaps 20% of the time.

    We have never had these types of problems with any other ISP, and their caviler attitude to their customers problems, and role reversal making the customer feel responsible is totally ridiculous. To experience what we did from a so called Orange supervisor was despicable and we are now at the point of despair. The fact they want to charge us £170 to cancel also makes us so sick.

    The last person who commented, saying they are canceling their direct debit is a stroke of genius, haha, like they said, someone has a brain!! Orange do not have a leg to stand on regarding this disgrace of a service.

    Take our advice:
    DO NOT SIGN UP TO ORANGE…

    Comment by Pete + Rach — May 23, 2007 @ 1:06 pm

93. check out http://www.orangeproblems.co.uk again - there has been an article on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme today and the website is on BBC Radio 5 Live tomorrow morning - thought you guys may be interested - things are hotting up! You can listen to the programmes on the BBC website if you missed them - there are links on the orangeproblems website

    There are thousands of customers complaining!

    Comment by liverpool_lad — May 23, 2007 @ 10:22 pm

94. Interesting programme but what was more poignant was the fact that Orange declined to come into the studio to comment. My problems have been going on since January without letup. Obviously the listen again feature is lovely - but if you are on Orange you won’t hear it as the 8Meg broadband connection is so slow (442k this evening) I can’t stream it at home. Have to rely on a more reliable connection from work!

    Comment by another liverpool lad — May 24, 2007 @ 6:56 pm

95. Hi!Me again.Orange actually breaking their own code of practice, because their minimum speed supposed to be 512k(p.6 line 4), i am getting around 100 kbit, which a way too low and no wireless and talk service present at the moment from the connection date. Me personally haven’t paid a penny yet because i canceled DD straight after, but because they failed to disconnect me after various requests within 14 days period of connection it will be my argument in court. As a consumer i assume that no service means no charge, no matter what, i am not prepared to pay for smelling pile of sh*t and it not suppose to be my personal problem investigating where exactly it smells. I am a very busy man same as you all are.So today i am finishing my case preparations, invoices and i will keep you updated how i am doing. Sly.

    Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — May 25, 2007 @ 11:23 am

96. Good advice for people using their credit/debit cards as a payment method-you need to call orange (i know) to tell them that you are not permitting them to use your credit card details anymore, get name of the person, date, as much details as possible. than call your credit card company with details-do the same, get name etc, if your credit card will be charged it will be illegal because it happened without your permission, all CC companies will get your money back as a rocket.
    same method with recorded delivery but it less reliable if nobody signs for mail.

    Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — May 25, 2007 @ 11:30 am

97. WE HAD FREESERVE THEN WANADOO WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS WHEN I RAND IN DEC60 FOR A MAC CODE TO CHANGE TO ANOTHER SUPPLIER (WHOS SPEED WAD 8 MEG FOR THE SAME AS I WAS PAYING ORANGE)THEY CONVINCED ME THEY COULD MATCH IT AND GIVE ME A PHONE LINE ASWELL! GREAT STUFF……..NOT.ANYONE ENGLISH WORK FOR THESE PEOPLE OR WHAT?WE LOSE CONNECTION IT RUNS LIKE DIAL UP.THE AMOUNT IT MUST HAVE COST ME THESE LAST FEW WEEKS IN PHONE CALLS DOSENT BEAR THINKING ABOUT,MY PHONE BILL WILL BE COMING ON A WHEELBARROW!THEY SAY THEY ARE CALLING YOU BACK MMMMMM AS IF!THEY WONT END MY CONTRACT AS IT STILL HAS 7 MONTHS LEFT ON IT AND I HAVE HAD PROBLEMS SINCE WE SWITCHED OVER IN DECEMBER SO I HAVE TO STAY WITH THIS SHITTY SERVICE(IF THATS THE RIGHT WORD)TILL I HAVE COMPLETED MY PART OF THE DEAL.ORANGE ARE NOT KEEPING TO THEIR PART OF THE DEAL SO WHY ARE THEY ALLOWED TO CONTINUE RIPPING US ALL OFF?WHY IS NO-ONE STOPPING THEM?HOW THE HELL DO I GET OUT OF THIS ONE?I AM NOT PAYING FOR THE REST OF MY CONTRACT WHY SHOULD I?IF ANYONE HAS A SOLUTION TO HOW I GET RID OF THESE JOKERS THEN PLEASE LET ME KNOW.I HAVE SOMEONE FROM COMPLAINTS RINGING ME TOMORROW SO I CAN GIVE HIM THE RESULTS OF MY OVER NIGHT SPEED TESTS(I KNOW IT WONT MAKE A DIFFERENCE)HE RANG ME TODAY FOR THEM AND THEY WERE AT 5MB SODS LAW LOL.THE ENGLISH TECH TRIED GETTING ME OUT OF THE CONTRACT BUT THE SENOIRS WOULDNT LET ME GO AND HE SAID THEY WERE INFORCING THE CONTRACT AGAINST ME.WHEN HE RINGS TOMORROW I WILL BE TELLING HIM I HAVE CANCELLED MY DD AND I WILL BE SENDING THE LIVEBOX BACK AND AS FOR THE PENALTY CHARGES THEY CAN SHUVE EM!!!20P A WEEK IF PUSH COMES TO SHUV.

