Appalling broadband service

[ShahinS]

Signing up for home broadband has been a nightmare so far. I was given an activation date of the 20th, by midnight (which I knew to mean as late as possible). 

I contacted live chat at 20:30 that day to enquire if everything is ok. He assured me that everything is fine and will be activated soon.

I contacted live chat at 22:30 again to remind them. This person guaranteed that internet will be activated by midnight.

What happened? Of course nothing. I contacted them early on the 21st. The agent basically suggests restarting my router twice. Then suddenly it may work within 24 hours (again, I assume this to be as late as possible). 

So I contact them a FOURTH time, at 21:30. I am chatting for 1.5 hours but again, getting absolutely nowhere. Suddenly there's possibly a fault with BT even though internet was fine with a previous provider.

I have been lied to constantly by Vodafone. This issue has caused me great stress and money as I am having to pay for mobile data to talk to these people. I am also having to pay extra to travel as I cannot work from home. I am on the brink of cancelling the whole contract. Vodafone, please live up to your promises and sort it out. 

[Muttley1956]

Get out while you can.

Your mightmare has only just begun.

The first Lie

Once your line is up and running, hopefully, you'll find things settle down (over a period of 1 - 10 days) and you will have a "sync speed". This becomes the only measure Vodafone use for their meaningless claim of a guaranted BB speed.

Sync speed is the ''raw'' capability of the line. Once your router is attached, the DLM process will kick in which will inevitable lead to a reduction in line speed. The DLM process reduces line speed to achieve a balance between speed and accurate data transmission.

But sync speed is the not the true measure of throughput which is infuenced by the router itself and Vodafone's backed-end processing.

Lie Two

Vodafone claim they "do not throttle down your line speed" so you might expect the same throughput throughout the day. Prepare to be disappointed. Like all other ISPs, the Vodafone infrastructure stuggles in the evening. You'll encounter endless dropouts and minutes of waiting for streaming content to continue. Remember Vodafone's promise is related to Sync Speed. Therefore they can legally claim they've satisified their claim.

Lie Three

"The Vodafone Router is the best on the market". The reality is somewhat different. Those having problems with wireless use of the BB are told (as confirmed in this forum) that they should "limit wireless connections to 4 or 5 devices". A decent router should be able to handle at least twice as many.

Furthermore, customers have been complaining for at least 18 months that the router constantly drops out and is reporting billions of upstream errors. Vodafone acknowledge this problem yet have done nothing about it.

If you do decide to stay, look at the forum and find out how to attach your own router. You might find a marginal increase in sync speed but, more importantly, you should see a more consistent throughput, realistic error reporting and the ability to wirelessly connect a reasonable number of devices.. I'm afraid there's nothing you can do about the weaknesses in Vodafones infrastructure and associated slow down in end-to-end throughput.

[robmar0se]

There's a theme on these boards with many punters having almost identical experience, put offs etc.

This rarely happens with other BT Openreach locl loop providers.

My own experience suggests that Vodafone have a problem in the dept that interfaces with Openreach.  I can only quote from what a CS guy said, that the dept responsible denied a responsibility that both Openreach and Ofcom stated was Vodafone responsibility.

The people I spoke to at BT & Ofcom were most articul;ate in the discussions I had, where the Vodafone guy couldn't even get his manager to call - a frequernt occurence which even the press has commented on

The conclusionb is that as you say we are being told porkies (putdowns), or Vodafone people liaising withg Openreach are incompetant, or a bit of both.

Best wishes and good luck

[JamesBroadband]

Leave, check my thread for my own account.

I left, now with BT and feel like a massive weight is off of my shoulders - already getting 60mbit/s with BT, Voda I was getting 5mbit/s if I was lucky... many times less than 2mbit/s.

[TJ]

Apologies for delay in getting you up and running @ShahinS, I know how frustrating this must be.

We'll be more than happy to investigate further and find out what's causing the problem. So our Broadband team can take a look into this for you, I've sent you a private message with details on how to get in touch.