What is ironic, I had wanted to leave Orange in May, due to cost, but they offered me a retention package for 12 months – 6 months free, £9.99 thereafter. How I wish I had stuck to my original intention of leaving.
On the 15th November my broadband connection went down – that little flashing green light on the modem was the clue. Anyway, I thought a quick call to Technical Support would soon solve the problem. How wrong I was.
I first rang on the 15th November and reported the fault to the helpdesk , said they needed to do line test.
Rang again on 16th for an update – was my line faulty? They said tests were continuing and they would contact me providing an update. They asked how would I like to be contacted and whether e-mail was a possibility. Do they realise that without broadband access you can’t retrieve your e-mails. Anyway, I asked if they could contact me on my landline.
No contact by 21st November so this time I e-mailed (from work) for an update. When I got home from work my wife told me an engineer did call, but as I wasn't in he would call back between 6.30 and 6.45. Guess what, no return call was received.
On Thusday 22nd received an e-mail telling me that an engineer had called but there was no response. Factually untrue as my wife had actually spoken to them. They came up with a good solution though – ring Technical Support. I must have been mad, but this I did. The helpdesk confirmed there was a fault on the line, an engineer had been called and it would be sorted by the 24th.
Sunday 25th, guess what, still no access, so yet another call to the helpdesk. Okay I said why hasn’t the situation been resolved and can I speak to your line manager. Not at present, okay then, can you please get him to contact me. How would like to contacted?, by landline I advised once again. No call was ever received.
On 28th I e-mailed Customer Services once again pleeding for help. I received an e-mail back on the 29th to say that they had closed the fault, but they would re open it and I would get a call in 48 hours.
Anyway, as you can guess no call was received and so on 3rd December I decided to write to Orange and formally complain. I also rang Orange (01727207000) and asked to be put through to the Complaints Department. The woman I spoke to sympathised and said I would be contacted within 48 hours.
On the 7th I had a cracking response to my letter. ‘We are sorry you are having connection difficulties and have been attempting to contact you but our technical staff can’t get through (strange this considering an engineer did manage to call on 21st November) but the best is still to come, can we suggest you call our Technical Support helpline.
At this point I was ready to give up, however, within about half an hour I did receive the call promised by the woman from the complaints department. This time is was an engineer from a local helpdesk (not in India). He sounded very helpful and admitted Orange was having terrible problems with people losing connectivity. He suggested one problem may be the speedtouch modem and said he would arrange for a new (different make of) modem to be sent out – this solves 8/10 problems (apparently). What if it doesn’t solve it when I get it, what happens then I asked. Well, its back to the engineers and that could take a while. Anyway, the new modem did arrive, but as I expected it made absolutely no difference whatsover.
At this stage I was only 2 days short of the 30 days downtime and so waited until the 16th December, I rang customer services again and informed them that I wished to cancel my contract. The operator said okay, there were no fees to pay and I confirmed no further direct debits would be taken – that is correct he said. I also requested my MAC code and decided to cancel my direct debit (not trusting what the operator had said). The MAC code did arrive in a couple of days, I contacted Sky and was up and running again by 3rd January. Great I thought, problems with Orange over.
I then get an e-mail from Orange in January telling me I have incurred a £5 late payment charge because my monthly direct debit was not paid. I simply ignored this. I then started to get phonecalls from Orange, although I never actually spoke to them since they always called during the day. It is interesting to note that as soon as they want money (which I am guessing why they called) they can mysteriously get through on your landline but the Technical Support people can’t.
Anyway, to cap it off I received a letter two days ago telling me that another £5 charge had been added to my account and unless it was settled they may take legal action to recover the monies owed. I kept my patience and e-mailed them explaining my contract had been cancelled on 16th December and could they simply confirm they had made a mistake. Instead, they basically ignored everything I had said, reinforced the fact monies were owed and gave me a web link through which to make payment. This time I responded by suggesting they actually read what people write in their e-mails and respond accordingly. Another equally useless response followed from Orange. I will follow this up with one further written letter of complaint to their Head Office.
What hope have you got with this Company. In my opinion they are simply the worst Company I have ever had experience to deal with. I really do believe that had I not moved ISP then I would probably still be without access. What really annoyed me was the fact they simply don’t seem to care – their constant solution is ‘ring Technical Support’ but the people in India can’t help. Orange seem to know they have got a mounting problem but simply appear to want to brush it under the carpet whilst normal people like us suffer. The internet, like it or not is a way of life, we all rely on it. How would the Chief Executive of Orange manage if he lost access for months on end? Perhaps he doesn’t have Orange as his ISP!
If you are with Orange, be careful, and if you lose internet access think about moving to a new ISP extremely rapidly otherwise you could be in for a long period of inactivity.
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