    Comment by donna — May 26, 2007 @ 8:58 pm

98. They may do something to collect debts, but if you have enough evidence and you ready to pay 30£ in court it can be solved, but it is a risky possibility because courts in the uk very strange. what I did at the moment - i rang my telephone provider requesting clear the line procedure-they sad no, so i then complained that i am receiving unsolicited calls from different Indian companies:) and requested the number change. as soon as it will be done, I’ll get myself a different provider with no tie-in contract.And Orange can stick their bill up their **s, with regarding to livebox, on my invoice it states “livebox recycling fee 10£” because we must fight global warming:) i tried to send it back but they do not want it back, so as far as i assuming it will go to the bin or on eBay.

    Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — May 27, 2007 @ 5:22 am

99. Got a live-box mostly for the free phone calls.Never had the use of it as phone line was so noisy could not use it. Complained 5 times- on the phone for over a hour and a half at the time turning the live box on and off,unplugging wires, restarting and punching in new codes and to no avail!Got so fed up that i moved back to dial up as didn’t want to keep paying for service i didn’t get and when orange sent the dial up they didn’t send all the right stuff to install it. Phoned them to get the stuff and two and a half weeks later still not here. Have just phoned them to cancel the whole shooting match and they want me to pay £156.00 to leave a contract that i haven’t been able to access as the stuff hasn’t arrived to install it.
    I work for a Citizens Advice Bureau and you come up against this kind of rubbish all too often. I won’t mention any company ‘cos of client confidentiality but i have to say that the service that i have had is as bad as i have had to deal with.
    If the future is orange then god help us all.

    Comment by John Foulis — May 29, 2007 @ 7:12 pm

100. I am 70years old pensioner on state pension,and really cannot affored the terrible time orange are giving me please will some one give me advice? have been with freeserve, wanadoo, horrible orange broadband, have desperatly been trying to council orange broad band, even stopped direct debit,i have phoned and phoned they tell me they have no record of my complaints? each time i phone they say my migration code will come by email, each different person seems that they do not know what the other has said or done? if i deleted all orange off my computer and took of their software (cleaputer of them?) would i then be able to sign to another isp? as i have treid to sign with tiscalli but they ask for a migration code that orange will not give me, please can some one help??thank you

     Comment by Rose — June 15, 2007 @ 9:42 am

101. Glad to see that i am not alone, used to have Wanadoo 2meg broadband which ran ok, decided to change to 8meg 2 months ago, since then i have to regulary reset the livebox on a Saturday it appears to go down sometime after midnight on the Friday, my broadband speed is down to 36Kbps orange are carrying out line checks and have tro ring back to find out results, had new main connection put in by BT (£160)last week, so I know the main connector is Ok, if it is not sorted I will go to another IPS, have been with Feeeserve/Wanadoo since they started and had no problems until Orange took over.

     Comment by Mike Everett — June 19, 2007 @ 12:31 pm

102. Happy Days! after 3 months of suffer,dd cancellation, telephone calls and Full complaints procedure!!!!(2nd stage of ispc) received a call from orange saying that they will refund all call charges, clear the line and i am not liable for any money to them! +confirmation letter.Complaints are big power.Russians never give up. Thanks to my girl.That’s all folks.

     Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — July 18, 2007 @ 12:03 pm

103. To Rose: all complaints to orange only in writing-if no reponce in 5 working days,escalate higher.

     Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — July 18, 2007 @ 12:05 pm

104. Well done, Vjaceslavs. For everyone having problems with Orange broadband it’s good to know that persistence will pay off in the end.

