Vodafone Sure Signal

[Quintin]

There comes a time when I wonder whether it is actually worth the effort to continue with Vodafone.

Although the Suresignal has worked well now for many months, today it stopped. Again.

It seemed to follow a power outage which dumped my router. A reboot of the router brought my internet back to life but the Suresignal stuck firmly on only two lights. It is the older version.

I phoned customer support somewhere in the world and asked to speak to the UK Suresignal help desk. I have done this in the past when I appeared to be beta testing the product and they were very helpful.  After nearly forty minutes of being put on hold etc I was told that I needed to contact my ISP who would have to "open ports" to make it work again. I knew this was rubbish but an agent and a  conversation of some length assured me that they could see from their system that the problem was with my ISP not Vodafone. The ISP would sort it out. Hmmm!

I had already done a ping test. I have no idea how to copy and paste the cmd page but here is my attempt.

C:\Windows\system32>pathping 212.183.133.181

Tracing route to 212.183.133.181 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  xxxxxxxx.mshome.net [192.168.0.2]
  1  192.168.0.1
  2  lo0-central10.pcl-ag04.plus.net [195.166.128.185]
  3  84.93.249.114.broadband.plus.dyn.plus.net [84.93.249.114]
  4  pte-sw6.plus.net [212.159.1.6]
  5  ae1.ptw-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129.2]
  6  ae2.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129.4]
  7  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]
  8  85.205.116.2
  9     *        *        *
Computing statistics for 200 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           xxxxxxx.mshome.net [192.168.0.2]

                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    1ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.0.1
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2   50ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  lo0-central10.pcl-ag04.plus.net [1
95.166.128.185]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   53ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  84.93.249.114.broadband.plus.dyn.p
lus.net [84.93.249.114]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   36ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  pte-sw6.plus.net [212.159.1.6]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   42ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ae1.ptw-cr02.plus.net [195.166.129
.2]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   39ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ae2.ptw-cr01.plus.net [195.166.129
.4]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  LNDGW2.arcor-ip.net [195.66.224.124]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  8   35ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  85.205.116.2

Trace complete.


I phoned my ISP, who are UK based, and they politely told me what I expected to hear namely that  what I had been told by Vodafone Customer service was, I paraphrase, rubbish. We discussed the ping and in particular the loss of trace at Arcor etc. See Above. Guess who owns Arcor? A German/Dutch subsidiary of Vodafone. The signal is not lost at my ISP, which it reaches, but at Vodafone's own server.

I have wasted 5 hours of precious time today trying to sort this nonesense out when I had other important things to do. I really don't know why I bother.  I should mention that I was also told that the Suresignal unit was faulty and needed replacing before the guidance was replaced with it's your ISP's fault not ours.

It still isn't working. I have no mobile phone and texts access and I have to use my land line.The ONLY reason I am still with Vodafone is the Suresignal - when it works.

I have read some of the posts on the forum today with fascination as people struggle with a non working system.

Do you guys really care so little about making this stuff work properly? And why is it so difficult to get to speak with someone who is in this country who can actually help and not treat the problem as if the occult has to be used. Plus the end user is technically stupid and will believe anything.

Please PLEASE just make it work. Is it too much to ask?

If I am wrong I will apologise but honestly ----- !

[Quintin]

And now it's back up and working again with no further interaction by me or the ISP. That's only 16 hours of unexplained down time.

But a nice text from Vodafone though saying they are happy I called them today.

Left hand and right foot -----!

[James]

Hi Quintin,

When it comes to the Sure Signal we have seen that a power outage can cause the Sure Signal to lose its current profile which means that once your router is back up and running it will need to go through the setup procedure again which in some instances can take up to 24 hours.

However as you have mentioned that your Sure Signal is back up and running please can you let me know if you experience any further issues with the service so that I can take a look at this for you.

The eForum Team are allUKbased and have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the Vodafone Sure Signal

James

[Quintin]

Hi James,

Good of you to respond. I usually do go through the forums and you will see from file that I was one of the first purchasers of a Suresignal back in the days when it was really hit and miss and mostly miss. During those early days it was possible to talk on the phone to one of your UK based and very helpful Suresignal support team. On a couple of occasions someone actually phoned me!  Much was sorted out quickly even if it meant waiting but it did often mean someone at your end "kicking" the server. I read all of the days posts on the forum and those for the earlier part of the week. The problems they reported seemed very similar to the old days and few seemed to be getting very far.

SO, I thought I would try the telephone route. I am sure you have read my original post and it would be great if someone would take on board the guidance I was given by your offshore support centre. Four times I was asked for my ID and on each occasion I asked to speak to the UK support team. I remained polite at all times - my wife was amazed but I never got there. The line was not good and I had to ask the agent to repeat themselves several times because of the time lag in speech. My ISP support chap was polite, helpful and amused at me being asked to phone him to "open" ports as he and I both knew he would be.

Vodafone is a telecoms company. It shouldn't have been impossible to speak to someone in the UK who actually knew what they were talking about. It is working again. It is not, as one of your colleagues described "awesome" it just needs to do its job.

Apologies for the diatribe. I was in the process of writing a complaint when no one replied but binned it when I got your email.

Regards.