In December me and me mum got to see the Broadband wars, where they all came down in price, unlimited here, and 8mb becoming a big part of the offer.
Before the change we were paying £27.99 512kb cap, unlimited which we took out with Freeserve. Awesome service, but the price was a bit bad, so we though, hell its £19.99 for unlimited now, lets change down to this new package, our Orange phones were always good so we gave them the benefit of the doubt.
At this point the next 5 months would be LIVING hell, little to our knowledge.
1 month in, hang on, wheres our livebox? After 3 phonecalls we got told they were out of stock and one would be dispatched shortly. Fair enough, we could understand there is a demand for this new plan.
Great, livebox arrives and we plug it in. Whats this? It won't install because of Flash Player? Having to manually install it, and what a pain it was, I finally got there. Rubbing me hands together i get cracking on the router settings so I can get straight back on me games, and then sort mums Laptop out for wireless.
After a few days we had family ringing on the mobiles asking why we weren't answering the phone, although the phone never rang. Oh yeah, Orange forgot to mention that little detail that to get free talk service, our phone number would change. We were NOT amused. So we gave everyone the new number, and got used to it.
After I would say 3 weeks, we started to notice we were still on 512 and not been upgraded to 8mb. Swiftly we rang Orange asking what's going on, why hasn't it been upgraded to 8mb yet? They never receieved a joblog to upgrade the line so we paid 2 months for the exact same service we had before. Alright, it's cheaper, just give us our 8mb like your website says our line can get.
Another 3 weeks later, and the line STILL hasnt been regraded, after been thrown through many and many foreign people, and god knows how many supervizors, we finally got told "BT had to do the regrade". As to which BT said its Orange not them. Been thrown back and forth, back and forth. We left Orange telling them, regrade the line, and were told they would sort it.
Sit back a bit, waiting, and waiting, and waiting. 3 months (or 14 weeks) the line still hasn't been regraded. And to top it off the Talk service has been pathetic and unusable for the past 2 months. The internet begins to become MASSIVELY slow, and games/google are a luxury.
Ring Orange today (15th May) and we got told we can have 3 months of Broadband free. However they forgot to tell us that our line can't get 8mb because of restrictions, they mentioned we will be stuck on 512 while BT/Sky/Be*/Bulldog/Virgin Media can all supply us with 8mb.
On the 10th May a major line fault was detected, and were told it would be sorted within a few hours, yeh its the 15th now and this "fault" seems to be progressively getting worse.
Pings of around 4700 on World of Warcraft, MSN fails to login because of the "timeout", and googles page cannot be displayed most times.
This is the end for Orange, they have 5 days (like stated on Watchdog) to sort their act out, or serious action is going to be taken.
Much as I don't want to take Orange's side here, they, as many other ISPs offer 'up to' 8Mbs services.
The reality is sadly nowhere near (except perhaps in and around London).
The average seems to be 2Mbs, which still is considerably better than 512k.
I'm on 8mbs with another ISP, but have never exceeded 2Mbs, and in my case are at the mercy of BT, who are lets face it, pretty poor and slow at upgrading any infrastructure - and it is THAT causing my less than impressive speeds.
I don't see any imminent improvement in my area unless I switch to cable, but so long as the line is reliable, it is fast enough for my needs.
The Line 'regrading' you mention I assume is switching you to Orange's LLU service... which (in an ideal world) should improve speeds over using BT lines.
A double edged sword however, on one side you are on the slower connection currently, but at least it works. On the other(in my case), they switched it without telling me and canned the connection altogether for 3 months. Their lies and incompetance resulted in my leaving and cussing them to anyone who would listen(like here for example).
You don't need to look very hard on this forum to find complaint after complaint regarding Orange's dismal LLU upgrades.
I have no faith in Oranges ability to deliver either a reliable service or most certainly support, and my advice would be to leave as quick as you can, and go elsewhere.
The more you try to deal with them the higher your blood pressure will get, You will be fobbed off with the usual lies, and free offers to keep you on board, come on- they weren't voted Britain's worst ISP for nothing!
Good luck
Much as I don't want to take Orange's side here, they, as many other ISPs offer 'up to' 8Mbs services.
The reality is sadly nowhere near (except perhaps in and around London).
The average seems to be 2Mbs, which still is considerably better than 512k.
Its not just London.. My parents live in a small village down here in Devon and they get 6.2 mb.. I live on the outskirts of a small market town and my neighbours get between 3 and 6 mb.. Unfortunately I only get 250kbps cos I'm with Orange.. My neighbours and parents are all with other suppliers.. Funny that..
See this chart for some idea..
According to this I should get somewhere around 3mb.. I know I'm not going to get 8mb and I can live with that.. It'd be nice if Orange could just sort out the speed I'm due..
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
