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Broadband Home Move - Nightmare Before Christmas. And after Christmas, too.

JSmile
2: Seeker
2: Seeker

This is a rather long rant summarizing my home move experience with VF so far (an unresolved issue for 4 weeks and counting), so sit back, relax and enjoy the read (TL;DR summary at the end):

 

So some time before actually moving home to another city I rang up Vodafone to check my options of taking my existing broadband with me. The agent tells me I'd need a new (and more expensive) contract, I take my time to check what is going on and compare other options. Then I call again to make sure they are serious, another agent tells me I will retain my existing contract. Whoof, okay, that's smooth. I agree with this and she tells me an openreach engineer will need to visit the new address to set up the line. Alright, so he'll be coming on 30th November 2020 (about two weeks from that point in time). No rush, I can live with that.

 

30th November comes, by this time I've fully moved home. The engineer comes early in the morning, sets up the wall plug side, but then requires access to the junction box, which I have no idea where it is. This is a huge apartment complex and the engineer claims it's locked away somewhere. Unfortunately the house management guys do not pick up the phone so the engineer leaves without finishing the work. Well he did what he could. After ringing the housing management again and again (another little nightmare), I manage to get the location of the box and promise of the access when the engineer comes again. I ring up VF CS and schedule another engineer's appointment. Next available slot is 4th December. A week without broadband, while working from home. Not great, not terrible, I can adapt.

 

4th December, the engineer arrives, yay! He briefly checks the junction box I was pointed to by housing management, stating that it is not an openreach box. After inquiring if he knows where the hell is their own box, since the housing management apparently has no idea either, we spend an hour looking around the whole complex trying to find a box in the building. No luck. After ringing a colleague, he finds out the Openreach/BT junction box is in a locked 'boiler room'. It's still morning, not a problem, we ring housing management to get access to the boiler room. No reply. It's well within working hours but we're getting mightily ignored. He leaves again. Alright, this one is not on VF/Openreach, either.

 

After having a few not so nice calls with housing management and more time spent roaming around the complex to find the 'boiler room', which, as I am told, does not exist, I find what I look for. Demanding and finally obtaining keys for a locked 'meter room' I discover a small box with the 'BT' signature on it. This must be it! All thrilled I call VF CS again to set up a third engineer's visit. My nightmare is over. Turns out it's not.

 

I am told the next available date is 30th December. Almost a month away. In disbelief, I ask if there's really nothing earlier. After another half an hour waiting, I get a slot assigned for 9th December. Okay.

 

9th December is here, no-one turns up. I call VF CS in the afternoon inquiring what's wrong. The agent sounds confused, stating the appointment is set for 30th Dec. Excuse me? Did the previous agent lie to me to get me off his shoulders or was it just a simple mistake? Can we find an earlier slot please? 14th December, morning? Okay, I take it. This time I get a personalised message with the confirmed time and appointment reference in case something goes wrong. Great.

 

14th December. Morning slot expires, no-one shows up. In the afternoon I ring VF CS support. Another agent sounds confused: the appointment is set for 30th Dec. Really? This again? I quote the appointment reference I got before. The agent asks if it is alright if the engineer comes this afternoon. Whatever, just set up my line please. She says she'll give the engineer my contact number so that he can let me know 30 mins before he shows up. She says she'll call again in the evening to make sure everything went smoothly. Evening comes. My phone is silent. Noone shows up, no-one calls.

Later on that 14th Dec evening I call CS again. I am fuming, I am wasting my time like never before. It's 25 mins per CS call on average, by now I've lost the count of how many times did I have to call them so far. The CS agent first asks me how many working broadband lines do I have (after I tell him I am calling about my broadband not working, good joke), then tells me to hold, and then hangs up on me. Great support, Vodafone. I dial the number one more time, another guy picks up. After inquiring what's happening he tells me the standard story: the appointment is set for 30th December. Now there seems to be a 'problem with the copper wires', so it can't be done earlier. I give up. Sure, I've waited for 2 weeks, I can wait another 2... but the very first engineer stated that what's left to be done is a 10 mins job in the junction box, just saying...

