Thread

Grrrrrr,

I feel like swearing I really do!!! I’m usually such a nice calm composed person (as far as I know 😉 ) but today I just feel like my patience is being tried!!

Does anyone know (I’m based in the UK so things might be different in other countries) why oh why the support lines for Broadband are £1 a minute if you are using a Mac as opposed to 5p a minute if you are using a Windows machine?

I don’t have any problems at all with my Mac. I have been using them pretty much since they first came out and I know them like the back of my hand. The problem I have is that the broadband connection is playing up! I can see this from logging into the router home-page (something which tech support probably think most people don’t know how to do!!) and that tells me in plain simple terms that I would get a quicker connection if I rang up the exchange and wrote down all the 1s and 0s and then fed them into my computer myself!!!!!!

I find it not only rude but also computerist (hmm seems computerist exists in the dictionary but doesn’t mean what I wanted it to mean!! I was thinking more along the words of racism but for computers) that it should cost more to support a Mac user than a PC user. If they do indeed support us then that must mean that they are paying people to provide this support and if so then it should cost the same!!

This really gets me annoyed. It would be like going into a shop and saying to one person you can have that paper for 30p whereas the next person that comes in is 6” taller and so they have to pay £3. It’s just not on!!

Does anyone know how they can keep on getting away with this and is there any legal action I can take against this? I mean I am paying them for a service. The service stinks and then they want to charge me extra to fix a fault on their end just because I use a Mac!!

At times like these I feel that maybe I should just go out and buy a cheap PC and call their PC line although to tell the truth that would get me really really riled as I shouldn’t have to be doing that just to get support at the same cost as others.

Any help with this would be really great as I want to take this as far as I can as this sort of thing has annoyed me for long enough now. If I have to take this to some European court or something then I will do. I just don’t see this as fair or just.

Thanks for listening to my rant 😊

Best wishes,

Mark

Can’t you just tell them you use a PC? Then of course, whenever they ask you to reboot, you just wait 13 seconds, then say, “Ok, now what?”

When my mom had high speed set up in her house, she called me in a panic, “The guy says macs don’t have ethernet, so it won’t help us, and we need to get PCs for the high speed to work.”

I said, “Well, you can argue with him, tell him macs have had ethernet built in since ‘84, or you can just tell him if it works on his PC, he’s free to go.”

I can se a justification for it from a business standpoint, but I think it’s crappy. If 90% of your customers use PCs, and 9% use macs, and 1% use Linux, and you maintain 24 hour support. This means as a company you have to have someone around that knows these OSes. So you have a staff of 49 PC guys, 12 Mac guys, and 12 Linux guys. If the damn mac and Linux people would just use PCs, that’s like 24 people you could let go.

But seriously, why should you, as a customer, EVER have to pay for help with an issue that on their side? And I’ve long since learned to deal with tech support people when they ask if I use a mac or PC. “Just tell me what you need me to do. I know how to do it on the computer I am using.”

I’ve never got why it matters at all, unless you’re getting into way high networking issues beyond that guy on the phone.

Hiya,

Yep I see what you mean with the tech support although if they have employed people for both PC and Mac then I see it that we should get treated the same. I’m sure legally this has to be totally wrong but I just don’t know where to start to find that out.

I could just say I’m on a PC but I don’t really think that I should have to. I find that absolutely demeaning to tell the truth (I don’t mean what you have said is demeaning 😉 ).

The part that really rattles me though is the fact that this would be the same no matter if I am on a Mac or a PC. There isn’t a problem with the computer it’s the internet connection itself. I’ve checked with BT who have said that there is nothing wrong the phone line so that only leaves a problem with the broadband provider who are giving me the run-around.

To tell the truth I am totally sick, tired and fed up of companies not bothering to take responsibility for their problems. I was always brought up to take responsibility for everything that I do and I stand by that sentiment firmly. Why oh why can’t companies who take your money away from you do the same though!!

