Orange

[East Staffs Gull]

Rang Orange today to switch from contract to PAYG.

Orange: "Can you give me your password?".
Me: "I'm sorry, but I can't recall ever having an Orange password. My phone was set up in one of your shops"
Orange:"Can you give me your middle name?"
Me: "I haven't got a middle name".
Orange: "Yes you have. Have you got your latest statement in front of you?"
Me: "Yes I have".
Orange: "Does it show a middle name?"
Me: " Yes, but it's wrong, I don't have a middle name. It looks like someone at Orange has input my firstname initial twice".
Orange: "Why haven't you reported this to Orange and got it corrected?"
Me: " Why should I have? It doesn't cause me a problem. People constantly mispell my surname, but I don't necessarily get them to change the spelling."
Orange: "Because it's a security question and therefore needs to be correct"
Me: "But I didn't know it was a security question. In the past I've been asked for my password or my date of birth, but never my middle name".
Orange: "Why are you calling from a landline and not your mobile?"
Me: " Because I'm using my work's phone and it's not costing me anything"
Orange: "Well, dialling 150 from your mobile would have been a free call"
Me: "I didn't know that. Would this be easier if I called back on my mobile?"
Orange: "Yes"

I rang them straight back, spoke to another operative and got everything sorted in seconds.

 

[Nibble]

Sometimes it doesn't seem worth undoing the straps in the morning, does it?

 

[Bry Nylon]

Why were you calling Simon Jordan about your mobile phone contract? You'd have been better off calling your network provider...

 

[Conkers]

Orange are a bunch of c*nts. Had all sorts of problems with my contract last year. Suppose to have received a £25 play.com voucher and after about 15 emails, 4 phone calls and 2 letters i got nothing

 

[Starry]

Is their internet much cop? Paddy has had a bit of a moment with Virgin and now I need to find us a new ISP.

 

[Springal]

wouldnt touch orange, or any of that lot. stay with virgin!

 

[Gully]

What is it with doing business by phone. I sold some shares through Barclays Stockbrokers a month ago, immediately the deal was confirmed I went online and requested to withdraw the funds, to pay for emergency work to my home. After a week the cheque still hadn't arrived, I e-mailed them, the response was "call us by phone", tried to do that and rather than wait on hold pressed 1 for a call back, promised within an hour...they never called back.

Finally I got through, they told me that they would cancel the original cheque and send out another one. I expected that to take a couple of days, however the cheque had still not arrived by the end of last week (three weeks after the shares were sold), so I phoned again. The bloke on the end of the phone told me that they had not sent out a second cheque, despite promising to do so...another would be sent out first class on Monday morning...it still hasn't arrived.

I am now doing my swede, I don't think that Barclays intend to pay me my money and I have been caused severe financial embarassment by their ineptitude and false promises.

My advice, avoid Barclays Stockbrokers.

 

[Starry]

wouldnt touch orange, or any of that lot. stay with virgin!

Really? I have had no problems with NTL and I would keep what we have since it works just peachy. Paddy on the other hand has spent all afternoon yelling down the phone at Virgin because they screwed up his business account and so he cancelled all the business accounts and at the same time told them they could stick our personal account where the sun doesn't shine.

I figured if there was someone else out there that was reliable and didn't cost the Earth I would switch just to appease the husband.

 

[The Clown of Pevensey Bay]

Is their internet much cop? Paddy has had a bit of a moment with Virgin and now I need to find us a new ISP.

I've had it for yonks, and never had any trouble, except when I moved house a year ago and they tried to charge me twenty-five quid for the privilege.

I'm moving house again in a fortnight, I hope they don't try the same thing on.

 

[dougdeep]

I changed to T-Mobile and it's great.

 

[Springal]

from someone who does alot of work for alot of ISP's, Virgin Media are bang on for internet if you are not in an over-subscribed area. I can easily max my line out at 10mb which is the speed i pay for, never get any downtime and i cant ask much more that.

Sky, Orange, Tiscali are the major ones to avoid. Problem is with ADSL is the technology isn't amazing, although getting better. But the speeds and service quality you get relies on how close to your exchange you are.

 

[Bad Ash]

When you call Vodafone from your mobile they ask you to type in your mobile number to route your call and then when you finally speak to someone they ask for your number again. They've already had 2 opertunities to optain it. It macks me right off. Other than that they're fine *touches wood*

 

[Starry]

I've had it for yonks, and never had any trouble, except when I moved house a year ago and they tried to charge me twenty-five quid for the privilege.

I'm moving house again in a fortnight, I hope they don't try the same thing on.

Cool thanks. I need to look around a bit more but I heard good things from friends of ours as well.

Was the Livebox set up easy?

 

[Starry]

from someone who does alot of work for alot of ISP's, Virgin Media are bang on for internet if you are not in an over-subscribed area. I can easily max my line out at 10mb which is the speed i pay for, never get any downtime and i cant ask much more that.

Sky, Orange, Tiscali are the major ones to avoid. Problem is with ADSL is the technology isn't amazing, although getting better. But the speeds and service quality you get relies on how close to your exchange you are.

How can I find out what speed I am getting from Virgin? We have the middle (4meg?) package, but I have no idea how fast it is. I too have no complaints and it they are the best I can expect I will stick. Paddy is just a pain in the butt.

We are not very close to the exchange at all. Infact we probably couldn't be further away if we tried. Maybe sticking with Virgin is best.

 

[The Clown of Pevensey Bay]

Was the Livebox set up easy?

I'm still on the old fashioned plug-it-in style broadband. But my mum managed to set up her livebox with no problems whatsoever. And she's RUBBISH at computers, so it must be.

 

[Springal]

i'll drop you a pm with a good speed indication, better than the tests.

http://freeola.com/broadband/broadband-speed-availability-check.php

if you check on there with your BT landline # it will give you a rough indication of what speed you can expect on DSL and all that kind of detail. However if you are on a poor quality line [aluminum or the like] you may have problems

 

[Billy the Fish]

Is their internet much cop? Paddy has had a bit of a moment with Virgin and now I need to find us a new ISP.

Just got it this week, was with Pipex but because I didn't tell them I was moving house they cancelled my account without telling me when the BT line went down and then wouldn't re-instate it.
Only went with Orange because my housemate has an Orange mobile and it's £10 a month for unlimited downloads. I connected it on saturday and we've had one evening of downtime, and their tech support is pretty shit, I had to explain to the bloke what a DNS server is, on the upside it seems fairly quick on downloads, but as Springal says that's more to do with distance from the exchange and the fact that it's a new house so it's all copper wiring. Connection speed says 4 meg on my router.

 

[Starry]

i'll drop you a pm with a good speed indication, better than the tests.

http://freeola.com/broadband/broadband-speed-availability-check.php

if you check on there with your BT landline # it will give you a rough indication of what speed you can expect on DSL and all that kind of detail. However if you are on a poor quality line [aluminum or the like] you may have problems

Thanks.

That site said Expected Speed: 0.5 Mb I have no idea what that means though! lol

 

[dougdeep]

http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/

 

[Springal]

that is about 6 times slower than ntl [if you are on 4mb], by todays standards its slow.

That means if you leave virgin, the most speed you're likely to get on any other ADSL ISP [over your BT line] is going to be 0.5mb