Broadband Butchered

[michaelcj]

So this might be a long thread but after the hell I've been through I thought it would be a little theraputic to post and remember why I've needed to speak to over 20 vodafone reps over the past couple of months.

The background is I'm a network (and software) engineer who has worked for a very large and well known switching and router company for many years. I don't specialise in VDSL though. I was previsouly with plusnet and I can honestly say the service I received from them was good. I can't recall a single time I was without internet for the 2-3 years I was with them. I never had to contact them about anything. I had a fibre (FTTC) service - exactly the same type of service requested from Vodafone. The only issue was it was quite expensive.

I then made the mistake two months ago of signing up for Voda's black friday deal which esentially was for £25/month for up to 76Mb/s.. I received an email saying the order had gone through - "here is your order number"....

And then nothing. So a week later I contacted their chat online to be told "techino problemo but no problem I'll recreate the order for you now manually.....and yes sir I'll make sure you get the Black Friday deal....." I won't go into the details of this minor issue here except to note that all the official emails received after then talked about a £30/month service and the only proof I have that I signed up for the £5 cheaper one is in a saved online chat transcript.

After the second order was placed, the communication from Vodafone was still lacking. Eventually as the "GoLive" (cross out and replace with "Go Dead") date approached I started to get emails about how I should install their router etc. I still didn't have a router from them. Around 5 days, 2 days and even the day before before the GoDead, the Indian call centre was promising me that I would receive my router on or before the GoDead date (28 December). Where was the dpd tracking link? "Don't worry sir, you'll receive it very soon..."

GoDead Day: I got up that morning and as expected the broadband had gone down although the phone line had been transferred ( I knew that because the CallerID had gone - no option to add it during the signup process or via the broken web app). Plusnet had said their goodbyes but no corresponding hello from Vodafone. Not even a router. Not to worry, they now allow third party routers on their network and I'd set them up before on Plusnet so I thought it should be easy to do. Well to keep the technicals to a minimum here (2 different routers with openreach modem, windows and a mac laptop with openreach modem) I was getting nowhere except that the log was clearly showing the credentials were invalid. More calls with Vodafone and I got the username/password for the vdsl line sent across and I was 100% sure I was putting in what they requested. But of course it didn't work.

Meanwhile I started asking again about the official Vodafone router. Where was it ? "...We're very sorry sir, I'll raise a manual request and it should be with you in 5 working days...". I think customer services of any company like to quote in "working days" since it makes the wait sound like less.

The next day (29 Dec - one day after GoDead) the Vodafone router arrived ! Well, I completely forgvate their customer services for telling me it would take a week (sorry "5 working days"). Here it was - what could possibly go wrong?

Of course it still didn't work. I had to go through several more provisioning dances with Vodafone and waits for non-existing callbacks before one guy there finally told me that OpenReach had left a note saying they hadn't completed the line changeover and they would update again on Jan 9!!!! Update? Does it mean sorted? Could it be sorted before then? Of course he couldn't tell me.

Then in the middle of all this was a really IMO big insult. He offered me 50GB of free data on my phone. Of course that's not an insult but bear with me.... I don't have a vodafone phone. He said if I went and subscribed to a vodafone 30 day pay-monthly ("...it has to be a pay-monthly...") service, I can cancel after the month and they would credit me with the fees paid as well as the 50GB. If this wasn't a big corporate it would sound very dodgey indeed - after all what is to stop them sending me a sim with 50GB pre-loaded?

So I decided to sign up. Only the sign-up failed (!) The on-screen message I got was "....your credit limit is only £72 which isn't sufficient to sign up for a pay monthly sim...." or words to that affect. Many more calls, and chats later the broadband team told me they would increase my credit limit first to £150 then when that didn't work to £300. Each time of course I was told to wait 2 hours (no doubt so that the rep telling me that ##~## would be long gone).

Finally, via a UK rep on the phone I was told I'd failed the credit check. Really? In brief, both my wife and I have worked continuously for many years, have an amex and visa card paid off in full each month, a first direct bank account with debit card and 5-figure balance, a mortgage 100% up2date and to add to that I get my credit reference file from Experian (CreditExpert) which no issue at all (green zeros everwhere). We've never been refused any kind of credit including mortgages. But this poxy pay monthly sim we get denied for. Maybe that was a good thing though. In retrospect, I can see it being a real pain getting them to make good their promises about refunds and adding 50Gb on to the card.

So here we are without Broadband. I feel so, so stupid to think of switching a perfectly good service!

[BandOfBrothers]

Not a good seamless service at all @michaelcj !

You've every right to vent after that catalogue of events. 

It was up until very recently that Vodafone agreed to release the credentials to be able to use a 3rd party router- from past threads people have been successful then in using their own router so im not sure what's happened with yours. Maybe the settings / passwords you've been given are not fully correct. 

Contacting the dedicated Broadband Teams via the telephone number in contact-us. may yield results. 

How a Broadband Provider cannot get a router to a person before the activation date is beyond me. The systems glitched excuse ive seen before. 

In regards to adding 50gb of data to a 30 day sim only offer ive seen before. It can seem that maybe they think that some will simply stay on with the sim only so thats a plus. 

