Wanadon't

An interim post for today to enable me to let off some steam at the sheer frustration of dealing with Orange (formerly Wanadoo) Broadband. Why is everything in the UK so difficult? Earlier this week I got a confirmation from Orange that, following what I am sure were exhaustive checks, I had been upgraded to 8mb (brilliant I thought). Today I have come to use the internet and low and behold no connection. Now, as I'm in Canada and my wife and daughter are at home in the UK, it has become a lifeline in helping us to stay in touch and my daughter is using it to help revise for her exams. My daughter contacted the "support" desk and, after a wait of over 40 minutes and a couple of perfunctory checks, she was told that it was something to do with Internet Explorer 7 and they don't support Internet Explorer 7 so contact Microsoft. All of this is costing me money (and I assume making Orange money).

This is a tactic that I have seen before from Orange. We had a problem with installing a Belkin router and we had exactly the same advice contacted Belkin who said, rightly, that everything was ok their end. Wanadoo wouldn't accept this. After much anguish and discussion with a number of nigh on useless Wanadoo agents I finally managed to get one to walk me step by step through the process and found out that there was something I needed to do with the livebox to enable it to work. Something which none of the previous agents had thought worth telling me. So in the end it was a Wanadoo problem. It seems that buck passing to the supplier could be a standard operating procedure for Orange.

Anyway as it stands now I have had no help from Orange I'm supposed to contact microsoft for a problem that I don't believe is a problem with Internet Explorer and I still don't have a connection. According to the OrangeProblems website this is not an uncommon problem and some have waited over 9 weeks before they have had their connection restored. I hope that this doesn't takes a lot less than 9 weeks and 2 days to fix. If it's not back in a couple of days I'm going to Watchdog!!!!

Do other countries experience similar problems with their ISPs or is it just the UK??

If there is anyone else who has had a similar problem or who want to air their grievances there is a forum at OrangeProblems where similarly frustrated souls go to purge themselves of their anger. I found it really therapeutic at least you know you are not alone.

It's just a good job I'm in Canada and not at home otherwise I would not be able to blog and that would derive a lot of pleasure to a lot of people!!