I'm sorry to have to tell you this but you are dreaming if you think by joining another supplier that everything will be ok.  There probably is a tag on your line & orange will not lift it until 30 days after you have closed the account.  Even then they might change your date of 'account closed' as they did with me.  AOL will not be able to connect you to their service until the tag is lifted.  Don't waste another 10 days of waiting.  Phone the tags on line team & find out, then get on to Ofcom.   You will be alot more stressed in 10 days time when you find you are paying for another service which you cannot recieve because there is a tag on your line, tha tag will not vanish, it has to be removed by Orange.

Please do your phoning & find out what I've told you about, & keep records of what has been said.

Do it now!

Good luck you'll need it!

Hi and thanks for all the info. I have joined Aol today and have to wait 10 days for my package to arrive and for my line (hopefully) to be 'orange free' and Aol on it. Whether or not orange will leave a 'tag' on the line i do not no.

 

Over a year ago i decided to leave orange and go to Sky. After weeks and weeks i still couldnt get onto sky because i was told that orange hadnt took there broadband off my line.. (i guess that means a tag on the line?).Well  I stayed with orange because of the stress of leaving them. Well i'm prepared to go though all that  hell again and fingers crossed i will be with Aol in 2 weeks.

 I do not recommend Orange to anyone, they lie and lie and leave you waiting for weeks and weeks and you do not get there service that you pay for.

 fingers crossed.

Hello

Sorry to learn about your problems.  I had no b/band for 154 days according to my son. 

Some of these things I'm going to tell you, you will have never heard of but you are about to have a steep learning curve.

Phone 'Tags Online Team' 0800169 0934 (free phone)  They will test your line to see if an LLU or tag has been put on it.  An LLU is put on your line by Orange when they try to upgrade the line & once it is there they deny all knowledge of it if it fails to do the upgrade (20% fail).

Don't bother phoning Orange any more as they don't tell the truth & speaking to India is a complete waste of time & money.

Go straight ot Ofcom which is what I did, all be it after 2 months. Tel : 0207 981 3000

Tell them what has happened, they will give you a case number.  They will contact Orange for you & tell them to contact you with in 5 working days.  Orange won't.  After that time you will phone Ofcom again & tell them Orange has not contacted you & the same procedure will happen again.  But this time Orange will contact you.  Be ready to give them HELL. 

The person who phoned me from Orange was Miss Paula Leslie Tel: 0845 070 2976  This gets you through to the head office in Rotheram.

You might like to phone her direct & skip Ofcom.  I'm sure she will be delighted to hear from you (not).  She is obviously higher up the ladder in Orange & appeared quite used to dealing with complaints, she told me I had 'slipped through the net'  !!!!

What net.    If you do phone her make sure you get a refund on all rental money & phone bills.  I got £100.

If she makes you an offer, ignore it & stick to what you guestimate to be right.  I did not send any copies of bills etc, I just geussed.   Question whether she is telling the truth, as you have been lied to so many times etc.  Wear her down.

Good luck.  But it will still take a few weeks to sort, but you should feel like you are getting somwhere.

 

hello can anyone help me?

 Ive had problems with orange for 5 weeks now. One night my line went down and i called them the next day and they said that they had to do a line test and for me to call them back 48 hours later for the results of the test. i did so and they said there was a fault and they are dealing with it and call them back 5 working days later. which i did and they said they had to do another test and call back again another 48 hours later.... etc..etc.. They have done 4 line tests and still they say there fixing it and there engineers are working on it. Well its been 5 weeks now i havent had no broadband so i said i want a MAC code and i have to wait 48 hours for it to be sent via an email to me. Orange told me it may be a fault in my house so i got a BT engineer (my dad) to check everything and he said that its all working here and its Orange's end where the problem is.

I'm looking to go to either sky or Aol.