The fact that we asked before even signing up with them if they supported Macs and were told “Absolutely. There is no difference to which computer you use” this should in itself be enough that we shouldn’t have to call a more expensive line. If I have a problem with my Mac I’ll figure it out myself as do nearly all other Mac users. Yes if there is a problem with their computer or system that they can’t fix themselves then perhaps this is acceptable but the fact is that there isn’t anything wrong with the computer at all, just their broadband connection.

I feel like taking up some kind of class action law suit or something just to nail it to these idiots! They had even banned the use of port 25 so none of our e-mail SMTP servers that we pay for the use of on our own domains would work anymore. Luckily our web-hosts are fantastic and simply opened up a different port for us to use and that has got round that issue.

We were lied to by the broadband support though and they said that they don’t block the port. From my doing a very very simple telnet command I could see that it was and also it came up with a documentation link to say that we had to use the broadband providers smtp address! Not banned, how dare they!!

Also the idiot that was on tech support lied to us when we asked to speak to his manager as he didn’t even know what telnet was and said that he was the Director of the company! Funny as I know who the director of the company is and he is located in France and this guy was in India.

How can they get away with lying like that!?

Sorry for the long rant 😊 I’m off now to use my exceptionally slow internet connection which at the moment is showing as just being slightly quicker than a 28k modem!!

Just wait till I get through to someone with at least half a brain. I’m going to give them the whole of my mind!!

Best wishes,

Mark

Does anyone know (I’m based in the UK so things might be different in other countries) why oh why the support lines for Broadband are £1 a minute if you are using a Mac as opposed to 5p a minute if you are using a Windows machine?

Probably because they have to hire a Mac specialist to understand the differences and need to pay him/her more than the ordinary helpdesk monkies 😊 OK, maybe not but that’s a ridiculous charge, it should be the same as all you’re buying is a broadband service like everyone else, and as we all know ethernets, modems and the rest of it are common whatever type of machine you use.

If you went to a garange to have your car serviced it wouldn’t matter whether it was a Ford, Vauxhall or VW, the price would be the same - if you had a Ferrari you could understand it would cost more, but you haven’t!

Who is this ISP any way? - go on, dig the dirt!

Who is this ISP any way? - go on, dig the dirt!

Oh ORANGE I ORANGE shouldn’t ORANGE really ORANGE spill ORANGE the ORANGE beans ORANGE as ORANGE that ORANGE would ORANGE be ORANGE un-professional ORANGE wouldn’t ORANGE it?

Orange? Cough! Splutter! Aaargh! Eeek!

I used to have friends that used Orange - they’re still friends but they use a decent ISP nowadays after seeing the light 😊

I use Plusnet, despite some peeps having niggles with them recently they’ve always been fine for me, and on the 2 occasions in the last 6 years I’ve had to call the helpdesk the staff knew what they were on about (I don’t use a Mac though…lol).

Another highly rated ISP is Zen Internet.

have you had a look at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ - http://www.dslreports.com/forum/ukbb - http://www.ispreview.co.uk - to see if you have Mac friends there?

Some Orange user ratings
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/orange.html
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/208.html (check this one!!!!)

I would imagine they treat it as as ‘specialty service’ and as such charge more. But I must say I have never hard of the price being different (USA here) usually all it means they have to reach for another book and start reading the script…not that they really are helping ‘troubleshoot’ as much as go though process of elimination and reading through ‘if then’ scenarios. Rarely will you get an ‘expert’ on line the first time you call unless you overwhelm him/her with things you have already done on your own….if give them enough facts that they can’t look up quickly then you have a better chance of reaching leve2/3 tech support.
Good ISP can save you a lot of hair 😊

Damn,

I wouldn’t use a mobile carrier for an ISP. Useless bunch of money leechers ever.

To be honest, I don’t see how an OS can be important as there are no drivers for getting internet access. Surely it’s down to the IP and DNS settings? If you can see the router then it’s a router issue. If you can’t then it’s a Mac issue. In that case call the router manufacturer.

The broadband connection has nothing to with the Mac.

