Orange - Broadband

Anyone who has Orange as their ISP should change as soon as they can. Orange are nothing better than Osama Bin Ladens turds. Shit speeds and even worse customer service.

I have been a customer since the good old Freeserve Pay as you go 56k dial up connection. After a couple of months I upgraded to the monthly plan for Freeserve 56k which worked out a lot cheaper.

With the new age of Broadband I felt compelled to upgrade to broadband. And what a difference it made. Going from 56k to 512k was like a shopping trolley to a Ferrari Enzo. Soon after going down the broadband route, they either changed their name or were taken over, either way they were called Wanadoo. I couldn't of been happier with the service until a couple of friends who were only with Wanadoo for a couple of weeks got a free upgrade from 512k to 2mb. I have been a customer for 3 years and I didn't get upgraded. I confirmed on the BT website that my telephone line is capable of 2mb so why wasn't I upgraded?

Turns out that Wanadoo put download limits on all their new packages which I wasn't part of. I was on the old Freeserve package which gave me no limits. So Wanadoo were only upgrading people that didn't have limits. They couldn't start putting limits on me without breaking the contract so instead they chose to leave me at 512k. A couple of days after my findings of this I got an email saying "you could get 8mb, if you change your package". So I looked at the package and it turned out I would get a 10GB download limit. No deal, Noel.

There were a couple of problems with that package that they didn't make clear. They said 8mb in the email which people would assume they get 8mb. Wrong. You will only get 8mb if you exchange is capable of handling 8mb and even then you wouldn't get 8mb. I chose not to upgrade and carried on paying more for my 512k service that people on the 8mb package.

A year of so later Orange bought Wandoo. Things started to change. I was left on the same package with the same limits, although the amount of time I was using the connection dropped with regular downtime. Orange refused to say whether there was a problem or not, but I couldn't get on through my router or using a USB modem. I have had more downtime in the last 3 months that I had in the previous 3 or so years with Freeserve/Wanadoo.

I though enough is enough, I will look for a new ISP. Shit...Internet isn't working again. I had to wait until 8pm just to get online. Once I got online I found a company called Be. They offer a 24mbps connection with no limits for £24.99. Great I thought, I knew I would only be able to get 2mbps as that is all my line can handle.

So I typed my number in to see if they are enabled in my area. Bollocks. You will be enabled in April. Grrr. Well I don't know why, but I tried again 2 days later, this was 25th March and it said Be has enabled my local exchange. Brilliant. So I went through and signed up. Then there was something that I forgot about. You need a MAC (Migration Authorisation Code) to switch from one ISP to another. This regulation was brought in by Ofcom to stop ISPs ripping people off.

In December, Orange decided to charge people £12 for the priveledge of getting their MAC so they can leave Orange. Then in February, Ofcom changed the rules and said that all ISPs must give users their MAC free of charge within at least 5 days.

So I rang Orange up on their National Rate number and my jaw dropped after waiting 10 minutes to be speaking to an English women. I then asked for my MAC code and she asked for my telephone number and my name. To which there was a problem. The account wasn't in my name, it was in my mums name. She refused to go any further with me. I made it worse by saying my mum knows nothing about the Internet.

So I hung up and got my mum to call up later on. Unfortunately after 6 minutes of waiting, a Pakistani answered. The line connection wasn't very good and would of been hard to understand even if it was an English person but this was a Pakistani as well which just made the whole experience a lot worse. She asked for the MAC and was questioned by the operator why we wanted to leave. She said that we would be switching to another provider who is faster and cheaper. Orange then said we could get a cheaper package with them. To which my mum said no. She knew that they were just trying to keep our money.

She was then asked if we have had any problems that is causing us to look elsewhere for our broadband to which my mum said the Internet has been up and down the last couple of days. To my shock the operator from Orange said that was because we were on 512k and it isn't always on. At this point I took the phone and told the operator not to lie. At which stage they apologised and passed us on to customer services to get the MAC, which we were promised they would be able to give us.

Customer services asked all the same questions again, adding to the cost of the telephone call. Eventually we got down to business. They said that they can't get give us our MAC as they don't have it. To which my mum just said "Ofcom". It turns out they could get our MAC after all, isn't that a stroke of luck.

They said they would email it within 5 days. Unfortunately this is within Ofcoms guidelines. We are now 5 days on and no email. So I am going to have to wait till after 6 to phone them up without being robbed of more money. If they do not give it immediately over the phone I will complain to Ofcom and the ISPA.

To this end I have been downloading Linux distrobutions constantly for 4 days since the day after the phone call to waste as much bandwidth as possible. It is what I paid for so they can't cut me off because of it. After downloading 60GB or so, I still have no MAC.

Judging by reading other posts on the Internet other people have had similar problems obtaining their MAC and it is not just limited to Orange. Once people rang Orange up for the second time they were told that there was a problem with the email system and they would get it out in another 5 days. Which was convinient as this would cover the broadband over in to the next months deal so you would have to pay for another month.

I am not going to take any shit from Orange and suggest that anyone and everyone steers clear of Orange.