 

I think I have just managed to get my LLU sorted after 2 months.  Don't bother ringing orange anymore.  Get onto Ofcom.  Tell them there is an LLu on your line which Orange are refusing to remove.  They will contact Orange, after nine working days Oange have finally contacted me & said I slipped through the net (what a joke).  I gave them HELL (no swearing though).  They have promised me that the LLu will be off my line by the 17th Sept. 

What's really good is that I have a name & number to give everyoneto get hold of the right person at Orange.  Tel: 0845 070 2976.  Ask for Miss Paula Leslie.  She knows all about LLU's & all the problems they involve.  The other thing is, ask/demand for a refund of all your phone calls.  I have got £100.00 (YES!) being refunded to the c/card.  Dont let her haggle the amount, just tell her what you want & stick to it.

Goog luck

HAd problems when i tried to switch. Pipex said my mac code was incorrect. Called the satsuma people who said it was fine and correct but an llu code. told this to pipex. two weeks later, super fast broadband with pipex, bye bye rotten citrus fruit!!!

Hi Suezi,

Sorry to hear you are having the same troubles as me. I have always been told Magdalene was the problem and that Orange were frustrated they were not moving fast enough ( not frustrated enough to let me know what the terms of the contract between them stated regarding repairs times though!). I am now asking Magdalene about this but am yet to receive a reply.

I haved tried ISPA, I am now on my third complaint with them, they did manage to get me a refund for the months I have had no service but could not get them to fix my line any faster. I will try Offcom today.

My mind boggles at what exactly could take over two months to fix. We seem to have identified one hell of a problem. ;)


Good luck.

Your complaint is the same as mine , infact it the same time scale aswell.  I have started down the Offcom road & they have taken up my case, so you should do the same.  Orange are supposed to contact me within 5 working days & guess what they have not, (this is the 5th day). I rang Offcom this morn, they are contacting them immediatley.  I now have to wait another 5 working days (next thursday aft) if I have not heard from Orange by then, they will take it to senior managment level.  But after all that, Offcom cannot force them to remove the LLU but apparently it is in thei interest to do so.  The bottom line is that we willl probably have to have a new phone line put in (£124.99).  Even this takes about 3 weeks to get.

My last news from Orange was that they were passing the problem to Magdalene & my line will be released on Sept 18th, somehow I think another untruth.  Offcom know little or nothing about Magdalene, & the Tags on Lone team have never heard of them. 

I have now decided not to phone Orange any more as all they do is tell untruths or 'fob you off'.  I am continuing to have patience with Offcom because if they cannot get the LLU removed then frankly no-one can.

You could try complaining to www.ispa.com.uk  There is an online complaint form.  Makesure you have your records with you when filling in the form.  I did not when I complained as I have had to join the local Library to be able to use the internet, & I did not have all the details with me so I will have to do it again.

I will keep trying.

Hi there

I am hoping that you have spoken to someone in the escalations section by now - if not, ask to speak to a supervisor.  Plague them with calls and notify them that you will be charging them for the calls and will provide itemised bills - they do pay you - although they still owe us £10 but we did get most of the calls back. 

Whatever, don't be fobbed off by them - also speak to BT wholesale - tell them that you are no longer a customer of Orange and that they (Orange) won't take the tags off your line.  Orange are supposed to notify BT of any customers that are no longer with them and place an order to have the tags removed.  We were told this by BT wholesale who said Orange had not contacted them about us leaving them, and as soon as the tags were removed BT contacted us to let us know. 

It's worth another try - after all Orange were the company providing the broadband and should take responsibility themselves. Speak to you local Trading Standards - their consumer rights section will probably give you a few pointers to go by. Also contact watchdog and your local press, the People newspaper has a person who deals with this sort of problem - I tried them all - radio, newspapers etc.

We have had our tags removed and are now with Sky broadband on the BT line and Virgin on the cable line.

Never give up and good luck.

Tremic

This is pretty much the situation I am in.
I have no internet since June due to an llu error. I am no longer an Orange customer but still cannot get broadband from anywhere else as Orange say they cannot remove the tags from my line until the repair the original llu error.


They are really shoddy and blame a third party, Magdalene, but you cannot deal with them directly- you just have to sit on hold to Orange at 7p per minute.