I can see no reason either why they cannot add this 50Gb to a Payg SIM card either which would be a much simpler experience for the customer due to no credit check or having to remember to cancel within the Network Satisfaction Guarantee period which is 30 days. 

That said I would have thought you would have been Credit Checked for the Broadband Account so why is there a need to carry out a 2nd Credit Check ! Maybe I'm wrong and a 2nd Credit Check is needed but I cannot fathom why. 

I understand what you are saying about the status of your Credit File but from past experience a good credit score does not guarantee acceptance and due to the Data Protection Acts they wouldnt be able to advise why they declined you. 

I like you was tempted by some of the deals being thrown around but I started off by asking my current Broadband Provider what they could do and lo and behold they retained me with an exceptional deal to stay. 

We do have a Vodafone Social Media Team here who read all posts so perhaps give them a little time to catch up with your post and reply to help where they can. 

I wish you all the best with this situation. 

[TJ]

@michaelcj We're really sorry to hear about all the problems you've been having and completely understand your frustration.

I can see that you've spoken to the Broadband team and they've advised that they'll update you on the 9 January, on the work that Openreach are doing. I've sent you a private message with details on how to get in touch, so we can chase this up for you with the Broadband team.

As for the issues with getting the SIM only deal, I'm sorry for any confusion this has caused, our credit team are unable to provide more details on why this has declined as BandOfBrothers said, due to data protection. When a contract is taken out, we require three clear payments on the account usually, before additional lines can be added, so this could be the reason you were refused, apologies for the misadvise. 

Please keep us updated on any progress and come back to us if you have any further questions.

[michaelcj]

HI

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I did speak to the Broadband team on over twenty occasions. On one of those around a week ago, I was told there would be an update on Jan 9. Please could you confirm if you just saw that in the notes (which would now be a week old) or if you checked the tickets in your OnePortal system which would give you the latest information regarding the status with Openreach?

Regarding the 50GB thanks again for your explanation. Given that anyone without a Vodafone phone that had just subscribed to your broadband service would be in the position of not having 3 months worth of payment history, don't you think it is a little inappropriate to offer it and worse to guide me through the steps of applying for it as your representatives did?

I am currently using my existing mobile phone provider's data sim on the cheapest plan I could find. I have implemented a firewall at home to prevent the family downloading video. This is to keep your/our costs down but it is stopping my wife using Skype to show our little ones to her mother who lives aborad (amongst other things). 

Why don't you just add this data on to a pay as you go sim or send me a sim with it loaded? That goodwill would at least probably prevent me going down the small claims track to recover my costs.

Finally, since I previsouly had a working FTTC service with another provider and I'm now having exactly the same setup, is it possible someone who knows more about FTTC than you or I explain how it could be that the service was broken? The only explanation I have so far is that the BTOpenreach engineer did half a job. 

[TJ]

@michaelcj I noted this from your original post, we're unable to access any account specific information via the forum as it's a public channel, so you would need to contact us via private message or get in touch with the Broadband team again for any updates. 

I apologise, it does seem you've been given the run around and I'll make sure that it gets fed back, that the agents in the Broadband team have provided you with some confusing and contradicting information.

Some additional support would be great for instances like this, where as you said, we could perhaps have a pre-loaded SIM with data. I'll certainly make sure that this is also passed along on your behalf.

[michaelcj]

Just to complete the post. We finally got the service switched on and working today! Wohoo!

We had nearly three weeks without any service at all.

The speed seems good as well.

Over the past three weeks, I bought a 9GB Giffgaff sim, a 30GB Three sim (on a monthly contract that I need to cancel), a Three branded Mifi device for £30 from ebay and a £10 antenna from Amazon. In total about £80 ish. I had to do that not least because one of the Vodafone people I spoke to said we could be waiting "months" if a new line had to be routed from the cabinet back to the exchange. I'm going to try and cancel the Three contract (the sim hasn't even arrived yet) under the 14 day rule but whatever I'm out of pocket I do intend to seek from Vodafone.

I've also spend hours of my time and had service like SKy's catchup not available due to lack of broadband. I wasted yet more time searching for the best sim only data details and now consider myself a market expert on which sim to get if you want a data sim with tethering allowed. Sadly, right now that would be Vodafone who also have a policy of not allowing a second account to be opened until three months of payment history is available. Apologies if I'm repeating myself... Second best was Three which with a contract you can/could get 30GB for £25.

One other interesting thing to note is that when I clicked to provide details of my woes to the Vodafone social media team, I eventually (more than a week) got an email from a chap called Abishek who managed to tell me two phone numbers I could call for support - both are listed on the vodafone website and I'd been calling regularly since the 28 Dec. What value are these guys adding?

[TJ]

@michaelcj Thanks for coming back to us. I'm glad to hear that you're up and running, sorry that it's taken so long to get everything sorted for you. I know that its been an inconvenience and I appreciate your patience with the whole thing.

The team should pick up your email and make sure that your query is passed to our Broadband team, so I can only apologise that they simply asked you to call in; this not being of any help. I'll make sure that this is fed back to them, so this doesn't happen in the future.

Be sure to continue to use the Community if you have any additional questions, or any information that you think would be useful to other members.