Steven you’ve hit it on the head. Now if only those complete and utter numpties could see that!! 😉

I have been on the phone to them today for over 4 hours already and the guy in technical support agrees with me that it is a line problem (BT have checked and said there is no line problem on their end 3 times now so it must be a problem with Orange) but that I still have to go through to a Mac helpline. When I asked him to put it into simple terms for me as to why when it is a problem with the line and they are admitting that fact I still have to go through a certain computer helpline!!

At one point he suggested for me to load Internet Explorer on to my Mac!!! He even said he could give me the phone number for Microsoft!!

We are going to be canceling tomorrow as this is beyond a joke. I know that internet speed is advertised as up to but when I am only getting speeds slightly higher than a 56K modem then that is just laughable!

We will move tomorrow and I am going to be putting in a complaint to the ISPA and taking this to our Trading Standards department too. I feel like I should go on a crusade to stop this sort of thing from happening ever again. I know that the government are trying to stop the utter clop that comes out of internet providers mouths but nothing ever seems to get done about it.

I’m thinking of getting a massive petition together and then taking out a class action law suit or something, I’m simply that miffed at the moment.

Best wishes,

Mark

I went with PlusNet in the UK and they were great. Next time, just pretend to be on a PC. Failing that, get Win on VMWare and go through that!

Yep. Well we have been with them less than a week so will definitely be closing the contract. I’ll bet you they try to take us for a ride though and don’t give us the necessary MAC code immediately which then they will keep us over the 7 day cool off period and then we are hooked into an 18 month contract. Wow this is going to be fun.

This really narks me off. Why can’t companies just be made to take responsibility for their actions. Too much of this goes on every single day and I have simply had enough now.

I will definitely be taking this through legal channels as I am beyond annoyed now.

Best wishes,

Mark

P.S. This really really annoys me as I am (I hope anyway!) usually a very calm person but this has just taken the biscuit!

Just wondering if anyone has ever used the http://speedtester.bt.com tool here in the UK?

Also if you have then what exactly is this testing? BT have told me there is nothing wrong with the line so I have to trust that they are telling me the truth on that.

I have attached an image of the results I am getting from that test. I’m pretty sure these numbers are bad although I may be mad and reading them wrong. Any advice on all of this would be great if anyone can?

Best wishes,

Mark

As far as I’m aware this test the *maxiumum* download and upload speed for your connection. In reality you rarely (if ever) actually get these speeds. Bear in mind that the further away you are from your local exchange the slower your connection will be.

Hi Rob,

Yep thought as much. The only thing that I find odd is that the down-stream and up-stream rates are the same as the router system information page shows me but that is definitely not what I’m getting. It is as though I am being capped somewhere along the line as every single online speed test that I do (I know these aren’t totally accurate due to many different reasons but are a pretty good indicator) show me as having 0.1Mbps download and around 0.3Mbps upload!!

Upload faster than download? Now that just has to be wrong!!

When we started using the service about 4 days ago we had normal internet at around 3.4Mbps and now it has gone down to 0.1Mbps. They didn’t even tell us that the service had gone live!! They were supposed to do that and so when our internet went dead last week we obviously got on to our existing provider who couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. On the off-chance that everything had been changed across we plugged in the new router and hey presto it was already online!!

If I say go to Google and try to download Google Earth (approximately 33MB in size) it takes around 1 hour to complete and in that time I am totally unable to bring up any other internet pages or do anything else!

Before the change I could be downloading probably 10-20 files of the same size as this, downloading at least 50-100 internet pages and checking e-mails now I can do one thing at a time and that is really really slow!!

Their tech support took about 2 days training on the routers and always try to make out that their is a problem with our computers. I have now tested 9 different computers and even a neighbors Windows machine on our network, all the same. Slow, slow, slow!

We will definitely be moving first thing tomorrow and I am then reporting the whole shenanigans to the ISPA and OFCOM and anyone else I can find!

To say the least I really really want to strangle someone at Orange!

=== RANT OVER ===

Best wishes,

Mark

I think moving is the best thing you can do, wherever you go I’d say avoid the big household brands and check the user commenst onhttp://www.ispreview.co.uk/ to find a good ISP 😊