     Comment by Doug Clinton — July 18, 2007 @ 12:29 pm

105. […] It is interesting for me that on this blog (not the most popular or active in the world, for sure) one of the most popular posts has been my rant against Orange for their disgusting broadband service. To date there have been 104 comments from similarly frustrated and dissatisfied Orange customers and it has become something of a forum for people to not just express their emotions on the issue, but to keep people informed of the progress they are making in the fight against a totally broken customer service situation, and, in some cases, to announce their final victory. […]

     Pingback by What did you learn at the office today? » Joel on Dave on Blog Comments — July 20, 2007 @ 10:12 am

106. Story isn’t finished yet. Orange cleared the line yes, cleared all money on the account yes, but I still waiting for confirmation letter and cheque for calls i made to them from mobile and landline. So if I will get nothing by friday, i will escalate complaint and it will cost to orange 750£. Nice.No regret.
     It will be my final thanks to their customer service and quality broadband:)))

     Step 0. Angry? frustrated? totally crazy about their services? and customer centres in India?
     Step 1. If they are not responding via emails, calls etc-cancel DD
     Step 2. write complaint to them and send it with recorded delivery, give the 5 working days to respond
     Step 3. no responce? escalate with ISPA first complaint. Cost to Orange 50£
     Step 4. no responce? escalate with ISPA second complaint, which will cost 750£ to Orange

     Step 5. Still no Responce? Offcom after 3 months+small claim court to claim everything you spent+your time+admin fees+postage+petrol expences to local post offices.:)

     My(my girlfriends -she is amazing in this:))) complaint here for reference:

     All my detail deleted except name….
     Contact address:
     Contact telephone:
     21st June 2007

     The Manager
     Orange Customer Care
     PO Box 486
     Rotherham
     S63 5ZX

     Dear Sir/Madam
     Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (as amended)
     I have requested your services (Broadband unlimited package with unlimited calls) on 19th April by telephone and your advertisements promised that the broadband will be ready to use in up to 10 working days after joining. The information pack you have sent me with the Livebox also stated that within 7 days of setting up my Livebox I should get an e-mail from you confirming my Talk phone number and that my Talk service is ready to use.

     The internet service was supposed to start working on 30th April 2007, but due to you administrative mistake it was only activated a week later on 5th May 2007. I have called you on 7th May to cancel my contract and you refused to do that. As the start date for the contract is 5th May, you haven’t fulfilled you obligation to cancel it within 7-day cooling off period (under Consumer Protection or Distance Selling Regulations).

     The internet service you provided me with has never been working properly; I was experiencing extremely slow speeds (slower than my dial-up connection via modem) and intermittent connections. I have taken out the contract on the basis of understanding that my internet connection will be an ‘always on’ connection. I have been monitoring my connection very closely and noticed that I got disconnected from the internet at nights and few times during the day.

     The code of practice on your website also states that the minimum speed I get is 512 K. However, I have performed several speed tests (including BT speed tests) and all of them showed download results of well under 512 K – anything up to 220 K. The following are the BT speed test results: 23rd May 21:40 – 113 kbps; 25th May 22:06 – 12 kbps, 22:28 – 3 kbps; 26th May 11:34 – 2 kbps, 13:06 – 3 kbps. As far as I am aware you are buying the internet service from BT wholesale, which finds speeds of under 400kbits per second unacceptable for up to 8Mbits/s service. Despite my many calls to you, Orange has failed to resolve this issue in reasonable time and every time I called on your customer support telephone I was given different reasons why my internet is so slow and no solution whatsoever.

     I have also called several times regarding my talk service, which has never been activated, meaning that you have breached part 4.2 of the contract, as the third element of broadband unlimited has never been provided to me and you again have failed to resolve this issue during and after many calls to your customer care and technical departments, which also refused to authorize cancellation without me paying the full 12-month contract fee, despite the fact that you failed to deliver promised services in promised times, made false advertisements that you were unable to satisfy and, therefore, were in breach of contract.

     On several occasions I have requested MAC code from you and you have failed to provide it to me at all times, although you are required to do so by law.

     I have contacted BT and their engineer visited my house and performed several different line tests and confirmed that my line is absolutely fine and should support internet service. This clearly proves that the problem was within your network.

     As a result of incompetent staff at your call centres and your inability to fix the problems within your own network in reasonable times, I had to spend 7 hours on the phone mostly with your Indian colleagues who appear to have less knowledge in IT, communications and ADSL service particularly than me myself. This has cost me £29.46 in telephone charges and even more in my valuable time (which I had to spend on doing various speed tests, monitoring my internet connection and speaking with your staff).

