Orange is the new TalkTalk of the broadband complaints league

Is there a GOOD broadband provider?

Can anyone actually recommend a broadband provider. I want to move from Sky becuase the router you're forced to use is rubbish. Every other provider I consider turns out to be "the worst ever".

Industry Average?

How can you have a meaningful Industry Average when there are so few players? When you look at the actual numbers, TalkTalk and BT had broadly similar stats and Orange had a single issue bad rating so should the focus of the report not be praising Sky and Virgin for having so few complaints? They each had a third or less of the complaints of the next best ISP and well under a half of the 'Industry Average'.

People aren't bothering to complain about Talktalk, they've just leaving!

It's shocking how bad the service is in the South East, the instant they move to another provider the speed jumps 10 fold and that's on a BT wholesale exchange rather than a LLU.

I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would ever use Orange for anything nowadays. They truly are an awful company, and their broadband service is so diabolical that they would actually have to pay _me_ quite a lot of money to use it.

Just about to leave Orange...

They've decided to "simplify" my mobile charges which means that instead of a call to an Orange number being cheaper than one to another network and my getting free calls to my voicemail etc, *everything* is going to cost 25p a time which means that some things have effectively gone up in price by 500%!

Goodbye, greedy bastards.

Orange are shit

Tried to charge me for two phone lines, I had transferred my number on the mobile across to them.

So they tried to charge for the original contract number as well, I say charged, they sent no bills they just sent baliffs round a year later with a big bill for a number I had never owned.

There customer service is atrocious, different departments that don't talk to each other, and who apparently don't share notes, so every time you phone up you can repeat your complaint again and again, then get passed round just to repeat again.

Their supervisors do not ever call back, (if you manage to talk to one).

They are a phone and communications company whose complaints department will only allow themselves to be contacted by a PO box number, this should be fair warning in itself.

First hand experience

I worked at a contact centre for Orange around the time they changed their name from Wanadoo. If they're the same now as they were then, I can't understand how they're still in business.

While studying for my A levels I worked on their 'Technical' team supporting the Livebox. Almost everyone was clueless. We were taught that too many people online at once were causing the DSL circuits to drop sync. One senile old man spent a day informing all customers that called "Oh you're getting the 'Page Cannot be Displayed Error'. Everyone seems to be getting that today, I think we must have a sever down. If you try again later it will probably be back online".

Not just the UK, France also

A friend of mine waited two weeks plus to get them to fix their line.

By then she had had enough so being a switched on womyn she

erected a satellite dish and went on satellite broadband.

Cost for greater speed, but no phone line (or marketing calls), less than the Orange package.

TalkTalk customer service - cruel and unusual punishment

I was a TalkTalk customer, as well as my girlfriend.

Around the start of the year, my girlfriend's broadband connection went down. Solid green lights on the router, phone line active but no connection. Changed routers, same issue. 100% packet loss for pings, etc.

I called TalkTalk technical support (Indian call centre) and thus began the 6 week labyrinthine, soul-destroying attempt to resolve the issue until we threw in the towel, cancelled the service and switched to Sky. I've tried to erase the many hours I was asked to perform the same tests, by a variety of different technical support staff; the bare-faced untruths with different support staff contradicting each other in the 'advice' that they provided.

I was told on two separate occasions that there was not a fault with the line.

6 weeks later, after switching to Sky, same issue. Within 5 minutes of phoning Sky technical support (UK based), I was informed that there was a fault on the line and that an engineer would be sent out in 3 days. When I called back 3 days later, Sky technical support were still liaising with BT Open Reach to get an engineer to the exchange because my girlfriend's line was switched with another customer - hence, why there was a telephone line but no broadband connection. The next day, a BT Open Reach engineer popped round and within 15 minutes the broadband service was up and running.

I immediately switched my line and broadband from TalkTalk to Sky. As much as I hate to further line Murdoch's pockets, their deals are competitive and compelling, with UK technical support centres.

To date, I have never experienced anything as soul-destroying as TalkTalk technical support.