EE Reviews

This braodband supplier is unbelievable - I've never come accross such poor service in all my life and it hasn't improved in years - if anything it's got worse. My connection started to drop out quite a bit and I got the standard rubbish - call centre in India and barely able to understand what was said (this has improved a little) - and at premium charges too! The gist was that they blame everything from your wiring to their router - try all sorts of excuses and so-called 'test'the line (on an intermittent fault?). You then get passed around various departments all of them unhelpful in the extreme! One person says one thing which is contradicted by another and oh yes... don't forget the 'we will call you back within 48 hours' - this is OK if you are immortal and can wait to the end of the universe but otherwise it's more Orange flannel. The solution? well it was their routers/configuration miles away of course! This has happened to me 5 times so far so I'm changing ISPs - the latest wheeze is to really restrict those 0800 free numbers and to make sure you can't phone anyone senior in England to complain!
My advice? Avoid Orange as you would avoid a rabid dog! They are OK when things are running but as soon as there is a problem they will reduce your speed and make up all sorts of stories - you just have to keep on and on at them until the problem is resolved - this takes several weeks so be warned!
Many people have written about this - but Orange don't listen and have no idea about customer service - they just want your money!

Without warning, I am now capped at 0.5meg. Complete shambles of phone support in trying to resolve this.

Bitterly dissappointed, cant understand how they are still in business.

Unclear proposition which is knowingly misrepresented on the Orange website in my opinion.

Unlimited - means only as much as they will give you....5Gb monthly pittance policy - you go over, they slow your connection to 1/16th..old dial up speed, almost unusable.

If you have a family with more than one pc or gamers, I sugest you stay well clear.

Worst of it is that I cant get the cap lifted by paying more for using more!

Actually, this is a godsend as I have now found Zen, uk based isp with a 10x oranges download limit and its clearly shown on their website. Its more expensive but I am happy to pay for the premium service.

Goodbye Orange

Have been with these guys from day 1 - Freeserve, then Wanadoo, now Orange

Quite honestly until now everything has been pretty ok - ok, more like the devil you know, but good stability and non-LLU speed has been ok.

But more recently have fallen foul of their FUP, which as everyone knows, seems to be an arbitrary number that isn't documented anywhere on their site.

Well firstly the condecending language of their "customer services" letters was enough to make we want to leave straight off, but then they said I'd been a good boy and wouldn't be capped afterall. Unfortunately arrive home on Xmas eve to find that now capped at 512k in evenings because had used on average 7GB at peak time over previous 2 mth - 7GB on an unlimited plan, jeez !!!

Anyway needless to say I now have a MAC and actively seeking someone better - IDnet, Zen and Vivaciti look like the best bets, even though will be paying more.

Oh, and in case anyone still on Orange, DO NOT call their premium support lines, assuming you can even find a phone contact number on their website, which I couldn't. Not even on their "customer services" letters! Go to "saynoto0870.com" and use the 0800 number listed instead - got me straight thru.

I changed to Orange in 5 months ago and have gradually developed a deep and enduring hate for the entire company.

The one positive is a reasonable connection speed, however..

The equipment they provide does not work (at least the two liveboxes they sent me so far). Frequent network (wired and wireless) failures. Constant crashing requiring the livebox to be rebooted, at least once per day and a five minute plus restart time. Oh and complete failures requiring the whole thing to be reset at least once per week. Such that I have gone back to using my own netgear router which works perfectly. Which brings me to..

One of the main reasons for choosing Orange was the VOIP secondline service providing free OS calls (I am Australian and like to call home most days) , this has never worked for longer than two-three days at a time. Anyway this would only work with the livebox, which as already noted is a complete joke.

The technical support (obviously in India somewhere) is positively Kafkaesque in it's approach. Expect to spend at least 15mins on hold before you talk to anyone, a privilege charged at 5p/min. The first person you talk to will be completely unable to help you, but you can expect that they will waste at least another 15mins of your time as they make you restart and reset the router a few time, because obviously you didn't think of that yourself. They may at this point promise to call you back so you won't pay for the call. Do not be fooled, they will not call back! Finally you may make it through to level two of the system where you will have to go through the whole restart process again before the representative concedes that you do have the problem you say you do and concedes to try and fix it/ send out a new livebox. If like me you have a busy work life and don't want to spend your entire home time talking to unhelpful Indians you meet the final problem..

Customer service, Orange take the unusual approach of insulting you early. After having enough of paying for a service which simply dosn't work I called to cancel. I was, of course told I would need to pay out the rest of the contract. When I said I thought this was unreasonable considering that the service was not working I was told "Tough luck, you would need to have called technical support every 3-4 days over a thirty day period before you can get out early." I've not given up yet.

So please tell everyone you meet to beware.

I have been with this ISP for over 10 years, since they were Freeserve, Wanadoo and now Orange. I have been happy with the service for most of this time.

Connection quality has been good, I can only remember 2 or 3 times in the past 10 years when the connection has been dropped, and never for a long time. Speed has been OK too, since I've never had another ISP I don't really know speeds in my area too well, but it is rural/outskirts of town and seems to keep up with the national average reasonably well.

My major complaint with Orange has only arisen in the last couple of months, but it has persuaded me to look at changing isp. Recently I recieved a letter telling me I had downloaded 27GB during peak times in the previous month, and that this was exceeding the Orange FUP. If I proceeded to exceed this, Orange warned, they would take action against me. They didn't tell me what the download limit actually was in this letter! Next month, without further letters/warnings, Orange began throttling my connection. The speed it now achieves is a joke (sub 0.5meg), as I cannot even stream the lowest quality iPlayer videos properly.

