This is my first post on here and the reason I am here is that I was with Orange/Wanadoo/Freeserve for many years in fact since the first days of Freeserve when it was actually going to be "The revolutionary new ISP that would provide free internet access paid for by advertising" hence the name Freeserve. Well as we all know that did not last very long.
Anyway the reason I moved from Orange was that I was getting 0ver 170 spam emails a day (and I do know that others get many many more than that) and I did not want them. The blocks and spam filters that Orange set up were very limited and I couldn't stop the emails. I rang Orange and asked them to change my log on name which would have changed my email address, not something that should have taxed them too much, but they refused to do that so I moved to Sky.
Now to be fair to Sky I have had very few problems since I moved and of course no spam emails. But on the Skyuser forum www.skyuser.com there are now over 20000 members. Not all of them are having trouble with Sky broadband I have to say but a good proportion of them are. The overriding complaint it seems to me is the Tech support and customer service. Looking around other forums on the net it seems that most if not all ISPs have intermittant connection problems and dropouts and in the vast majority of cases tech support seems to be sadly sadly lacking. Fast broadband unfortunately is, as far as this country is concerned anyway, the cutting edge. LLU technology seems to be very very unreliable and of course a lot of the telephone lines in the UK hark back to WWII or before. In the village where I live most of our telephone lines are aluminium (apparently) because during the war copper was in short supply so aluminium was used as a substitute. To get an adsl signal to pass down a copper wire requires a lot of technology and to get it to go down an aluminium one is even more difficult. The slightest pop, bang, whistle will knock the adsl signal off resulting in a connection dropout. If you are lucky your modem/router will reconnect but mostly a reboot is needed.
So you see it is just not Orange customers that are having these problems. I also believe that LLU equipment is not as reliable as it should be so compounding line problems. But as I have said the overriding problem seems to be a lack of technical support and a lack of communication from and between the various support departments and from what I can see from reading other forums that applies to most if not all IPSs.
I rang Orange and asked them to change my log on name which would have changed my email address, not something that should have taxed them too much, but they refused to do that so I moved to Sky.
That's actually a lot more taxing than you realise. The account name is so entwined into the account itself the only way to use another is setup a new account. That means closing the old one, to close it and not cease the broadband would require quite a bit or fiddling, then theres opening the new account without it automatically closing because it can't order the line, finially the new account has to be made to accept the line thats already running to prevent all sorts of other problems. That would need things done by 2 or 3, maybe more, departments over the course of several days.
Yeah okay I will concede that, may be, it is a little more difficult to change your log on name than I made out. But, a) it shouldn't be as difficult as it seems to be, b) the point I was trying to make, and didnt actually explain it very well, was that I just got a point blank refusal to help me out in any way shape or form. That is what seems indemnic with all ISPs and that is what most customers complain about, the complete and utter lack of customer care and technical knowledge. Because of that Orange lost a long term customer (me).
I can understand that.
Changing the account name should be easier but it would probably require some major reworking of several systems to do and that alone will likely end up as being one of the ideas that sounds nice but would cost more to do than it's worth.
As for the spam problem, there's very little that can be done. You could open a new account just for email or possibly limit what addresses you use but that's out of tech support's remit of what they're supposed to do.
I did exactly what you said LOL. I shifted my ISP to Sky and didn't use their email facilities and opened up my own email address using my domain if that one gets spammed I can easily close it and open a new one.
Bottom line is though Orange lost a long term customer.
Joined: 13 Aug 2006Posts: 1689Location: Marylebone Central London
Mine was similar pete when i was with them the spam was totally ridiculous and so is their filters so i asked to have a new email address the answer was ...wait for it...yes of course we can do that for you she sounded very pleased but after a few minutes she quickly but very briefly mentioned it would mean starting a new contract (i had been out of contract for 3 years) i refused and left (and my god they made it difficult for me to leave i ended up having to get a MAC via the ISPA) and after an appalling service that was the last straw, not had any problems since...or spam.
I agree with you about customer and tech support and its always usually the larger ISP's but i can honestly say Orange was the worst ive ever experienced.
I have been with Be exactly a year now which is LLU and i havn't had any problems whatsoever......mmm i hope i havn't spoken too soon lol
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