Vodafone

[Sundayjumper]

Those that obsessively memorise everything that's posted on here will recall that I recently ditched Sky (telly, phone & broadband) and moved my broadband to Vodafone. I'm currently on my fifth day with no broadband and reduced to tethering my phone to my laptop to do anything online

It's been a bit of a pain all along. The original changeover date came & went without anything happening. I chased it up and apparently they'd tried to call me but couldn't get through and so cancelled the whole order. Nobody thought to try emailing or anything

Revised changeover date came and hurrah ! It worked. That was 10th Sep.

Late morning last Friday - the 20th - an OpenReach bloke turned up out of the blue and said they'd identified a problem with the line and he'd been sent to investigate. He found a broken wire in the master socket. My fault as I'd been mucking about with stuff, but the internet was working so I'd not realised anything was wrong. He fitted a new master socket, did something in the cabinet down the road, and said we'd be offline for half an hour. Half an hour (ish) later we were back online and running faster than before. Yay.

Late afternoon last Friday we went offline again. I can access the modem/router, the DSL connection is up, but the router is not getting an external IP address.

Saturday morning I called support and spent an hour talking to a chap who seemed to know what he was talking about. He spoke to OpenReach and determined they had an outstanding action on my line. They promise to fix things within two working days. Seeing as this was Saturday morning, two working days obviously means four days, end of Tuesday

Tuesday afternoon I decided I'd better call them again to see what's happening. After just over 45 minutes on hold I got to talk to someone who advised me to turn it off and back on. That didn't work, of course, so she advised me to do a hard reset. That didn't work so I was passed to someone else who, get this, advised me to turn it off wait two hours and then back on. That didn't work. But true to his word he called me back to check, and advised me to wait another couple of hours to see if it would connect. Nope.

So all in all yesterday I spent about two hours on the phone being given various versions of "turn it off and back on".

I'm now waiting for another person to call me back. Not holding my breath on this....

[RobYob]

I had a mobile phone with Vodafail for a couple of years, never, ever again.

Now have internet and phone with EE, every time I've called their customer service over the last year I've been happy with their response.

[scotta]

Which is why i use Plusnet!

When you phone them they actually know what they are talking about. we had problems when we moved in here with speed and unreliability. Took a while but they fixed it between themselves and openreach. I dont think we would have got there with a different supplier. I did get escalated to their third level support after a few calls which helps.

Demand that they escalate this to their senior engineers or you'll just get a succession of first line checklist muppets.

[Jobbo]

When it appears to be a fault which Openreach aren't fixing, what would be the difference with any other provider? Genuine question, I've managed to avoid BT lines for most of the last decade by using Virgin cable and now Gigaclear FTTP.

[Broccers]

When it appears to be a fault which Openreach aren't fixing, what would be the difference with any other provider? Genuine question, I've managed to avoid BT lines for most of the last decade by using Virgin cable and now Gigaclear FTTP.

Nothing if they are piggybacked onto openreach who are the supplier of the service into your house.

[Sundayjumper]

When it appears to be a fault which Openreach aren't fixing...

Appears ? Or really is ? Vodafone slopey-shouldered it on Saturday but that didn't work out for them !

[Sundayjumper]

Subsiduary moan - my wife absolutely cannot grasp that wifi and internet are different things.

"Oooh, I've got wifi again"

Then

"It's not working"

At least half a dozen times over the weekend.

[Sundayjumper]

...Gigaclear FTTP.

I'd not heard of them. Sounds great. But I can't get it here because (I assume) I'm not rural enough, and I can't get FTTP from other ISPs because (I assume) I'm not in a sufficiently built up area. D'oh.

Also can't get Virgin here. That would have been my first choice right from the start when we moved in 13 years ago.

[Broccers]

When you were switching from Sky I had a similar problem with the broadband. They wanted 50 quid to send out an engineer as I was out of contract. After agreeing a new deal I got a new hub which didn't fix the dropping out issue. Sky arranged for an engineer to come out on a friday at 4pm which ended up being 730pm She was very lovely and changed the box in the house and it still wasnt working properly.

So Openreach sent to look at it and turned out to be an issue in their box miles away - all sorted now and Sky sent us 25 quid as they were late.

[Sundayjumper]

This isn't dropping out, it's just not connecting at all.

I was planning on my next conversation with Vodafone being a bit shouty and ending up with me cancelling the contract, but if it's genuinely an Openreach issue I'll feel slightly bad about that, and I'll still have the problem with whoever I choose next.

[Matty]

I've been with Vodafone BB for a while - TBH it was painless swapping, they also couldn't hit my advertised speed so I'm only paying £18/month inc. line rentral so it's cheap.

Like most providers, it's easiest just to point fingers. In my experience...it's usually always been OpenReach's fault. And unless you're in a VM area....you're pretty much stuck.

[drcarlos]

...Gigaclear FTTP.

