Orange
Orange is a great option for your broadband needs if you are already an Orange customer (e.g. mobile phone) as you get discounts for being an existing customer. All packages come with a free wireless router, security software and web space / web mail.
- Up to 20meg speeds
- From £10 per month
- Free easy setup wireless router
- Discounts if you are an existing Orange customer
- Unlimited usage
Orange online shop
Orange‘s accounts department messed up big time and cut my landline and broadband with no notice. I’ve spent a fortune phoning them to get my service back. Their call centre staff have been unbelievably unhelpful.
They told me I would have to pay another £8 to get my services back. They promised to have everything back within 24 hours…it wasn’t!
My landline was back after 5 days, but the broadband took 7 days. I don’t know if there was a coincidence that I had sent a letter of complaint by snail mail and had asked for my code to transfer to BT!
I was told that it would cost £97 to break my contract with Orange. I said I wasn’t on a contract, but was told that agreeing to pay the extra £8 had put me on a contract, even though I was never told that it was – I thought I was paying separately for my landline.
When my broadband eventually came back and I was able to access my email, I found an email in my junk folder from Orange stating that my contract had been renewed! Unfortunately, of course, I hadn’t been able to access this email, because I had no broadband. Bit of a no brainer really!
There is no way I will sign up for a contract with Orange unless a gun is held to my head.
Whils it is working then all is well – but have a problem and you are due for a long wait! I have used freeserve, wanadoo and finally orange over the years and have had the odd problem here and there. Whilst it was Freeserve we had a lightning strike on the house which frazzled the modem but I was back up and running again in 4 days. Another lightning strike (we do seem to be vulnerable for some reason which no one can explain) and this time a frazzled live box and transformer. I advised Orange within 20 minutes of getting power back to the house on 29 Jun. The replacement livebox was finally despatched on 8 Jul. After 2 weeks and 80 minutes on the ‘phone to Mumbei I received a replacement livebox but no power supply. So I now have to wait a further week for that to arrive. There is, apparently no alternative to the standard delivery time of 5 working days. The call centre staff seemed unable to comprehend the implications of a lightning strike and there was a definite language issue there. They are all very polite and can read the script perfectly but step outside the boundaries of the noraml and they seem to be totally ineffective. I shall be looking for another provider when I get back on line.
I’m typing this at the local library!
I would never use again, Orange charged me another months charge after I cancelled and say they have a 30 day cancelation fee, its in there small print. I was paying BT and Orange the same time, Orange seem fit to charge you an extra 30 days even when your original contract was fullfilled.
What a con. Read the full terms and conditions first, then you will be looking for a better company to supplie your broadband, the service was ok but the speed was terrible but the fact that they want to take money for nothink just made me realise that I will never use orange again.
I’ve been a customer since freeserve, wanadoo and now orange and for the most part have been very happy with the service, speed and package.
I’m a very heavy user with 5 people in my house using everything from desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks, PS3, Wii, DS, iplayer etc …….even wireless photo frames.
For that reason I was reasonably happy to pay over the odds for an unlimited package.
I live pretty close to the exchange so get 7-8mb speed and very rarely have outages, but I’ve recently been capped at 512KB between 6pm and midnight.
The reason I’m looking elsewhere is that they have recently increased the price by £5 per month to £25 which just isn’t competative with others.
I’m happy to pay for what I use, so long as it is reasonable and reliable and no stupid fair use policies……unlimited should mean unlimited.
I think I’m going to look at Sky (because no fair use policy) or PlusNet (because of good reviews)
For those who dont need to download more than a few hundred mega-bytes per day you’ll pay over the odds but the speed is OK, even if the fair use policy and customer service is poor.
I came to this site to compare alternatives to Orange rather than to write a review. I was astonished at the bad reviews which do not represent my experience at all.
I’ve been with Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange for several years and on Broadband for the last three or four with few significant problems. There have been short outages but none I recall for a couple of years now – in that respect Orange has been better than its predecessors.
Broadband is fast enough for me: most things happen instantly. I rarely download very big files, nothing I recall anything much over about 200Mb, but that’s very rare and worked eventually leaving me enough bandwidth to do other things while the download works.
Customer service is basic but has always worked for me. I had to tick that no-one calls back but I’ve never asked them to – I have to tick Y or N or I can’t post the review!! They only advise on matters directly relevant to their service and it is obvious that most of the people in the call centre know less about computers than I do and work from prompts. BUT I’ve never had very long to wait and the info. has always been enough to solve the problem: 3 examples. I was able to set up my dial-up and Broadband connections with their help and recently (after HD failure)I had to re-create my connection through a 3rd party LAN router without much clue how to do it – all they could give me was strings of apparently meaningless numbers, BUT when I went through the connection wizard it was obvious where they went and I connected first time. That’s OK with me.
