The FastDay Forum

Hi

I' ve been with Orange for 18 years.

Last Wednesday I was up early at 4 ish browsing the web when it wouldn't pull up a page.
Nothing would induce I to work again.
I call through to the or Orange "help line" revealed an Asian/Indian gentleman.........no disrespect meant here but over a crackly line an easily under stood accent is some times better with techinicalities/entering data than a strong foreign accent*.

2/3 days later of countless;
1) Can I just put you on hold?
2) Endless qunatities of horrible distorted crackly pop music, every time I asked a question
3) Sales staff who couldn't care less

...I discovered that the fault l lies there end not mine and no they don't when I'll be reconnected.
It went back on first thing this morning but I have some questions now on how I work things for the future. Is my e mail address (I ve had 18 years ) really so important or should I find another way of doing it? (it's too long anyway)

I've head different things about BT. Some say don't touch it, some say to swear by them.
I need coverage in the west midlands (Shrewsbury/Telford/Chester area).
Thoughts anyone?




*I should say the people on the helpline MOSTLY seemed to want to help but clearly had been briefed to fog or confuse the issue (a lot of people have lost their connection with Orange in the last few weeks). (one guy with considerable reluctance said the problem was not my end/he probably lost his job for that)

Hmmm, interesting ...

I can't recommend an ISP, we are out in the sticks and with the Post Office. The connection speed is so-so. Other villages in the area offer super-fast if you are with other providers such as BT.

As regards email, why not set up an account which is independent of an ISP, such as hotmail or Gmail?

I've been on Virgin about 5 years, all good and helpful so far, couple of problems encountered but satisfactorily concluded. Expensive (£40pm with telephone line/TV/30bps broadband) though I did look into changing to Sky and mentioned that to Virgin who promptly dropped my monthly payment a few pounds and upgraded my modem and TV box.
You need your street to be cabled to get them of course:0)

Good luck!

Hmmm, interesting ...

I can't recommend an ISP, we are out in the sticks and with the Post Office. The connection speed is so-so. Other villages in the area offer super-fast if you are with other providers such as BT.

As regards email, why not set up an account which is independent of an ISP, such as hotmail or Gmail?

It's one answer, yes.

I'm with BT and live in the sticks too. No complaints so long as you don't have a BT email address as it is totally shocking and does not work with Apple very well. We are data hungry with multiple devices on the go and often live streaming for TV so it has been tested. One of my relatives has BT Vision which we don't and they reckon it is just as good as Sky but loads cheaper.

I'm with BT and live in the sticks too. No complaints so long as you don't have a BT email address as it is totally shocking and does not work with Apple very well. We are data hungry with multiple devices on the go and often live streaming for TV so it has been tested. One of my relatives has BT Vision which we don't and they reckon it is just as good as Sky but loads cheaper.

Another vote for BT.

The trouble is I do tend to think of internet as being synonymous with an email address...... got a logic crisis on that at the moment.

[Tracieknits]

What I did was move over to gmail gradually. I told all of my friends and family to use my gmail address, and my old ISP's address became just for things like forums and shopping. Then I eventually got a hotmail address for that stuff, and after about six months, I figured I had caught everything and finally was able to free myself of the bad ISP. It is terrible when you feel chained to terrible customer service.

I'm with BT too, landline and wifi. This year I called and they halved my bill. Ironically we have had problems with our hub/line over the last few weeks. I think it is sorted, it's never easy but I am impressed with BT as they followed up many times to ensure a solution was in place and you don't often get that proactive service these days. My daughter returns from her travels tomorrow so I will know for sure as she works from home and sends huge amounts of data. Hope that helps. I'm on hotmail and gmail. I don't tie myself to BT.

Hmmm...thanks for the ideas.

Talking to the lad today in the class where I help out; another vote for gmail (good idea about easing it in....)....

BT, yes , thumbs up for that again. They are reputedly taking over Orange. Not sure I'm s o keen o that haha. The dongle orange offered me last week on 60day off he reckons they would just have started billing me for after the 60 days. Nice trick.

The sooner I remove my bank details off them the better.

I don't especially like the gmail interface but I guess I'll get use to it.

I use gmail and Hotmail and find Hotmail a bit more user friendly.