     Despite the fact that my broadband has not been activated on 30th April 2007 and that your staff has assured me that I will not have to pay anything until the internet service is up and running properly, you have tried to bill me from 1st of May (when my broadband activation has been delayed by you) and to charge me some ‘late payment fees’ which I have never heard of and which has never been mentioned in our contract. You have also tried to charge me for June, while again your staff in the customer care department has promised that I will have this month free.

     I also find it unacceptable and unfair that the only means of contacting me used by you is e-mail (especially in current circumstances, when I have contacted you many times regarding problems with my internet connection and when you have disconnected me from internet) as it is not a very reliable and secure communication medium.

     To sum up, as you were clearly in breach of contract and weren’t able to fulfil your obligations and promises, as a result of this complaint I would like you to take following action:
     1) cancel my contract and all the fees that should have been payable to you under this contract;
     2) clear my telephone line from your tags and provide me with MAC code in writing;
     3) refund me £29.46 incurred in telephone costs (evidence can be provided on your request);
     4) provide me with the copy of all recordings of the calls available to you made from the following telephone numbers:
     5) collect all the equipment that has been sent to me (livebox and cables) or alternatively provide me with the address where it can be sent back and sufficient postage;
     6) all the correspondence to be sent to me in writing only.

     Please treat this letter as my formal complaint and respond in writing within 5 working days.

     If I will not receive your reply by 2nd July 2007 I will escalate my complaint further, seek legal advice from my solicitor and take legal action against you.

     Regards,

     Mr Vjaceslavs Kasins

     Orange broadband e-mail address:
     Orange broadband username:
     Date of birth: Telephone number:
     Full postal address

     Enjoy!

     Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — July 25, 2007 @ 8:50 pm

107. Do not deal with orange over the phone! never!especially if you are calling them. another good site to know is www.saynoto0870.co.uk there is alternative numbers for orange:))

     Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — July 25, 2007 @ 8:54 pm

108. thanks to blog owner and everybody! hope everything i posted will help you to finish them.Special thanks to my lady.

     Comment by Vjaceslavs Kasins — July 25, 2007 @ 8:58 pm

109. I am having the same problem. I really hate Orange now! It was decent service when it was Freeserve or Wannado. After the company was sold to Orange, the connection went so bad. They said it is because of high demand due to cheap GBP9 package.

     Bad campany, bad service do not use Orange!!!

     Comment by tt — August 14, 2007 @ 8:20 pm

110. I’m having the exact same problem with Tiscali,iv been with the company for 4 years,2 months ago i switched from 2mb - 8mb a week after i changed i still wasnt getting 8mb not even 2mb any more.My connection was tested and was getting in the region of 1-1.5mb.Iv repeatadly rang and emailed them although email is pointless because they just fobb you off with anything.apparently me and a handfull of customers are experiencing extreme peak times,at which point i became furious as i dont even get what im paying for.They said the same thing - our engineers are currently working on the solution and cannot give an estimate as to when it will be completed,bearing in mind iv already been waiting 2 months.now the question is which ISP do i switch to as most of them are having the same problems with SHIT customer service to boot!

     Comment by bb — August 23, 2007 @ 10:41 pm

111. i used to have freeserve/wanadoo which worked great then shortly after orange took over it stopped working alltogether. after spending hours on the phone trying to understand people in india it finally emerged that there was nothing wrong at my end and the fault lay in the exchange. after two weeks of those morons telling me that it would be working tomorrw i finally had to borrow and old pc with a modem in it and buy some monthly dialup from tiscali just to get internet access so i could email them instead of driving my self almost insane on the phone.
     after another month still nothing had been sorted eventually i gave up and moved isp to bt i found that in all my dealings with them over this they were allways more than helpful and never failed to call me back when they said they would.
     it took a further month before orange finally released my line and i still have to pay the remainder of their contract as well as the new bt one it was the only way i could think of to free my self from them.
     i will never deal with orange broadband again

     Comment by tommaguzzi — August 30, 2007 @ 7:20 pm

112. Orange - How to lose your customers! Chief Exec / Chair /shareholders take heed.
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     Well where do I start. I originally had a fantastic service from Demon/Thus but moved to Plus.net, who also gave me a great service. Kids wanted a machine to do their homework on so I (foolishly) thought great theres an orange deal with PC World/Currys join orange and get a free laptop. For around the same price I paid per month at plus net. So I thought great I will switch as we already have 4 orange mobiles in the family and that service had been great.

     Step 1 - How to give your customers incorrect information to miss-sell a product.