I'd not heard of them. Sounds great. But I can't get it here because (I assume) I'm not rural enough, and I can't get FTTP from other ISPs because (I assume) I'm not in a sufficiently built up area. D'oh.

Also can't get Virgin here. That would have been my first choice right from the start when we moved in 13 years ago.

One of the benefits of moving from Sandhurst to Yateley, we are fully cabled up here. Used Sky for about 4 years until they couldn't get anywhere near the Virgin price even after being with them for 18 years (2 months later they bring out the retentions system for long standing customers). Virgin has been OK but it gets a lot of contention at busy times and the router occaionally stops giving out IPs and needs a reset. That said though I beleive that Sandhurst got Infinity2 as they weren't cabled and Yateley are still stuck on Infinity1 so I don't really have much choice as the BT/Other choice is quite slow.

[McSwede]

Now have internet and phone with EE, every time I've called their customer service over the last year I've been happy with their response.

My mobile has been with EE for yonks and they're great. My home broadband Hass been with them for quite a while too and is faultless. I also get a 5gb data boost on my mobile plan because of this.

Anytime you ring them they sort stuff for you. They were superb helping me sort out a new phone and contract for my 80+yr old neighbour.

As a contrast my parents are with talk talk and their service is shit.

[Sundayjumper]

Update: After a few more hours on the phone today, and turning the router on & off god knows how many times, Vodafone still have no idea what's wrong. So they're sending an engineer out. On Monday. Who may or may not be able to fix it. They don't know yet.

They say they'll reimburse us for the additional data we use on our phones (on O2) until it's fixed, but I bet that's going to be a difficult discussion when we get there.

Rating so far: 1/10. They're fairly good at calling you back when they say they will. Apart from that they suck.

[Broccers]

My sister works for head office at newbury so we get 60 percent off the phones and to be fair they are quite good at working.

I'll not try the BB

[JonMad]

Only on Vodafone for my phone because it's free, as is the handset, and the data, with work.
PlusNet here, seems reliable, have had no need to ever call them. Touch wood that remains the case.

Sorry that's no help at all!

[Sundayjumper]

This is quite astonishing but they actually manged to make it worse, and then worse again. With a cherry on top.

Thursday was painful and I was getting desperate. In the conversation back on Tuesday they'd said they could give me some free mobile data, but only if I had a Vodafone phone. We don't, we're both on O2 so nothing came of that. Thursday afternoon I went out [1] and bought a Vodafone mobile wifi doohickey. It came with 15GB of data and worked perfectly. Once that had run out, Saturday morning, I called up to ask for the free top up only to be told that they can only give free data if you have a Vodafone *contract*. The PAYG dongle I bought didn't count

An hour or so on the phone and I got 6GB from them. That 6GB ran out mid evening while trying to watch Netflix. Couldn't get through to request another top up. Gave up. Went to bed.

I tried to top up this morning, with my own money, to avoid the pain of talking to someone, and the account wouldn't allow it. WTF.

Back onto the phone, a half hour wait to talk to someone, then 45 minutes of them fcuking about being clueless before saying "Oh, is this a PAYG data ? That's a different team".



Got another 6GB. Which lasted until about 5pm.

I know that sounds like a lot in a short time, but when you're accustomed to your home having email, internet, Neflix, Spotify, Youtube, instant everything, you burn through it fast. My wife works from home as a graphic designer and needs to send & receive large files. This has really made me realise how much we take the internet for granted - less than £1/day for a gateway TO THE ENTIRE WORLD suddenly seems amazingly cheap when you're denied it for a while.

But here's the best bit - after that I got an automated text message asking me to do a customer satisfaction survey. Oh yeah, I'm gonna let rip on this one First question - "Based on your last call, how likely are you to recommend Vodafone to a friend/colleague? Text a score from 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely)"

That is a solid 0/10, so

"0"

<reply>

<message failed to send>

Dammit.

<retry>

<message failed to send>

Oh FFS. Their customer satisfaction survey doesn't accept incoming messages.


This afternoon I phoned again and got another 6GB, and that only took 15 mins. I'm getting the hang of it now. You *tell* them to do it and you get fewer questions than if you *ask* them to do it.

There is an "engineer" due to visit tomorrow. Meh.

Broccers - tell your sister that Vodafone suk teh massiv donk coks.





[1] Not technically true, I ordered it from Argos because they offered same day delivery, and they did <thumbsup>

[IanF]

Here to push Plusnet as a provider, even though the guy I just chatted with used the phrase "I'll have to speak to my manager, as that deal is for new customers only"!

£27.50 /18mo plus £70 cash back for unlimited fibre extra inc line rental is a nice reduction from £41.something previous.

[ZedLeg]

I keep forgetting to phone them to do that, mines went up to £40 a couple of months ago.

[Ascender]

Vodafone are one of those companies I thought were really bad after using them for mobile phones, but I was amazed to find out when dealing with their corporate team that they were even worse than I expected. So at least they're consistent in their approach to $hitty service.