Yet another ripped off Orange broadband user here, and I think I have the proof, what do you guys think.
I did a little test using my PC and the help of a neighbour who is getting a far better broadband connection than me.
Firstly I connected my own PC to my neighbours wireless network, he uses Opal Telecom to provide his service. Bear in mind that I DID NOT MOVE MY PC AROUND, I simply connected to the neighbours wireless router, in theory my connection should have been slower because the signal to his router is weaker than to my livebox which sits in the same room as my PC!
I ran the speedtest.net tester on his connection on my own PC, then I did the same by switching back to my Orange livebox's wireless connection and ran it again, I screen dumped both tests and I've posted the results on my own web page at the following URL:
The key to this test and why I think Orange are deliberately throttling their service is that both my neighbour and I are the exact same distance from the local phone exchange and we both pay for an up to 8 Meg service and most importantly these tests were run within 1 minute of each other at the same evening 'peak time', around 9.10pm
As you can see from the screen dumps, whilst my machine usually supplies me a connection of 1677 Kb/s my lucky next door neighbour get's a whopping 5504 Kb/s. from his Broadband provider!
THINGS TO NOTE:
1) The ping response time for both mine and my neighbour are not that different!
2) The upload speeds are not very different!
3) The major difference is the DOWNLOAD SPEED!
Surely this shows that Orange are putting a restriction on the amount of data throughput, or throttling the speed deliberately?
If they are then as a customer I'm more than a little aggrieved that they are advertising 'Up to 8 Meg', when in all reality they may well be restricting the service so that 8 Meg is almost certainly not acheivable, and from most postings on here it is likely that the majority of people only get between 1.5 - 2.5 meg if they are lucky.
If they are throttling the service but advertising 'Up to 8 meg' then isn't this mis-selling a product?
I'm not a legal expert but I would imagine that even if you put in the small print that service speeds may vary, if (and this is just an if) orange have put a restriction on the speed of a customers broadband so that he couldn't possibly achieve 8 meg then surely have sold a product using false claims in the advertising by saying 'Up to 8 meg' because the customer never actually had a chance of getting the service he thought he was paying for.
My real bone of contention is that as I'm not even getting a 2 meg connection, I know for a fact that I could have just bought a cheap 2 meg package anywhere, so why bother going for an 'up to 8 meg' one?
Incidentally, I've made numerous phone calls to Orange support, my service died for 3 weeks a couple of months ago, not even so much as an apology when they finally got it back online. They promise their support people will call you back and in my own experience they never do.
They will get you to factory reset your livebox over and over again, when it's obvious even their support people don't believe this will cure the problem.
And finally today (8/4/2008) I see they are allegedly preparing to increase their prices to existing customers.... these guys are great, not only do they provide a rubbish product and rubbish customer service, but now they also intend on charging you more for the pleasure!
I hope to god this fall's under their terms and conditions where it basically says something to the effect that if they increase the prices or vary the contract and it has a negative effect on the customers position then the customer can cancel the contract within 7 days of the changes, at least I think that's what I recall it said, or words to that effect... I'm happy to be enlightened or corrected on this as I'm typing this rant at work and don't have the T&C's in front of me...
So Orange if you are reading this then explain why all of this is happening, I'm sure you have a very plausible excuse NOT!!
Yet another ripped off Orange broadband user here, and I think I have the proof, what do you guys think.
Actually it's not really proof for a few important reasons.
Speedtests can be unreliable, you need a consistant result from several tests really
Your lines may not be far apart but they can be very different for broadband
Your line stats and those of your neighbor will show any line difference
Quote:
If they are then as a customer I'm more than a little aggrieved that they are advertising 'Up to 8 Meg', when in all reality they may well be restricting the service so that 8 Meg is almost certainly not acheivable, and from most postings on here it is likely that the majority of people only get between 1.5 - 2.5 meg if they are lucky.
As far as I'm aware there is no throttling of connections, this does mean that if there's high usage in general or in your area the available bandwidth could drop significantly.
Quote:
And finally today (8/4/2008) I see they are allegedly preparing to increase their prices to existing customers.... these guys are great, not only do they provide a rubbish product and rubbish customer service, but now they also intend on charging you more for the pleasure!
Thats wrong, exisiting customers will only get the new prices if they change package.
Quote:
I hope to god this fall's under their terms and conditions where it basically says something to the effect that if they increase the prices or vary the contract and it has a negative effect on the customers position then the customer can cancel the contract within 7 days of the changes, at least I think that's what I recall it said, or words to that effect... I'm happy to be enlightened or corrected on this as I'm typing this rant at work and don't have the T&C's in front of me...
