I have Orange Internet with a wireless LiveBox – provided free under Orange’s free internet deal for contract phone customers.
I have a very strong suspicion that they are running a deliberate ‘connection removal’ scam to gain income from their helpline callcentres.
This is based on several observations as follows :
I was originally with Freeserve dating right back to the 1980’s – and I don’t ever remember an internet failure situation.
Then Wanadoo took over – and once again no connection problems.
Then Orange took over. Initially the service was reliable until the free offer started. Immediately afterwards connection failures became common. They usually occur from 6pm until around 10pm in the evening, and at weekends for several hours on each day. This happens with monotonous regularity. My son lives approx 2 miles away and he usually also loses his connection – so it’s often an area fault.
What really convinces me that this is a scam is the Helpcentre’s attitude to callers who have lost the internet.
At this point I need to explain the Livebox system – there is a known (by a few) fault with the box in that it ‘goes to sleep’ or freezes. When it does you lose the local intranet within the house. The solution is simply to unplug it, wait 30 seconds, and plug it back in. Orange however will not reveal this if you call.
The second problem is loss of the server at the exchange – the most common fault – which shows as PPP Server Offline being shown on the Livebox configuration screen. This fact too will be ignored by the Helpcentre.
Both faults can be identified within 30 seconds – one being easily fixed, and the other only resolvable at the exchange.
However, if you call (at £0.50p/min) the Helpcentre will ignore any self analysis by the user and commence a complete check of all of the settings – even though they know what the fault is because their first few questions establish this. This check can take up to 45 minutes (very often with being put on ‘hold’ whilst the staff ‘check something’. At the very end they will ask you to unplug the box – wait 30 seconds – and then miraculously have fixed it! If it’s a server problem they will insist on running a line check – which means you have to call back in 24 hours! The PPP Server Down is never mentioned! (This was really rather obvious during the ‘unbundling’ fiasco with the Helpcentre were fully aware that their severs were down – but still went through this tedious checking procedure).
In all this can cost £22.50 per event – a nice little earner whenever Orange deliberately pull the server offline! Multiply that by several thousand users in an area calling in and they can afford to give a ‘free’ service!
How bad is it? – Every evening this past week it has gone off – and for hours over the weekend. A really nice earner for Orange!
Had a similar problem in October 2007. I lost Internet on Friday night, phoned Orange finally on Sunday and got the usual nonsense - it must be my settings etc. (this despite the fact that all my PCs lost connection simultaneously). The fact that I have my own modem/router meant that I got the "we don't support this so it must be the problem" line. I was ready for this and countered with okay, I have my speedtouch here (set up and connected) and it's not connecting either.
Then I got the linetest business and phone back in 24 hours. After 24 hours I called back and got another muppet who point blank refused to give me the result of the test but instead was preapared to go through the same crap I had done the day before. Needless to say I hung up.
Phoning back later to get a MAC I by a freak chance got through to a call centre in this country. The FIRST person I spoke to said that the reason for my Internet loss was that the server was down and had been since Friday. Further they cut my monthly charge by more than half and gave me 6 months free. The system was back later that night.
From this point up until now, I've not had any problems until last week - now I can't access ONE website - the server times out. I know the site is there as I can access it from work, but not via Orange. I contacted the site and they inform me that Orange/Wanadoo/Freeserve/Tiscali users can't connect just now. From reading this site I see I'm not alone in this problem.
Does ANYONE have a contact email address for Orange as the "contact us" link on the website conveniently points back to the "self help" page and I refuse to phone the help line?
oldboy maybe on to something here, for the last 6 months i have had nothing but trouble with my connection dropping out with ppp server down, you phone the helpdesk which is always in india, you never speak to the same person twice, they don't seem to listen to what you are telling them and you always end up doing the reset thing even though you have done it a million times already to no avail, just to satisfy them that there is a problem at the exchange, then there's the line test and "escallation" which usually takes a week to complete. i have just got my connection back after a week and apparently there was a fault on the line but it is so slow it's worse than dialup. i should be getting 5 meg download, but after testing on various speed test sites i was geting 52kbps down and 5 kbps up through the live box, so i bombed that out and am using my original router, i get 445 kbps down and 52 up now, still alot slower than it should be and i'm not gonna ring them again. i think it's time to get rid of Orange and get something better
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