 

30th December. The long-awaited day of my line activation is here. After having to spend Christmas away from family without a decent connection. Well, no-one shows up. In the afternoon I call CS. They tell me there's a problem with copper wires and they'll get an update on the situation on 31st Dec. But then everything will work fine automatically, I won't need to contact them again.

 

31st December. In the morning I get an automated message that my activation date is 30th Dec AT MY OLD ADDRESS. This is not the first time I am getting the automated message stating incorrect address from VF so I am not even surprised, I just find it ironic regarding the date in the past (I did previously check with CS on chat to make sure the engineer is actually coming to the new address). Then I get the message how sorry VF is that I have a problem with the line and that they'll call me within an hour. In two hours I get a call. The agent tells me there's a problem with copper wires and openreach is working on resolving it. They'll call again on 5th January 2021 to set a new appointment for the Openreach engineer to come set up my line. Back to the square one.

 

At this point I strongly suspect that 'problem with copper wires' is a codename for 'we can't be bothered to send an engineer sooner' as I can't believe I am the only one in this huge building who's (trying to) having a broadband using BT/Openreach wires. Also, one would assume that the time between the 30th November and 31st December was long enough to fix a new wiring in the whole neighbourhood, let alone one single building. However, apparently I shall be waiting well beyond 5th January to have my broadband working at the new address. Until that time I am supposed to work from home hotspotting from my phone - I did get unlimited data from VF for the time being (for the second time now, as a 'temporary' solution), but one has to wonder what'd happen if I didn't have VF contract for phone as well (Yes, I'd be completely screwed).

 

On 14 December I filed a complaint to VF about being blatantly lied to by CS agents regarding the engineer's visit, I got a confirmation stating they'll try to get back to me within five days. Never heard from them.

 

On multiple occasions during the calls with VF CS I was assured that I won't be charged for the time I can't use my broadband - a bill came in on 24th December, stating full price for the broadband (it was deactivated at the old address on 29th Nov...). I was then assured I'd get reimbursed AFTER the line starts working. Seeing the current timeline, that might as well mean 'never' in this case, but I want to remain somewhat optimistic. It is yet to be seen if this optimism is anyhow justified.

 

TL;DR: after moving home and scheduling the broadband to be activated on 30th November 2020, and being playfully screwed by the housing management with the correct junction box cupboard access for a bit, VF continues the screwing activities in such manner that I wasted a net time of more than 5 hours during 13 calls to VF CS (yes, I did actually go through the logs now to calculate this), having to work from home and spend Christmas away from family without a decent connection, and being charged a full price for the broadband I can't use (subject to future reimbursement, they said).

 

The result of all the above is: NONE - I still don't have a working broadband, more than a month after I've moved in.

Conclusion: Stay away from this circus!

 

1 REPLY 1

Tash
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

Hi @JSmile, I'm really really to see this is the experience you had when joining us and that this has been ongoing for such a long time. 

I'd also like to apologise for the misinformation you were given regarding your appointment date and for any inconvenience caused during this time. I'm glad to hear we've been able to offer you unlimited data on your number in the meantime - I hope this is helping whilst we work on a fix.

In regards to your bill, we'll automatically reimburse you for the days you were without service once the issue has been resolved. This means we're then able to calculate an accurate amount which reflects the time period you were without broadband.

If you've received a confirmation email following your complaint to us, we'll be in touch as soon as possible to discuss this further with you. If you haven't yet received contact or your case reference number from the team. please drop us a message on Facebook or Twitter. While we may not be able to speed up the process with Openreach, we'll be able to take a closer look into the progress of the fix as well as ensure your comments are fed back to the relevant teams and advisers. This will help to improve our future customer service and we want to help with turning things around for you.

When sending us a message to our team via social media, please include your Community username and link to your post - you then won't need to write your query out again.

Rest assured, we'll be working hard with our Engineers on a fix so you can benefit from our super fast speeds.