Orange BB OK?!

[tech_guy]

Not happy with Sky's little £5 price hike if you don't take their telephone package as well so I think I'll be telling Mr. Murdoch to stick it somewhere.

 

Looking at Orange BB but seem to recall they are a bit dodgy?! Any info / insights / horror stories?

 

Don't recommend Virgin please as I don't like the bearded little hippy or his ethics.

[pete]

My parents had them (well, actually they had Freeserve > Wanadoo > Orange). They now use the Post Office broadband, mainly as a result of having to deal with Orange telephone support.

 

Like the majority of home broadband providers, provided you don't ever need them to do anything, they're inoffensive. As soon as you need them to do "X" you quickly conclude they're useless.

 

I used Pipex for years, but left em when Tiscali took over and started packet shaping, blocking ports at primetime and denying they were doing so. Currently on Demon Home Office and they haven't annoyed me yet.

[Edu-IT]

Orange is unreliable my friends have told me.

[jcollings]

I think whatever provider you chose someone will always have a horror story.

I had Orange for many years (freeserver - wanadoo - orange) and while it was Orange I can't think of a single time I had an issue. Only got rid 'cos I didn't want a landline in the property I was renting. Now I use mobile Orange broadband and that seems pretty reliable too.

[MrEprise]

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

 

Don't you dare go with Orange. I'm (or rather my parents are as I still live at home) with Orange - its a bit like using 56k all day, every day.

 

Basically, until about 5 months ago we were fairly satisfied with their service (can't say happy since they've never been able/bothered to provide the speeds that a) we paid for and b) our line was able to support) but when they sent a letter through to tell us that we had been going over our fair use monthly limit regularly over the past 3 months (i'm a bit wary about this, since we don't use it that often or download very much) and that they would be capping our connection until further notice.

 

3 months pass... (although during those three months it really was like using a 56k dialup connection, so it didn't pass that quickly) ...and we get another letter from orange telling us that our usage has improved and they would remove the cap within 7 days. I can tell you right now, we're still waiting!

 

On a good day, it might reach 1-2Mb/s but most of the time seems more like 512k (ought to point out that we are paying for an up to 8Mb service and was getting 6.5Mb/s before this palava.) Although I did sit down with my Dad and look at alternatives (we even picked one that we could go with) he has been reluctant to change and alas we are still with them. Even though he moaned that he was paying for something we weren't properly getting, he's now switched off on the issue which annoys me as we are still paying for a service that Orange are not really delivering.

 

Thing is, unless you're having problems with Sky, i'd recommend that you should probably stay with them unless you're absolutely sure that you don't want to pay that £5 extra (which is something even i'd do considering what little we're getting, but on the other hand is a bit of a cheek) then i'd stay clear from Orange.

 

Whew, I feel much better now.

[ahuxham]

Had Orange for 18months when I lived in Wells, Somerset.

 

Not once an outage, full speed on the line and more, more than often downloading at 1.2mb/s.

 

Use "Sam Knows" and check if your local exchange has other LLU operators in, Orange are only worth it, if they have active equipment in the exchanges, therefore give a damn, id say yes.

[ZeroHour]

I tbh would pay the £5 as sky is still one of the best isp's around and at that price its still cheap tbh.

My boss was on orange and had non stop issues tbh so I would stay clear.

[gshaw]

Don't touch Orange with a very long bargepole!

 

Freeserve was good until those Wanadoo idiots took it over and destroyed the service... rebranding it Orange foesn't change the mess behind the logo... I'd either pay the extra for Sky or ignore your ethics and go cable (I always prefer this as it doesn't rely on phone line quality )

[localzuk]

I was with Orange for a short while, until they kicked me off their service. (I went something like 8GB over their 40GB 'fair use' limit one month). Their customer service is awful. Speaking to their call centre, I asked to speak to their complaints department and they said they didn't have one which could be phoned. Asking to speak to a supervisor got another bloke who said that you can only contact them via a letter to their head office. No phone, no email.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

Been with BT ever since. Expensive, but works well.

[laserblazer]

I've been with orange since they were freeserve and have had no problems, so never dealt with their support desk. I'm still on the original freeserve contract when it was 512k. They upped me automatically to 2mb but said I would need to enter into a new contract to go to 8. However, I'm consistently seeing 5+

[ahuxham]

I've been with orange since they were freeserve and have had no problems, so never dealt with their support desk. I'm still on the original freeserve contract when it was 512k. They upped me automatically to 2mb but said I would need to enter into a new contract to go to 8. However, I'm consistently seeing 5+

 

Indeed, Orange seem to provide more than what is stated, all my speed tests on an 8MB line, the data was always showing between 9.5 and 10.9 at times. Never had a problem, did call to cancel when moving house, very nice customer support, explained what I had todo, and costs, and even refunded me money, I didn't know this was due.

[laserblazer]

Just tried and failed to get on my webmail That does seem to be a bit flaky of late!

[ahuxham]

Aren't all ISP webmail the same. I've never touched mine, prefer to use gmail over everything else.

[mac_shinobi]

Aren't all ISP webmail the same. I've never touched mine, prefer to use gmail over everything else.

 

same here - gmx or gmail

[ZeroHour]

Aren't all ISP webmail the same. I've never touched mine, prefer to use gmail over everything else.

 

Sky use google to host their email service so it generally always works