ISP Reviews by mabz2k

I switched to Orange when ukonline were stopping their services. I didn't want Sky because I wanted to use my own router and my relatives have it and it's not very good at all at their end.
I went with Orange simply because they are cheap and they promised me a fast stable connection up to 10Mb/s, no traffic shaping, port blocking etc. Also I could use my own router, which was late December 2010. It seemed like an upgrade from my rock stable 2Mb/s (seemed like a business connection since ukonline stopped doing home broadband with free static ip I got by surprise) I happily had for years.
One week after my line was activated I noticed my speed test said I had 8Mb/s and my line rate was about 9Mb but when I do anything it drops to 6Mb/s or 2Mb/s even when downloading from a dedicated server in a data centre. I contacted Orange about the problem using the website saynoto8070 and spent months doing line tests and diagnostics.
They blamed my filter, rj-11 cable, router, master socket, etc. They even got me to buy replacements for those and connect to my test socket.
According to BT there was no problem with my line, but soon after they said they were upgrading a device at the exchange. Things started to work better after that... for 1 month then it all started to degrade again and I called yet again. During the time I was having problems I was told I would not be charged if I wanted to switch but now they are charging £70 and I would have to wait till August 2012 to avoid it.
BT Engineers had more knowledge of border gateway protocol then the Orange staff. If Orange couldn't fix my problem in 8 months I have no faith they will fix it now. Even when I called for a MAC I was on a long call being told the usual B/S and being treated like I refused to comply when I gave them close to a year to solve it. While on the call they themselves had issues with their own phone system to one another let alone know how to fix mine. Eventually connected to someone who said they would e-mail me my migration code in 2 weeks, every other isp I have been with (fs,wanadoo,tiscali,ukonline)was able to give me a MAC within 3 mins.

I would only recommend Orange if you’re very desperate or if you think your hard enough to take on their "support" staff.

Service: usual junk, used very little of it

Support: 0844 number, you spend pushing buttons for a min until you talk to anyone even if it's the wrong person, obvious lack of knowledge and tech skill.

Speed: fast speed (9Mb now) but very unstable and slowly getting worse every month.

Value: £15/month very cheap, but comes with expensive 0844 tech support and not much to support you with, expect dropped connections.