Origin Broadband

Worst company for Customer Service. I feel so sorry for the staff. They are on the frontline but the system they work in is not fit for purpose. CEO is happy for them to struggle on. He told me has better things to spend his money on. Avoid this company.

Just awful, feel trapped in their contract now as well.. have had to order a seperate 4G home broadband kit so that I have usable internet.. total shambles... Buy at own risk

I've had a great experience from start to finish really. The service has gone down from time to time but what internet provider doesn't? For £24.99 for the Max Fibre service I really can't complain. It does what I pay it to.
The only constructive feedback I can think of is that perhaps Origin could supply a better router? The ASUS router supplied isn't that great but again for the money can't complain. There is the option to upgrade and buy a better router but if I was going to do that I'd probably source my own from Argos or Amazon.

Ordered broadband on 6/11/2020 & installed on 12/11/2020 & speed has been diabolical.
Called them on the 21/11/2020, to highlight the poor service & even sent a screenshot of speed test, but got no reply.
Tried to cancel on the 23/11/2020, to be told I'd have to pay over £600 to cancel,as its a 2yr deal.
I said that the 14 day cooling off period, should be from when your connected & live, as how can you rate the service until then, but was told its in the contract, so now feel very trapped & stuck, with a service that is so unstable & 2 yrs will be like a jail sentence.

Gary Redpath

The reviews praising the company by family members ( Lowes and his partner Frain - also ex employee) when my relative worked in management have vanished. I think that says something about it .....

I joined Origin at the end of August 2020 due to it been local to me and the excellent deals offered. Initially, the customer service was outstanding! The gentleman selling the package listened and also quickly resolved the fact we needed an additional line. All going well, Open Reach Engineer comes out, fits an additional line and although the speed wasn’t good, we were told it needed 10 days to ‘settle’. Low and behold, we’re now out of our cooling off period. This was by 20th September 2020.

We carry on and although the broadband is intermittent, this is something we’re used to. I tried to contact the technical department and although spoke to someone via the live chat, was left confused and the chat was cut off on me when I tried to keep asking questions.

Now, the big issue. Parental controls!! This is a big issue for every parent and quite rightly so. When I joined Origin, the lovely customer service rep assured me there is solid parental controls available... what a LIE!! I rang technical for support setting it up. They talked me through a convoluted system but was adamant inappropriate content would be locked so I persevered. It didn’t work. I then contacted them again, spoke to someone different and had different advice although this time they did send me the user guide out via email. When I followed the link to the guide, it’s 331 pages long and certainly not written in lay persons terms!!

I rang customer service and was told that actually the parental control is only a screen time limit and nothing more. The offered ‘resolution’ was for me to download an external app to offer parental control. On average this would be £200 a year. The lady actually told me “I’m Googling it and there are loads available”. Just not available with the broadband provider I pay for, clearly.

I asked to cancel at this point as the service isn’t fit for use and borders on a safeguarding query if we can’t assure our children are safe online. I was told I would need to pay the full amount and was refused to escalate it further when I disagreed. I placed a formal complaint to which I received emails saying staff members have tried to phone me but no reply. I can absolutely assure I had ZERO calls and can prove it on my call log. What a terrible way to try and resolve a conflict! I spoke to someone again after I called back and was given the standard line of “you can’t cancel but will need to pay the remaining balance”. No room for discussion or anything this pretty poor customer service.

I then put a second written formal complaint in and surprise, surprise, no reply. I will now wait and see but am so disappointed. It takes a lot for me to leave reviews and in my mind, this review didn’t have to be negative if Origin had stuck to their own ‘Origin’s responsibilities to you’ on their own terms of service!!


Overall, if you want consistent and safe broadband and for any customer service or technical issues to be sensibly and clearly answered, reconsider joining Origin.

