Decided to put in a call to Origin in order to fully understand my account with them. After being held in queue for 1 hour 10 mins, I finally got through to someone. My first question was whether or not I am in any sort of contract with them. I’ve been on a rolling month-to-month basis for a long time, and their portal tells me that my “contract” expires on “11th March 2025”, which seems fine. However, I was told that my contract expires on 3rd November 2025! WTF?! After much drilling, it seems that she sees an expiry date of “03/11/2025” and insists that it is 3rd November! I asked if she was in the UK, and it turns out she is in South Africa…
It was just a painful going-round-in-circles conversation. The Origin portal is specifically saying “11th March” not “03-11” or whatever, and that should be the reliable source? I asked her to start up a complaint procedure and they will call me back – in one week… from South Africa again… She said it is not possible for me to talk to anyone in the UK about this… I asked about cancelling, and she said there would be a £79 penalty because the end date was November!
All so very frustrating. She said I could cancel in November without penalty – but how can I trust them not then to turn round and say I am in contract till 11th March 2026?! Origin used to be a local South Yorks firm, but silently got taken over by Talktalk, and their support is now a bloody nightmare. I definitely need to cancel Origin, it’s just a matter of when.
So… I was already considering a new solution from an outfit called National Broadband. They are offering a pure 5G router i.e. no phone line necessary (we have no phone on our line anyway!), and serviced by O2, EE, Three (and maybe others). And I’ve now gone ahead and placed an order… We live quite close to a phone mast, and when I’ve tried using 5G for internet on my mobile I get download speeds of over 200Mbps, which is 5x what I get from Origin. I’m hoping this is going to be straightforward!