     I am an IT Professional who works from home and uses an IPSEC based secure VPN to at home to connect my place of work/head office. This keeps the car journeys down saves the business money and of course is much greener.
     IPSEC/VPN
     ———
     Before Joining I rang the helpdesk and got put throught to an India call centre. The staff were polite though did not speak very good english and clearly had considerable difficulty in comprehending anything that did not follow a script they were reading from their screen! I enventually got put through to someone who claimed he was a technician he clearly struggled to understand but eventually found someone in his team who could answer my questions. My question will your livebox support ipsec connections? - yes it does it has a pre-configured option for ipsec. Well, yes it did have a pre-configured option, but despite trawling forums no-one including me ’someone qualified’ could get it to work. I strongly suspect that this could be down to MTU sizing (no option to change on the livebox) or NAT port forwarding (not working on the livebox). I have to switch from the livebox back to my netgear ADSL router to get connected to the office! Orange Technical support gave me the runaround systems down, try this number, try that number, we dont support this feature (but hang on it was sold to me as an option on the device you supplied!). Hopeless Service and Clueless support. Now I have to switch between devices to use my talk service and conect to the office.

     Mobile Calls on the VoIP talk service
     ————————————-
     Is it free to call orange mobiles. Yes I am told. What if I call my wife on the talk number from my orange mobile. I am also told yes. My mobile bill arrives. Ive used 8 minutes of my 300 minute call allowance, but been stitched up and charged an extra for the calls from my mobile to my talk number and also orange technical support/customer service. Orange Mobile finally agreed to refund the calls after a member of staff spoke to the broadband team.

     Step 2 - How to run an incompetent new customer order - desk

     Went down to Currys with my MAC code from my ISP. Currys were really helpful and professional. Currys rang to place the order. Currys gave over my details and I stood by the guy while he read of my MAC code and I checked while he read it out correctly. After 5 days I heard nothing so I called the helpdesk and was told the date for transfer from my ISP. Waited and no correspondence. I called almost daily to check progress. Then told your account has been closed. Why? Well, Sir its because the MAC code you gave us was not correct. So you closed it? Yes. No one called me to check! Okay lets check the code I have the paper with me that Currys used to read the MAC code from. At least two errors in the code that orange had recorded. Okay can we re-activate the order with the correct code? No sorry you need to place another order? Oh okay! (Pause - no reply) I would like to do that now please. Sorry you will have to place the order at Currys!! What are you sure! Yes! ridiculous! So off I go to Currys contemplating whether to bother or not. I arrive, sorry says the managress got some people off sick. If I give you the number you can use our phone. I did. It was an 0800 number and I did not need any interaction with the Currys staff. Order placed with the UK helpdesk read back all details and were off. Hurrah!

     Step 3 - Accidentally close the account

     Had the connection for 2 weeks. 1 week was away on a holiday and then returned to use connection. Working fine, kids using it, I’m using it. Then the realisation of the IPSEC problem (above). That same evening the talk light goes out on my livebox. Hmm no phone service. A call to the helpdesk. Takes my details, I am getting a dab hand at this 10+ calls and they always as me for the same 2 letters of my password (Great Security NOT) I reach india, by now getting pretty cheezed off ‘No, I did not see last nights coronation street. No I dont want to talk about the weather’ What the account is closed!! Why? You have exceeded the fair use policy, but I am on unlimited, I don’t download excessive amounts of data from peer file sharing networks, play online gaming, neither do my kids. Then after a couple more calls I finally get to speak to someone in the UK. They confirm this is the reason for the closure, I have not had any warings re fair use etc. So a supervisor checks. The account has apparently been closed in error. Okay reactivate it then. I can’t! Well my account was disabled and had to place another order after 3 days. Took another 10 to get reactivated. All back up and running for now.

     MY ADVICE
     ———
     1. Orange need to get their act together.
     I suggest
     i. Pull your call centre back to the UK only. The India helpdesk is customer frustration and a false economy.
     ii. Train your staff to understand the products better.
     iii. Take a strategic look at the future. Its more globalisation, drive to be green, home working so make sure your device support all types of VPN including IPSEC and SSL based.
     iv. Review your order processes, how to take an order - and read back details to the customer.
     v. Improve your escalation processes. If you have made a mistake then give someone the ability to reverse it. It must have cost orange more money to have broadband physically removed from my line, then physically re-installed and set back up, than it would have done to put a stop/recall on the processes to close an account.
     vi. Review you customer security and verification processes. Why are you always asking for the same two letters of the pass phrase?

     Comment by Paul — September 18, 2007 @ 5:37 pm

113. We have had no trouble since installing ——- till