Morris Minor Owners Club

My present Broadband deal is with Orange - they have just told me I getting an almost 50% increase in the cost! So - anyone got any recommendations - including wireless router, BT line rental and free calls ?

Yes, ask them for a MAC code to go to a different supplier and they will try to keep you by offering a better deal. At least thats what happened when I wanted to move from BT broadband, they gave me a cheaper deal in order to keep me as a customer, you have nothing to lose. You may also find the following link usefull.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/cheap-broadband

Yes - thanks for that Nigel! Same trick works well with home insurance! But looking for any personal experience of a particularly good (or bad!) service - if anyone wishes to share. PM me if you don't want to go public!!

'Be' have been excellent, but not particularly cheap. I've been impressed with the customer service though, and have had no problems with broadband. My previous supplier, through the same copper, was patchy at best.

I'm on Virgin for Broadband and landline and it costs £15.00 a month. I rarely use the landline and the broadband speed is supposed to be 10mb Also get free weekend calls......

I dont know if this works with broadband, but it certainly does with mobile phones ... tell them that you want to speak to 'customer retentions' as you are unhappy about the price hike ... you may then be put through to someone who will be a bit more reasonable with you.

It appears to becoming standard practice to stuff the customer as much as possible until they threaten to leave, and only then treat them like a real person ... I can imagine this works quite well, since a lot of people will just swallow it and grumble.

I'm unsure what all this MAC code malarkey is about .. in geek speak a MAC address is the internal address of your network adapter, not that it matters to the internet where you are connecting from.

If you arent already using a webmail provider like gmail or hotmail, then I'd suggest switching to one and emailing everyone in your inbox from your current account telling them that you have switched over. Webmail is much safer (the files arent downloaded to your machine until you specificly ask for them to be, so no problems with viruses installing themselves - unless you use IE), and it's more flexible because you can access it from anywhere.

Me I pay through the nose (£35p/m) for an internet connection that gives me 8 static IP addresses, so that I can connect to my home machines from wherever I am in the world (useful when you want to get at something that's on your home desktop), I also run servers for testing work stuff.

alainmoran wrote:I'm unsure what all this MAC code malarkey is about .. in geek speak a MAC address is the internal address of your network adapter, not that it matters to the internet where you are connecting from.

It also stands for Migration Authorisation Code - it's a number you need if you want to transfer an existing BT ADSL connection from one ISP to another.

If you arent already using a webmail provider like gmail or hotmail, then I'd suggest switching to one and emailing everyone in your inbox from your current account telling them that you have switched over.

Personally I like owning my own domain name(s) so I'm not tied to any provider and I need never change my email address (I run my own webmail server too but that's fancier than most people want to get! ).

Well - Orange were not at all impressed with my MAC request - and refused to reduce the cost by a single penny! Seems no-one else will provide me with broadband in my area for any less - and Orange have me over a barrel - because they took over my phone line, and no-one else (except perhaps the Post Office) will touch it now ! I'm stuffed! Anyone like to comment on the usefulness of going mobile broadband with a 'dongle' and abandoning the line land altogether ?

Don't do it. Speeds are only fast in the cities, as soon as you go to the country you drop back to near dialup speed. I live in a town and even here it is sometimes difficult to get a 3G connection on most networks. Also data is charged for and once you go over your allowance the charges ramp up quite significantly.

I don't know what the current provider charges but my friend who only has orange for broadband has gone back to BT for the free weekend and evening calls at about £12 line rental + vat and plusnet value (6.00/month for 3 months then 11.99) which works out less than her current orange £18.99 + BT for line rental. I think orange may be in trouble as they where the cheapest deal if you could get on their lines and proably have been losing money on it.

Looks like it -I'll just need to grin and bear it - or as the (quite helpful) Orange operator said - just make more use of the FREE world-wide phone calls, and get better value for money!

Was paying £20 for landline,free calls and broadband with Virgin (now gone up to £22). Customer service is much improved in recent years but installation guys are an absolute total shambles.

Argh ... that's insane ... mind if I ask how much they are asking you to pay? ... have you tried any of the smaller ISP's? (I'm connected through Zen Internet, and they are very good, so long as your connection is ADSL I cant see any technical reason why they couldnt take it over - also their contracts are monthly so if you find a better deal you dont have a big long contract to get out of)

I'm happy with BT for the moment.

I have been specifically warned off BT by several who have had horrific experiences with 'home hub' etc. There's no doubt that Orange had a cunning plan to enroll me (and many others) then crank the price up because it is very difficult to move away from them once they 'take over' the phone line.
Thanks all for your responses so far - I'm (more likely my wife!) just going to make more free overseas calls to get value from the service.

I personally have never had any real problems with the hub, and any problems I have had have been very quickly dealt with by their online service.

No problems here with the BT Hub either.

Same experience here had BT broadband for 5 years and only had 1 problem which was sorted within 30 minutes. Proffesionaly I have found 80% of broadband problems are user generated and just involved installing the equipment as per the instructions rather than rushing it, losing patiece with the helpline then calling me out and paying me to sort it.
The best example was the guy who ordered broadband whilst he was at his mums then could not connect on his install date, lots of helpline calls and people saying his service was showing as active etc.......seems he gave his mums phone number so they instaled the broadband on her line and not on his