tenthofjune

My mother-in-law has always been with Freeserve on Dial-up and does not use the internet enough to warrant paying for broadband. When Dixons sold Freeserve to Wanadoo in France (part of France Telecom), she was none the wiser, except that she didn’t understand why her homepage had changed to wanadoo.co.uk.

Now that France Telecom have decided to merge the brand names under the Orange brand, her homepage has changed again, still with no explanation. Since her homepage is still actually set to www.freeserve.co.uk, this redirects to www.orange.co.uk. Surely, it doesn’t take much for Orange to spot the redirections and display a banner explaining the change.

Now the really crap part: She started getting a message saying she had to change the number her computer dialled. The POP server also started refusing connections, refering her to the same page. Not exactly much warning nor much explanation to someone who just wants to check her emails and log in to her bank.

The automatic ‘download new number’ option does not work, even when logged in as administrator, but then again that’s Windoze for you.

Previously, she had dialled 0845 079 6699 (1p/min weekday eve), but the new number is 0844 058 7000 (2p/min).

There is no valid reason for doubling the price, especially as most people won’t realise this.

According to the FAQ on the changes:

Why is the number changing?
We’re asking you to change to this new number as the old one is out of date and will soon be closing.

What utter Bollocks! If you need to change it, change it to another 0845 number. The real answer is that Orange don’t like dial up customers and have therefore chosen to fleece them.

When did you tell me about this change?
We emailed you about 30 days ago explaining what the number change was and what you’d need to do.

No you did not! My mother-in-law received no such email.

So basically, no warning, no valid reason for the change in price. Shame on you Orange.