I felt this was unjustified, as I could not fathom what I had been downloading that would add up to a sum total of 27GB. I also had no idea what the FUP limit actually was, or when peak hours were. So I put in a call to Orange. They informed me that my connection would be throttled between peak hours of 6pm to 12midnight, and that this would continue for "about 3 months" and would return to normal as long as i stopped exceeding the FUP. They still wouldn't tell me the monthly download limit.

Since I don't know what the FUP actually is, and I don't even think I broke it in the first place, I have lost trust with Orange. I don't feel that I can be sure that once speed is restored to normal, they won't just start throttling it again claiming another FUP violation. It seems ridiculous that they can virtually render useless a service I am paying money for, without having to disclose any details or even give me sufficient warning. The gas company doesn't cut off the gas unless you're a few months behind with your payments, after probably about 10 threatening letters. Why can my ISP send me one innocuous letter and then shut off my sevice?

In future I intend to switch to an ISP with a more transparent and open policy about download limits and throttling service, or preferably even an ISP where I pay for the amount of usage I want and there's no mysterious 'fair' usage policy.

Orange broadband has made a complete mess of my adsl connection. My line is capable of 5mbs speed and that is the speed I enjoyed when Orange first took over supplying my broadband. Since then they have t6aken me off the BT network and put me on their own LLU network, which will now cost me £40 to get back on the BT network with my new ISP. This resulted in numerous PPP server down errors where I would be offline for between a few hours and THREE weeks!! To resolve the PPP server down error Orange decided to drop my speed to 3.5Mps. A couple of months later and the PPP server down message occurred again and then Orange decided to drop my speed to 2Mps!!
It's a good job orange don't have a garage business as anyone with faulty brakes would simply have their engines horsepower cut.
In terms of value the product is very competitively priced but, and it's a big but it does not work!! If you want a fast reliable connection stay well clear of these clowns.

A customer of mine used Orange happily (despite the fact that they had her on a fixed 576Kbps connection when she could have had about 1.7Mbps) until an Orange network upheaval after which she was off the air. Extensive tests indicated the fault at or onwards from the telephone exchange. The 1st-line Orange support people were infuriating but after several days of irritating them, they agreed to send out a BT engineer. The BT engineer found that there was a fault somewhere on their network and made a report. Nothing happened. Called Orange again (always had to talk to the highly non-technical 1st-line support people first) to find out what was happening and were told that the BT engineer reported no fault! WHAT??!! I think what he meant was that there was no fault WITH THE LINE OR HOUSE WIRING you imbeciles!

After several days more of completely inconclusive phone calls where polite Asian people assured us that everything possible was being done while there remained absolutely no improvement, the customer asked for a MAC and called Vispa. They had to sort out the problem (some issue in the BT Radius server) but it only took a day or two after they took over the line.

So well done Orange! This was a great lesson in how to lose a customer by having what is effectively a COMPLETELY unsupported service.

Have been with Orange for about 2 years as they were/are extremely cheap, especially when combined with an Orange contract phone. Things did not go smoothly from the off. They throw in a free router, but it's terrible. The interface is slow and unreliable for changing settings and it takes an age to reboot.

I initially had a problem with the internet dropping out at my flat, and when I rang technical support they were unable to offer any advice at all (foreign call centre worker reading from a script). I solved the problem myself eventually with a few Google searches.

More recently they began to throttle my broadband connection during peak times - it is so slow during peak hours that it cannot stream a video from Youtube smoothly, or even run Spotify properly. Though I am unaware that anyone throttles http:// traffic, even web-browsing was slow. When speaking to them on the phone about this, they not only did not know what throttling/packet shaping was, they lied about the connection we should be getting in order to try and keep me as a customer. Needless to say I have not renewed my contract with them and it runs out at the end of this week.

It may be tempting if they are the cheapest - but I'm begging you, please don't do it! Pay a few quid more for an open fair use policy provider with better service. You really do get what you pay for.

I used Freeserve years ago and barely even noticed when it was taken over by Wanadoo. When Wanadoo was acquired by Orange, the service became almost unusable: slow speeds, frequent disconnections and even long periods when I could not connect to the internet at all.

Technical support (I use the term loosely) is an absolute disgrace! Frequently I would call, only to be told that their computers had gone down so I would have to call back later. 50p per minute for this!
After several weeks of line checks, which always proved inconclusive, I decided enough was enough. I threatened legal action if they did not immediately release me from my contract. Now I am with a real ISP:
fast.co.uk and the contrast could not be greater.

I rated Orange 1/10 for everything only because this site does not allow me to rate 0/10!

I have been with them from its Freeserve days and wonder why I have stayed. I have been promised up to 4.5 mb but have only ever been able to obtain up to 2 mb. I’ve tried e – mailing them but get asked the same stupid questions; - have you tried different filters, how many phone sockets do you have, is the router connected to the first socket etc. etc. etc. Its technical support is too expensive and no better than useless! You end up trying to keep a thread open but get different ethnic call centre people all the time who have to ask the same laborious questions, they don’t seem to keep records.
I finally resorted to writing to the customer service department for all the good that did. Many e – mails letters and so on and the speed is no better and to cap it all they have bumped up the price by £8 as if that is acceptable. I am now searching for another ISP as Orange cannot keep up with today’s demands, most definitely not mine!!