Well, the actual service is good, as in normally good connection and wifi BUT when I had issues, Origin were pisspoor.
I contacted them and they did nothing I chased them.
They then told me that it took 24-48 hours to reply to an outage.
That was never mentioned until I chased.
Then, I was chasing everyday and I could only get a reply on Twitter and one particular lady (Leanne) is proper mardy and difficult.
They promised a callback on 1st Oct within 3-5 days.
Didn't get one.
I didn't get a call until 3rd November.
They also sent an engineer to my house, without informing me or checking if I had anyone shielding from COVID. I'm normally on my own and have PTSD so a random man showing up at my house was quite scary.
Luckily, I had my partner with me during lockdown (although he is meant to be sheilding) who helped out and Origin never explained this. Just, oh well, nuts to your mental health.
They kept charging me even though I had nearly a month of no internet and had to purchase further data packages and rely on others' data to continue operating as a key worker.
I was eventually angry enough that I asked them to waive my termination fees and refund the monies paid for extra data and for the time I had been without internet.
They waived termination fees and I don't know what they're going to pay towards data but they're still charging me for the time I didn't have internet for, which I intend to report to Trading Standards because that seems like heinously poor practice.
Avoid them.

ZERO STARS
My Broadband cuts out for several minutes daily at least three times when I am working on projects - HororGin must be using a Cheap crap system & setup - Its also said, "Yer gets wot yer paid fer - The Asus DSL-N16 Router - Its only 40 Quid NEW ON FLEABAY - "Cheep cheep" YEAH - BUT - At least Henry's Model T Fords (1908 -1927) worked properly when they were juiced up & driven correctly.

I have found there Customer Service to be Excellent.
Very Knowledgeable and Helpful.
Added to the Cheap Deal they are a No Brainier.

We have waited 13 days to get online and have finally given up and are about to cancel the agreement. They told us that it would be on on a Friday (up to midnight!!) and nothing happened. Its now 6 days after that and their response was were sorry but there is an update tomorrow. Try to support a small company but they haven't got a clue about customer service. Looking at the other reviews here I'm glad were cancelling. Don't bother trying them....

Origin supplied poor broadband service unable to work properly through the equipment they provided. The technical team were not able to offer any sensible advice and when I complained they hadn't responded after a week. We all rely on broadband during lockdown with University lectures and working from home. DO NOT USE this company, we are looking to return to a more credible provider as soon as we can, after trying to support smaller businesses.

Between service outages the broadband connection is usable.

Many times however the speed drops to unusable levels, between 0 and 3Mbps,

Customer and tech support either answer with useless things such as 'Check your router MTU' or 'What's your DNS setting?' when the problem is clearly with their service, not my wiring, router.

Like many I need my broadband to do my job, these jokers waste so much of my time, I cannot wait to change provider.

I've been with origin broadband for around 18 months or so, should never have gone with this company.

I used to work for a well known UK based service provider myself, and if we had acted like the staff do at origin we would have been out of a job in days, but it's seems ok for customer service and support staff to ignore questions from customers, lie to them, close chats/phone calls without informing the customer and this is me being kind.

I am a live twitch streamer and youtuber, which was explained to origin from the very very very start even before taking out the contract with them, I explained what this means, and what I do, and explained to them that this is how I make a living, they assured me I would get the best connection I could get, even better than my old ISP ( who I was with for 8 years with very very little issues ), since joining origin, I have had hardly a stable connection, unable to live stream, its gotten to the point where I am more or less bankrupt as I can not earn money without a working internet connection.

I am writing this in November 2020, just after getting 3 months free service from Origin broadband after the last lot of issues I had, and now its started again, been complaining to them for over 7 weeks about issues with the connection being unstable, not being able to live stream, dropping etc, I have spent hours doing winMTR tests ( at the request of origin staff ), emailing them on a daily basis attempting to get answers ( I have sent them around 70+ emails in the last 6-7 weeks about this latest issue alone )

I also play online gaming for fun as well as streaming and youtube, and I have screenshots of a ping on a UK based farming simulator gaming server of over 5000ms ( friend from the USA who lives nearly 3500miles away had a ping of 70ms, where I used to get from my old isp a ping of 23ms ), I also use discord for my gaming community, reported of having a ping of 1.8million ms.

If you are truly looking for a good internet provider please for your sake skip origin, as far as I am concerned these are the worst ISP in the United Kingdom at this time.