AFAIK the price change option is relatively new and has never been invoked.
Firstly I'd start by posting the line stats of your livebox/router along with your neighbours, that way a more direct comparison can be made. After that run a BT speedtest if possible, if not try thinkbroadband.com and speedtest.net a few times to see if there's any varying results.
The BT speedtest is the most useful if you can run it as it gives the profile information.
Actually since posting I've run the same test and various others repeatedly for a number of days now and it's coming up the same virtually every time.
Also I've been contacted by Orange to say they have found a fault on the line (although they have told me this before not long after Orange broadband was installed) and that they are awaiting an engineers report to solve the problem (again I've heard all this before).
I also contacted them 4 times by e-mail and I have a succession of unbelievable e-mail replies from Orange which shows perfectly that they NEVER read the support requests properly.
It took 4 e-mails to actually get my questions answered and twice they used standard replies to me, which if they had checked their records they would have seen they had sent to me a number of times already.
Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating, they have made promises before and never fixed the issue, they are making them again now...
I'll keep you all updated on what happens, but so far the customer service given by Orange goes, it is certainly some of the poorest I've ever received.
Perhaps I expect too much but I was a customer service manager for 5 years and we would never have accepted the quality of service Orange seem to offer to their customers.
If Orange want to learn something about good cutomer service then they should take a note out of Microsofts book and how they handled the Xbox 360 red ring of death issue.
We suffered from this and Microsoft not only took the machine back twice, all collection paid for, but they sent us a new Xbox, even though ours was 14 months old and they also offered us a choice of about 10 games to choose a free one from as a sweetener for our inconvenience, but as we had them all they sent us a free Wireless headset instead which retails at around £30, this arrived the day after our phone call.
Microsoft said that the Xbox would be returned within 4 weeks of being received, it arrived back to us in less than 2 weeks on the first occasion we sent it back and then the second time the new Xbox arrived less than a week of having been returned.
Not only that they sent an apology letter through the post as well which seemed very genuine, now bear in mind that whilst we have Windows PC's in our house I'm a die hard apple fan as you can probably see from my username on here.
Whilst I've learned over the last 18 months that from a product point of view Apple is superior (yes another contentious and different debate!) in the end Microsoft won my applause and praise for their superb handling of the Xbox issues.
That is what I call customer service at it's best, it is possible to do but in my opinion Orange don't have the strength of character to admit they have problems and actually sort them out properly, this is just my opinion, but I judge as I find..
Oh well I guess I'm still not surprised by the usual customer service from Orange ...
This evening I was driving along in my car when my mobile went, not having hands free I let the call go to answerphone.
Upon checking my messages just a few moments ago they basically said let us know if your connection is now working properly.
So I checked and guess what ....
Yep thats right, absolutely no change at all, still slow ....
So as instructed I called them back and told them, they then tell me a fault has been found on the line and they are still waiting for the engineers report.
Hang on ... thats what thy said last time , I see a pattern emerging here !!
If this is the case then what were they actually ringing me for ???
Either they have fixed it or they haven't, my problem here is that if they are ringing me to ask me if it's now working then one would assume they have tried to fix it, except that they admitted that they were still awaiting the engineers report on the phone, so this still leaves me wondering why were they ringing me?
Your guess is as good as mine, so here we go again, just like last week I'm told that it will be a few days to get the engineers report.
This engineer needs a rocket up his proverbial, after all he seems to be delaying things all the time, then each time after a few days they ring me and just tell me to call again if it's not fixed ...
If this is the case then what were they actually ringing me for ???
Either they have fixed it or they haven't, my problem here is that if they are ringing me to ask me if it's now working then one would assume they have tried to fix it, except that they admitted that they were still awaiting the engineers report on the phone, so this still leaves me wondering why were they ringing me?
Because they don't know what's wrong or how to fix it.
The engineer has probably tweaked something, not knowing if it will fix it, then they ask you if there's any change !!!!
Well, either they are in the process of fixing it, or they've completely botched it up now, no broadband at all now ...
I'm at work and writing this, my girlfriend just texted me to say it's gone off...
No Xbox Live for me tonight .....
Holding my breath that they may actually cure the speed issue and it will come back 'On-Fire', Will I turn blue and die or sigh a breath of relief and thanks ....
I know what I think, I'm wondering which way you guys will bet ?! ...lmao
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