I'm moving house in a couple of weeks, so phoned Orange on Monday to get the phone and ADSL services transferred to the new address - something that should've been simple.
BUT.... at first I was told to contact BT because "it's their line". BT confirmed that this is nonsense when I phoned them....BT Openreach looks after the lines, and all phone service providers (including Orange, Talktalk, BT Retail, etc) can arrange for services to be transferred to a new address, and for a new number to be assigned if necessary. BT Retail currently charge £70 to transfer the line and hand it back to Orange, and quite rightly so as I'm not a BT Retail customer.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I finally found an Orange call-centre operator who was prepared to let me talk to his manager, who passed me on to their centre in Belfast. The transfer was ordered within 15 minutes, but I wouldn't know my new number for 3 days (i.e. today). No problem, until...
Today when I phoned, I got the most obnoxious, poorly trained operator (even by Orange's standards), who told me to phone BT because "it's their line". At this point I lost my patience, redialled and specifically asked for the Belfast dept, who again were very helpful and provided me with my new phone number ready for moving.
Why are Orange's call centre staff so poorly trained? How come only the manager knew they had a dept in Belfast that talks to Openreach? Not good enough, and certainly not up to BT's level of service. If there's anyone from Orange reading this, pull your finger out and employ someone in your call centres who has at least a vague idea what they're talking about.
I'm pretty sure the staff in overseas call centres are told to do anything and everything to save Orange money. The won't contact BT if your line has a possible fault - as that would cost Orange money if the engineer found Orange's service to be at fault rather than the line, but are more than happy to bring in BT if you move home, as that saves Orange the cost of moving your broadband connection.
I've moved from Orange now, as they really have become dreadful, and have the worst call centre staff of anyone I have ever dealt with.
If I was you I'd take the opportunity that moving home gives you, and switch to an ISP with a better record of customer service..
They weren't overseas operators - the really awful one had a Yorkshire accent. The odd thing is I've never had a bad experience with Orange up till now - the home phone service works fine for me, as does the ADSL service. Despite living over a mile from the exchange I get good sync speeds (~6000kbps) and am quite impressed with the Livebox (with its built-in print server etc).
My only complaint is their ignorant, unknowledgeable staff who are really dreadful, especially when compared to BT's home-moving team.
Well it's only with the new packages where the phone line goes through Orange that you need to talk to them so it's a change from what used to happen. Also you should have gone through to Belfast by selecting the phone option in the menu when you call up.
it's a change from what used to happen. Also you should have gone through to Belfast by selecting the phone option in the menu when you call up.
I selected the phone option every time, but didn't get through to Belfast (the people in Belfast even told me what numbers to press, but I still didn't get through to them when I next phoned!) I appreciate that things changed when Orange started offering the home phone packages, but all their staff should have been given adequate training to keep them up to speed with all the changes, rather than passing customers to a rival home-phone provider!!!
Update: Home phone and ADSL services moved over to new house with no problems, but for some reason the phoneline's still active at the old house too. However, I need to give the old house back to the landlord on the 7th of April, so I'll be phoning Orange if it's still active around then - don't really want to be paying for the next tenant's phonecalls!
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