"You and Yours" on BBC Radio 4

The BBC Radio 4 show "You and Yours" had a segment on Orange broadband today. You can listen to it via this page

Quote:
"Recently we featured AOL customers’ problems now thousands of Orange Broadband customers are experiencing loss of broadband connection. Many report the problems beginning after they have had an upgrade to a faster version of broadband. At this point, they are put on the LLU server (Local Loop Unbundling). Orange say they are looking into the problem."

The Orange Problems forum has a thread on it here

Here's the "You and Yours" Realplayer stream - the Orange segment is about 15 minutes in.

Orange still think i'm a customer

I received this email from Orange today

"We're having trouble taking payment for your broadband account using the details you provided and have taken a £5 late payment fee from your account. It's probably something simple like your credit card's expired or bank account details aren't quite right."

Trouble is, i'm no longer a customer of theirs - i cancelled the account over a week ago.

Migrating to Fast

Fast have confirmed that I'll be migrating across to them this evening. Can't wait.

According to Orange I owe them about £200, because I broke a 12 month contract (which i never saw or signed...) for a service which they never provided in the first place.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of speeds i get with Fast.

Moneysupermarket reviews

MoneySupermarket Orange broadband reviews - needless to say, most of them come to the conclusion that Orange is probably the worst ISP ever to have existed.

Orange's solution to broadband woes : revamp the shops

No, I'm not making this up.
According to this article , a staggering 40% of Orange broadband users are considering moving to another ISP. And Orange's solution to that - revamp their shops in an "image" makeover.

So there you have it - your crappy broadband service is because you've got bad decor in your house.

Quote:

Broadband provider Orange is hoping that an image revamp will help the firm steer away from its reputation as being a mobile phone retailer.

The firm has said that it will give 50 of its stores a makeover, moving towards a more "commercially minded" model.

If the new look proves to be a success, Orange plans to recreate the image in all of its outlets across the country. The company states that it will carry out consumer surveys to gauge the shops' attractiveness first.

Head of retail at the firm, Sian Doyle, said: "The whole purpose is to trial this now before we land it everywhere. We want to get the niggles out and make sure it's working."

She added that the interior of the stores would feature a live laptop equipped with home broadband to highlight that Orange had changed from being a mobile phone provider to a communications retailer.

The need for an image revamp may have been added to recently, when a recent study by Point Topic found that more than 40 per cent of its broadband customers said they were fairly or very likely to change their provider soon.

The Great Support Swindle

From a forum post on The Scream:

Was called out to help a friend with their broadband install, I dont normally do homers.. but because my business is IT I get all the calls.

Anyway, I go out there thinking its bound to be something stupid....

I arrived at his house at 5:30pm and left at 11:00pm....

And still he had no broadband.

Everything set up as it should at his end, used Dr SpeedTouch and that pointed to ISP every time, I could only assume it was one of two things, the line wasnt active or the username and / or password was incorrect. Neither was the case according to Customer Service and the correspondence received from Orange.

The swindle comes when you cant call anyone apart from a Premium Rate number and you end up talking to someone in India who's accent was only a shade thicker than the person himself.

The 1st trick..... go through a long message about the premium rate number etc and that will waste 30 seconds... then ask as many details as possible, repeating each one back as its said.... and then repeat it all back to you at the end.

Then tell you to wait, they are updating your file... more time wasting... then repeat again the problem...

Then you ask a direct question.... you get cut off.

You ring back... and it all starts again...

You then ask another direct question...

You are put on hold indefinately.... then cut off

So you ring back and the call is answered but no one there...

All the time the call charges are clocking up, one single call is only billed for a may of 20 mins.. £10

BUT..... multiple calls are not limited so this bills keep rising.


In the end, gave up, rang customer service, pleaded with a nice english girl for help.... begged not to be put through to india again....

NO JOY...

Got passed to another helpdesk, but told because this chap only had a Starter Pack.... there would be no help from them and you have to call the premium rate number and suffer India again.

This totally infuriating when you are paying £14.99 a month for the service in the first place.

Gave up

Told the fella to box it up and ship it back to Orange telling them to poke it.

Now a cynic would say... wouldnt it be a nice little money spinner if everyone who signed up had an incorrect password put on their account... a simple keying in error perhaps.... and then every user has to ring up because they cant get connected and they all go through this rigmerole.. all paying premium rate... all getting the run around

An easy way to make profit from a service that on the surface appears cheap.
be interesting to hear how many others have had similar experiences

back to work

bank holiday weekend. no luck - still getting a PPP server login error. DSL line is active. No reponse from Orange to my technical email query, sent last Thursday.