So why I am I considering alternative contracts?
No fault of Orange, but under my present contract I have to pay BT for my line and phone calls. I’m utterly sick of the complicated and sometimes near incomprehensible contracts that BT insist you use, and keep changing. The final straw was them tying me into a year’s contract and then unilaterally switching the start of free “Evening” call-time from 18.00 to 19.00 – making me pay at a busy time. So I’m going to switch to a contract that avoids having to deal with BT.
So from my experience, Orange is fine but I’m having nothing more to do with BT.
I got 8mb broadband as part of my mobile deal and the majority of the time its excellent.
Average speed is 5mb+ and at worst 2mb at peak times. I am 1½ miles from my local exchange which must help.
My contrat is up soon but looking at some of the other reviews and speeds I am not sure If I will change. Am tempted by Virgin as I have the neccersary cable to my house, but it gets awful reviews.
I applied for the ‘free’ orange broadband , but upgraded to the £5 per month for unlimited downloads. I received the livebox and was told it would be active soon. This did not happen. After many hours and days of ringing their customer service, and much frustration I still did not have a broadband service. I was told it was BT exchange at fault. I wrote to BT – they blamed orange. I wrote twice to orange and received 2 letters back saying it would be coming on soon. No number to ring apart from the cal centre number, where I was geting fobbed off time and time again.
One of the reasons I got my orange mobile, which is costing £35 per month was for this free broadband sevice, so I begrudged forking out £20 a month plus for another internet provider, but it got to December 2007, and I still had no internet, so was thinking I would have to go elsewhere if I ever wanted to get online again.
However, I moved house and had a new telephone number, so I tried again with Orange, just in case it was BT at fault on my previous number. I rang Orange – There was some error, it could not be processed, they would get back to me within 5 days. A week later no response – I rang back and tried again, yet another error but they could not say what it was – they would put it to another team and someone would get back to me. A week later – still no response, I rang again, and this time they said it could be done. I explained I already had a live box wireless router) from the previous address, and could I use this – no chance, I had to return it, they would send me a new one as this was a new registration!!!
Anyway soon afer I received a package from Orange through the post. Yippee I thought, at long last! I opened up the box and discovered it was a speedtouch 330 wired modem. I rang Orange and explained it was the wireless router I wanted (we have 3 computers), OK, they would get one out. 2 days later another package arrives, suspiciously the very same shape as the speedtouch 330, and guess what? It was another wired modem. I rang again, they would send a wireless one out. I have connected a laptop to the wired modem, which appears to be using dial up, not broadband, but at least I have access to the internet. I’ve not been off it for 2 days!! Hopefully the wireless router will be here tomorrow, then all the family can get back online.
Anyway, the speed etc through wired access has been good, so no complaints there, but I have never experienced customer service as bad as from Orange, I thought BT was bad, but Orange tops the lot. I hope that once the wireless router comes I can connect with that, or I will definately go elsewhere!!
I have used orange for about two years now and the only time i have had to phone into a call centre was when i moved home. Although this did take much longer than i wanted (about 24 days), once the new line was up and running the broadband worked just like it had previously. Overall my speed has remained stable at about 6 meg and never drops out.
Having worked in a broadband technical dept for a uk ISP I know how frustrating it is when all of a sudden your bb stops working. However knowing of the wide variety of issues that can go wrong and how often it does I am very pleased with the service Orange provide.
I had no problems with orange until A storm one night when for some reason I was unable to use the internet phone at the same time as using the net, which I had done with no problem beforehand. I rang up customer service and after 46 mins of unplugging and re setting the live box etc they said it was probably the adapter and would send another out to try in 3-4 days. I am still waiting a week later. I rang them again and after about 20 mins and explaining all over again they are going to have a try at fixing it from their end and will give me a ring within 72 hours, after that I dont know. if it doesnt work I may try another provider. I am no expert at PC etc just a normal broadband user.
Well lets face it peeps i pay a fiver a month unlimited with united calls and upto 8meg. i get great download speed. so i’m well happy. just one tip if u join the software won’t download if u have flashplayer installed u need to install it first or you’ll be stuck. otherwise if ya got a orage mobile over 30 quid get it. then get ya line rental from toucan for 7.99 a month and ya have unlimited broadband line rental and unlimted calls for £12.99 a month. WHAT A DEAL