Iâve been with the same ISP for 12 years. I joined Freeserve in 1998 on a dial-up and went to broadband when they offered it shortly after. Freeserve became Wannado and Wannado was bought by Orange.
For the most part, I have been happy with the service. I get the top package (Up to 8Mb but my area only gets 6).
But last summer I got an email saying I was using too much internet in the evenings, so they started throttling our usage. This really sucked. I couldnât want live baseball games anymore and services like the iPlayer were unusable. I suspect the iPlayer and MLB.com were the culprits for the large net use anyway, and I didnât like feeling like a criminal because I used too much of the âunlimited broadbandâ I was paying for. I was paying about £30/month.
So I finally signed up for the 50mb cable broadband from Virgin Media. Iâm paying only slightly more than I was on Orange and the performance is sooooo much better. I can watch Youtube in the evenings again and Iâm actually able to watch the MLB services I pay for. Iâve had it a few days only and canât believe the difference it has made.
I cancelled the Orange account on the same day as the Virgin Media broadband was installed. They said it would take 14 days which I was fine with. But then, four days later I get a call (on a Saturday morning) from someone telling me I have to pay a £30 disconnection fee because I was cancelling my service and not just transferring it. I complained but it got me nowhere. I asked what the fee covers (like, does someone have to do anything to cancel it?) and the guy couldnât give me an answer. Iâll just take the hit and pay them and be glad to have them out of my hair forever.
To be honest, I wasnât expecting a lot of help with cancellation anyway. But I did have good things to say about Orange before. If they were quicker about increasing the speeds in my area, I would have definitely stayed with them. But then they screw me at the end. To hell with them.
I would never subscribe with Orange broadband againânor would I ever recommend them. Iâll also probably leave their mobile network when my contract is up. I went from a satisfied customer (mostly) to an unsatisfied customer. All they get out of it is £30.
