Cannot add new number to SureSignal

[Starstruck]

Hi,

Ive been using my sure signal for a long time and its working fine with my personal phone. Ive recently started a new job and my company has given me a company phone (on vodafone) so I tried to register it on my sure signal and keep getting the following error:

Sorry, there seems to be a problem.

We're working hard to fix the issue, so please try again later.: 500, 2004 - [2c2]

Ive tried reseting the box, waiting for days etc but nothing works .

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

Kev

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi

You could see if Live Chat or customer service on 191 can add the number for you. 

[Starstruck]

Thanks I contacted livechat and they added the number which they said would take 30 mins before the phone would recognise it. 

Is now 2 hours later and its not working and the new number doesnt appear on the website either.

I will leave it over night and try again tomorrow.

Thanks

Kev

[BandOfBrothers]

---

@Starstruck wrote:

Thanks I contacted livechat and they added the number which they said would take 30 mins before the phone would recognise it. 

Is now 2 hours later and its not working and the new number doesnt appear on the website either.

I will leave it over night and try again tomorrow.

Thanks

Kev

---

You're welcome.  

It may take a little while to update. 

[Rahim]

@Starstruck Is everything working now? 

@trolleybus Sorry to hear about the system issue. If you've not managed to get the number added, please try again with our Live Chat team. 

[trolleybus]

The thing is you have a visitor at home who is only staying for the day or two and therefore an immediate addition to the user list is required. To try again in a few hours, or indeed the next day is somewhat pointless as socially we have moved on to other issues or used another registered device..  The online facility to add users should be very much more robust that what it is at present.

[Rahim]

@trolleybus Apologies for the inconvenience, I understand your frustration. 

The online registration via your My Vodafone account should be up and running. It may be worth trying it from a different PC or laptop. 

If you're still getting the same error, please try again later or use Live Chat

[tonyvcarter]

I have never had any success with the support centre on the phone or live chat, which I think is in India . They are helpfull, polite and promise that the problem is solved - but invariably it is not.

I have had much better success calling second line support on 03333040191.

I have feeling that the message about a technical fault and to try again later is spurious. It nomally goes away as do most problems if you deregister the SS3, powering it off, do a hard reset - hold the reset button till your finger gets tired (30 secs or so) and then re-registering it and adding users (one admin and the rest users) appears to solve 95% of issues. Sometimes I have had to do this a couple of times. I've also found that if its not up and working in an hour or so, its not going to.

Just my personal experience over a few years (probably used about 5 SSs) - I even bought a second sure signal so I could instantly prove the problem was not my network. Don't try and get 2 working at the same time on the same router/switch - very hard and unreliable. Mine worked for months then decided not to and Vodafone said they were surprised I had managed it - took me hours of experimentation.

None of this is good, but it is what it is and things have improved a bit since the first (FemtoCell) SS1s

[trolleybus]

To TonyVcarter.
Just some questions if you wouldn't mind please::

1) When you ping the SSD do you have any packet loss?

2) Did you configure the router in any way like opening ports?

3) Does your SSD have a fixed LAN address and if so how did you achieve that [Binding or something else?]

4) Which ISP?

5) What is your MTU setting?

6) You connection speed, up and down?

7) Make and model of the router?

My interest in all this is that we have a number of rural home workers where a working SSD is a real boom and while some installations are up and running in no time at all, there are many instances where deep frustrations sets in the moment the box is opened and while eventually the unit springs into life we are never sure what we actually did to achieve a result!

[tonyvcarter]

"we are never sure what we actually did to achieve a result!" - Join the club

No problem - I'll do my best- I'm not too technical.

1) When you ping the SSD do you have any packet loss? Never done a ping - thought was usually a waste of time. Thats why I bought a second SS3 so I could quickly "prove" the problem was not my network. My router stats show no packet loss or drops or errors on my LAN over 6 days.

2) Did you configure the router in any way like opening ports? Never did anything including port forwarding just plugged it in. This was with 3 different routers over the years.

3) Does your SSD have a fixed LAN address and if so how did you achieve that [Binding or something else?] No just DHCP.

4) Which ISP? Zen - the best ISP there is!!!

5) What is your MTU setting? 1492

6) You connection speed, up and down? 7.4 up and 34.99 down. FTTC. But it worked fine with normal broadband. I'm out in the sticks and quite a way from the exchange. When I changed from Plusnet (copper) to Zen (copper) by broadband download speed went from 300k to 5MB - not all ISPs are the same.

7) Make and model of the router? I currently use a Billion 880AXL but this is too good for me really. I found that Billion routers stay up longer and hold on to the connection better if it is a bit flaky or a long way from the exchange. I think its something to do with better firmware and chipsets. Zen were doing a deal with a free Zyzel Router and I got my neigbour connected with Zen, that and a copper connection all works fine. The Zyzel router even has an FDDI port ready for if she upgrades to fibre.

By the way, when I worked, we had 3 Sure signals to support up to 60 users in a large open plan office. My internet connection was a leased line but it was only 10mb for everyone, world wide. It worked fine though as users got more hungry I upgraded to a bit more.

Latency is often more of an issue than bandwidth.

Summary:

I'm convinced most problems are Vodafone's flaky SS systems. It looks easy to get them confused.

Not all ISPs are the same - have a look at Zen - you won't see many (any?) complaints.

Hope all this helps.

Tony