Free Orange broadband upgrade

I had a phone call from Orange tonight which initially involved them trying to flog me some upgrade package which I told them straight I neither wanted or needed.

I expected to get the usual pushy sales pitch, but to my surprise they just accepted me saying no. Even more surprising was being informed that they're giving me a free upgrade to 8meg unlimited broadband, for being a 'valued customer'. I'm currently only on a 2meg capped package.

Now, call me a cynic (because I am), but what's the catch? Any other Orange users get this free upgrade?

Sounds good man! Take it and run!

OK, there is a catch. :/

Apparently, by accepting my 'free' upgrade, I'm tied into another 12 month contract. The sly barstools.

No biggy really, though. I had no plans to change ISP. And now I have unlimited broadband - welcome to the 21st century, me! \o/

Yep I did the same recently. There IS a catch though. Before I was able to get 2Mbit constantly. Now I get 8MBit in the day and offpeak but it has dropped to as lows as 400Kb in the evenings and at Weekends. the BARSTOOLS!

Did you get the upgrade free, Grey?

Apparently, I can only get ~4.5meg where I am but I'm not too bothered about download speed as I hardly ever dl huge files. I'm currently only getting 1meg but it always seems consistent.

If I get any severe dropout in speed, I'm going to insist they return me to my old package. I don't really see the point of these 12 month tie-in contract things anyway - if I decide to leave and cancel my direct debit, what can they do?

no but i did get a free ipod nano (new version) so that was rather nice, already on 16mb (really around 14 is what i get) broadband anyhowwws.

Funny, we area always bound 12 month to contract, if you don't cancel it upfront it will be automatically renewed for 12 months ...

but the "drop down" seriously sounds like cable, where you share your connection with all around you so if all got an 8m upgrade ... baaad

No, it's not cable. I will only get ~4.5megs because I live too far from my local telephone exchange to get the full 8meg.

Mine was free too. (years ago I had to pay £20 to go from 1Mbit to 2Mbit). The thing with the low speed is I can't stream music or youtube when it's like that, it's that bad!

Hmmm. Did you ring tech support? What did they say?

It's just a common thing. I had a thread about it here a while back, also spoke to a friend who said it's just normal. They change you to a different system when you have 8Mbit where they don't guarantee a solid 2Mbit so you are just sharing with everyone and his dog.

Oh. What a crock.

Sounds like an incentive for a DoS attack to me.