HI Here is what you do. Contact ORANGE  again and tell them that you want your MAC code. If they say we can not give it to you. Then tell them you will now be contacting OFCOM thier address is

Ofcom
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London
SE1 9HA

Here is the information that you will need to phone them if you have a complaint about a Telecommunications, Broadcast or general issue please call 020 7981 3040 or visit the complaints area of our website. If you want to ask for advice about a Telecommunications, Broadcast or general query please call us on 020 7981 3040 or use the Advice for consumers area of the website.

If Ofcom   can not help then contact the BBC Watchdog program You can write to Watchdog at
Watchdog, BBC TV, London W12 7TS

or you  can email your story to watchdog AT bbc.co.uk.

If you there is any other information you need please contact me at XXXXXXXX Moderated -- email in profiles only please. mark your header MAC CODE PROBLEM

We told Orange that we wanted the money back for calls that we had made to them and up to now have received one half.  The rest is still yet to come as well as the monthly refund for broadband which was posted out to a month ago and never yet been received!!  I won't hold my hopes up.

Hope that BE are Ok - we signed up for Sky but have since cancelled and upgraded the virginmedia to XL package with faster download speeds.

Good Luck, Tremic

 

Hi Tremic

Re your itemised 'phone calls.Did you get a response from Orange regarding getting a refund.I've printed mine off the BT website but have not yet sent them in.I received the mac code 3 days after i asked them for it,in the post.Signed up with BE on the 9th June,em from them says my line should be activated on the 19th.Sounds promising,haven't seen anything negative about them,it's wait & see now.

Cliff

Hi Cliff

You sound as though you have been going through exactly what my husband and I went through - at one point in time I almost borrowed my son's dictaphone and suggested to my husband that we tell them we are recording their telephone conversation just like we kept getting told at the beginning of each call.

We found that letters were never acted upon quickly and took around four weeks to open - plus it took them a week to walk to the post box with their replies which never answered any of the questions we had asked.  We found out later that there are not enough staff to open all the letters on the same day - there must be even more of us than we thought sending in letters of complaint that they are inundated. 

You should read some of the posts on the ATTENTION: ex-Wanadoo / Orange customer case studies required for BBC Radio 4 - well worth a read.

Wish you luck and by the way get some itemised telephone bills and tell them that you want the money back for the calls you have made to them as they have been so long and costly - it is worth a try - we have sent one in already and are awaiting for our next bill to come to send them.

Good luck

Tremic

 

Hi Tremic

Thanks,i'll keep a tight watch on what happens including refunds i've been promosed..From what you have said it is down to Orange to remove their tag which was what  i was completely in the dark about.

Concerning the original post.I only started getting anywhere when i got to speak to someone in the UK.

After 36 calls to India at a cost of £18,having my system checked because i thought it might have a problem  £22,no problem found,£12.50 for a dial up connection,countless emails.

I wrote a long letter,sent a copy to customer service in Rotherham & a copy to Orange main offices in Hertfortshire.I actually got a 'phone call after i'd sent another email saying that i hadn't had a response to my letters.She gave me her name,went through all the line test again,she said she would ring me back,gave me the day and time.Would you believe,she did ring back.The info i got didn't help because they didn't know exactly what my problem was,she would ring me again,she did,still not fixed though,but she was ringing back.

I said enough is enough and how did i obtain the mac code,it meant ringing the customer service number again.I asked her about the 2 months i'd paid for no service,she put it into my account that i would receive refunds and not be debited with any more payments.I also asked about the remainder of my contract,6 months,She said i was out of contract,i told her to confirm because when i upgraded i was supposed to be locked in to a new 12 month contract.She confirmed i was out of contract,i can only imagine that they canceled it,plus i hadn't had a service since they did the upgrade,which i'd pointed out many times.

I agree with you,the poster should get to someone other than the 'phone customer service people.

The Rotherham & Herts addresses are on the Orange website.

Cheers

Cliff