New ISP & Options

I have to apologise for the shoddy language of my last entry. It was written on my iPod Touch – while ‘borrowing’ someone’s internet access…as mine is down.

I have looked into whether I can change ISP. Yay, I’m out of contract period with Orange. I called this morning to check the situation and I found calling the customer retention team works a lot better than trying to get through the script and the language barrier with the Indian call centre. I even told the guy on the phone this morning that the reason I’m thinking of leaving was because I can’t afford to spend an hour to two hours of my time on the phone working through a script whenever there’s a problem. And, that I was left with no Internet (correction, I still have no Internet access) for several days.

He was most helpful. He checked the line and from my account saw the ‘fault’ had been fixed. I told him it hadn’t been fixed. He registered another service call. And, he’s sending me out a freebie router to replace the LiveBox. 

But there are options. Sky, Talk Talk and PlusNet have all been recommended as possible alternatives. BT was a ‘no-no’ according to my impromptu poll…

We shall see what happens. For sure there’s no Twitter & no Facebook at the moment. What’s worse, my music won’t play throughout the house…only where I have a dock for the iPod.

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Orange Broadband, No Thanks

My broadband service has gone down. The computer is connected to the router and the router shows ADSL connection, but no Internet. My ISP is Orange. I have been happy (ish) with the service, if you don’t count the issues with the LiveBox – until now.

I called customer services and reached Angela – a very nice, polite, but heavily accented lady in India. 40 minutes later we have battled through the script and got to the point where Angela decided it was not an Orange issue, but a problem with my Linksys router. “before we can test the line, we need you to call Cisco about a possible fault with your router”. Hmmm. My boyfriend is a geek. We know it is not a router issue. But I hung up, waited 10 mins, had a cup of tea and called back.

Round two:
Hassan (apologies, didn’t actually understand the name of) the new cust servs guy. 40 mins later, again we have been through the script (despite my insistance that Angela told me to phone requesting a line test) and he tells me to call Cisco…when I said been there, done that he said (frantically flicking pages) “then we need you to call Microsoft, it is a broswer problem”.

Despite my anger I giggled at his lack of knowledge. I explained I knew it was nothing to do with the browser on my pc, iPod Touch, laptop or Wii. Finally, after over an hour, he tested the line. And, you’ll never guess, there’s a fault on the line. all that time to tell me something I already know.

Apparently an engineer will call me on Saturday. What use is that to me? Two laptops, a pc, a Wii, the Touch, AirportExpress (two of them) are all without connectivity. Aaaaaaaaargh.

Time to switch? Perhaps. I read comments on Orange Problems and now I wonder if Saturday was a good solution/suggestion from Orange. We shall see. Thank goodness for the end of my contract!