As I was writing this review I was again on their live chat trying to get an update from yesterday when I spent 3 hours trying to get through to their support department to try to get them to look into the issue I have been reporting for the last 7 weeks or so, was talking to Jonathan first then along came Olivia ( live chat was transferred without informing the customer IE me ), to say Olivia is not very good at her job is the best thing I can really say about them, as they ignore your questions, don't actually give you any answers, and takes up to 70mins to reply ( not all the time but this is the max waiting time) then Olivia just closes the conversation mid chat, without any explanation, get used to this as this is the norm for staff at origin, either when you spend hours trying to get them on the telephone or hours waiting for them to reply on their live chat they will just end it with no reason.

Added this as it seems they have 2 websites now, 1 co.uk and the other .com but both are the same website and same provider.

I have given Origin the requested information and not heard anything from them ( as they requested this from my other review )

Forgot to add that I received an email from Origin 10 days ago saying that they would be sending me out a letter for a ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) so I could make a official complaint to the Ombudsman, I need this to start the process, still not received it as of yet, Below is a copy of their email.

Dear Mr *****

Thank you for your emails. I am sorry that we have been unable to come to a mutually acceptable resolution to your complaint.

As we have been unable to come to a resolve of your complaint, we will now issue a letter of ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) this will allow you to take your complaint further with the Ombudsman Services for Communications. All offers at this point will now be withdrawn.

I do not know what offers are being withdrawn, as I have not received any from them in any way shape or form, in fact had hardly any contact from them at all, it takes upto 4-7 days for a single email, upto and above 90mins in their phone queue ( and when you get through they often cut you off ), and if you use their live chat can take upto and often over an hours for each reply, and they often close the chat mid conversation, most of the time without even answering your questions

Not able to speak to anyone via phone, live chat leaves you hanging for ages and doesn't answer your queries. Absolutely awful service

The worst internet provider ever. I feel like I am lying to you by even giving a one star review. Staff are incompetent, been yelled at on the phone even as the customer. Everyone is completely uneducated about internet or even simple stuff. Everything that people have said about them trapping you into 12 months contract is correct. They said they don't even know the time frame of which my extremely low and unstable speeds will be fixed.
Spent about 7 hours on the phone to them and have accomplished absolutely nothing.

!SCAM! AVOID THIS PROVIDER!
Worst ever internet provider.
Scams people convince to sign up for contract by phone after send router by post. After approximately 2 weeks man came to install. Straight away we discovered that internet speed much lower than advertised.
I call them asking for cancellation the next day after installing.
Whey answer was 2 weeks passed after you sign contract we can't cancel it now.
If I would cancel it right now termination fees will apply for the whole period of contract.
I asked to cancel anyway. And informed them what I will not pay a single penny to Origin due I was not using them good even a day long.
Origin call me by phone after a week.
Lady from complaints department.
Saying all the same threatened with cancellation fees.
I request information how to return router. She told me that information will be send to me by email. But after 1,5 months I still waiting to be contacted

Awful internet provider . Internet drops all the time , cannot download any program on my tv , really bad . They won’t let me leave them unless I complete the 1 year contract which I’m don’t want to do because of their bad service . Any help of how can I stop using them ?

Please Please don't register with Origin, their customer service and connection is very bad and unprofessional. I was with them for less than a month and now they are claiming £600. I am taking legal action against them.

Absolutely dreadful company!
***SCAM***
Automated email claiming broadband up and running After 14 days so they can hit you for the cancellation fees of £270 when you call to cancel.
Gave them a chance to sort it out and they kept sending me emails saying they had received requests to switch to another provider. (Which I had not done) claimed they had the wrong address on their system so I couldn’t speak to them about anything.
Argumentative rep rang and said they could spend upto 8 weeks to correct any issues!
Now being hounded Daily by their debt collection agency for £270!
Ombudsman is dealing with it but origin are disputing everything and making stuff up to delay an outcome.
Dreadful dreadful company!

DREADFUL SERVICE. Have been trying to leave this company for over a month. Customer service line makes you wait nearly an hour to get through and then transfer you to wrong person. Completely unethical scam company.