Vodafone Connect router crashing several times a day - how to resolve?

[sirvelo]

I moved to Vodafone from BT about a week ago, just to save money. The BT service, using my own Asus router, was faster than its advertised 80Mbps speed, and was 100% solid. Zero downtime logged.

Since moving to Vodafone (having said to the sales person that I'd be using my own router - he never said I couldn't), I now find myself forced to use the Vodafone Connect router, which:

1) Connect router crashes at least daily. This is not WAN down, this is some kind of router reset. The intranet (LAN/wifi) still functions, yet the router web interface (192.168.1.1) is unavailable (indicating probably nothing wrong with WAN), and there is no Internet connection while it restarts. Also of coure the WAN infrastructure is all the same as it was when BT provided the rock solid service.

2) The Event Logs only show me the last 60 or so entries, so at least effectively, restarts on every reboot. AND, the timestamp of the logs reset to Nov 2016 every reboot until the reboot completes. Hence I can only really say the router reboots "at least" daily - the logs never get as far as showing a full day without a Nov 2016 reset. It's 11:53am now, and I know it's crashed at least twice since 08:30. But with no logs from the crashes, no way of identifying the cause. Which is 90% what logs are for!

This post relates to firmware 5.4.8.1.291.1.30.1.6, but from reading around, this lack of reliability has been around a while, exact same symptom, so likely no hardware fault with my specific router.  Is there any way of getting the logs to show more entries so I can try to resolve this, or at least feed those logs back to a tech team to try to resolve it? Last night's crash was mid-paypal payment, never a compfortable time for an outage.

(Ideally of course, I'd rather just be allowed to use my own reliable Asus router... I do believe I was miss-sold this contract by the sales rep saying nothing when I said that was my intention...)

[paulcormack]

So the Global Director sent the email to UK Director, the UK Directors Office got in touch with broadband team

Somebody phoned me and very nicely advised me I could leave them without penalty, as there was no way they were giving me the details.

Circled round to the global and uk director offices and told them that I was told to just leave.   And within 24 hours I have my username and password to use my own router.  The office also advised me they were reviewing their policy, not sure how much this was to soothe me as opposed.

I have to say I had my doubts about escalating so high and though it was silly to have to do this, but there you go, it worked out ok for me.

:smileyhappy:

[EricMears]

Pleased to hear it's worked out for you.  CEOemails very seldom fail and I've had previous experience of using the service for a previous VF complaint (with mobile service rather than landline).  I've also used the website for complaints to other organisations where 'normal' channels had failed and been equally successful in achieving a cure.

A quick update on my own problems - which are now solved and it's more than likely that VF were (fairly) innocent in the matter as action by Openreach has finally resulted in my keeping a steady connection above MGS for a day and a half and a slightly slower (before a DLM retraing session yesterday) for another day and a half.

But to achieve that has required 4 visits to premises by Openreach (and possibly another couple of visits but not to my home).  At each one the O/R automated fault checking service was used and every time it indicated a fault,  the fault was investigated & repaired and a subsequent check showed no fault.  But on the first three occasions there was quite obviously (in hindsight !) still a fault after checker showed everything to be perfect.  The advantage of using the high level complaints team rather than whoever you get by calling 191 is that you get to talk to qualified telephone engineers who are able to exert pressure on O/R to repair the fault.  I'm not sure what level of technical expertise you get from a first level 191 operator but suspect their training may sometimes have been limited to being told which way up to hold their phone.

I have offered to re-try a Huawei router in a week or so's time after I have satisfed myself that all the faults have really gone.  My VF contact has told me not to bother but to keep using my TP-link router and keep the Huawei as a backup in case the TP-link ever fails.  Read into that what you will !

Having drawn the high level complaints team attention to the problems being caused by ther (alleged) security policy of obliging customers to use a VF-supplied router,  I can believe that the policy may be relaxed - but if anyone else is told that it's written in stone then look up the CEO email address.

[paulcormack]

@EricMears - thanks Eric again.   I have now setup my own modem/router as it has always been and I have removed the vodafone router out of the loop.

My whole network has just got simpler.  The ability for me to VPN back into my home network when I am remote has just gotten a lot easier.  And everything else seems fine.

I will be keeping the vodafone router because there is a few chips in it that are quite interesting.   For example if they made it also do some stuff for sure signal, etc...  Then it might be worth a look at, at a later firmware version, at it is always good to have it to rule out issues with my own setup.

I am happy to say now - I am happy with my network.   🙂

[Colleen]

@paulcormack It's great to hear everything is working for you - thanks for taking the time to let us know

If there's anything we can help with in the future, please get in touch. 

[Nabs]

@paulcormack It's fantastic to hear Vodafone are finally starting to reverse the crazy decision, it's a shame it' takes contacting the Vodafone Group directors office to achieve this!

[Jacste]

We have had this problem since we joined VF and despite various chats with the broadband team the problem is still not resolved. I have emailed the CEO's office and am still waiting for a call back. The router has crashed 4 times in the last hour. Would love to get the details to be able to use my own router and not the rubbish VF provide. 

[Jacste]

Since my last post the router has crashed 3 more times so that makes 7 in the last 2 hours. Ridiculous! 

[ChazzD]

@Jacste

Please speak with the Broadband team on 08080 044 848 so they can escalate any issues you're facing to the Technical team.