YouTube terrible speed and buffering

[Alecmac007]

I am on Vodafone fibre so just under a year and no problems getting 10mbps but over the last 5 days I am getting terrible performance on YouTube on wifi on all devices. It either buffers, doesn’t play video and occasionally I get a period of a few minutes with no problems.

I have rebooted router and reset firmware and spoke to  Vodafone but no solution. If I connect to mobile data all is good, and all other streaming video sites work fantastic and my wifi speed is always good. Any ideas?

[mmotti]

@Gemma  I raised a complaint this afternoon and have since received a call from the complaints handling team whom was extremely helpful. He told me that practically none of the information I provided was passed on to support was even logged/given to 3rd line. To his credit, he listened to everything I had to say and found all the emails I had sent etc and was going to send it on properly.

It took me raising an official complaint to so much as receive a call from anybody and from what he said seems to suggest nothing was even being looked at since I last heard from them.

More importantly he told me that they're not aware of or haven't received any other reports of people having the same issue. Can you explain exactly what's going on? As far as I'm aware, you mentioned that you'd briefed your team internally about this issue and that it was acknowledged. Somebody from your team even mentioned it was raised on Friday. I'd even seen from social media team that they'd had several people reporting the same issue. So why exactly am I being told this is the first they've heard of it / I'm the only one having this issue?

[Jayach]

When a thread gets to 8 pages long in less than 3 weeks, you definitely know there is a problem somewhere.

Trying to get Vodafone to acknowledge it though is never easy.

[daern]

@mmotti Well that's a bit disappointing, isn't it? I'm still wading through the lower echelons of support (they deleted my last case because I didn't take their call, and they never called back) but if I don't get a decent resolution in the next 24 hours, I will follow your route and raise a complaint to expedite things. I'm also interested to hear why nothing raised in this thread appears to have made it to the people who can actually resolve the problem. It's a little hard to avoid the conclusion that the whole social media support system is just designed to fob people off and tie them up in knots, rather than to actually resolve problems.

Interestingly, I'm out of contract now (waiting for Openreach to finally get fibre to my end of the street) and I was fully expecting to re-sign with Vodafone as they've been reliable for me so far. I'm now starting to question this as their technical support system seems pretty dysfunctional, so if I were to have a future problem, I might end up stuck without help. Not a great position to be in.

FWIW, I actually expect that once the problem gets into the hands of someone who knows things, it'll get resolved pretty quickly. Hopefully your complaint will achieve this and solve it for all of us!

[4pack]

I have the same issue, in fact the entire connection is faster via a vpn than without.

I get higher avg speeds, much higher burst speeds and higher upload speeds.

My first post in this thread has also been deleted.

but without vpn YouTube takes 10 -30 seconds to start streaming a video. On a new 200mb fttp connection. 
 

[embattle]

It all stinks of some sort of throttling.

[jstott1070]

Got to say i too have no confidence anyone is actually aware or looking into this.. I have asked the question before and got nothing. I have raised the issue via Social Media as requested and provided evidence and still nothing. I have asked the Social Media team for some confirmation as to what is happening, who is dealing with it and can they provide any reference/case numbers...... Nothing..... Seems to me like VF are experts as wasting your time asking questions with a hope you will give up and go away.. 

[mmotti]

@jstott1070  speaking to the complaints handler guy yesterday was the first time I've ever felt like I'm actually getting anywhere with having this looked at, or at least promised to be forwarded on to level 3. Whether they do anything who knows.

Sad really that the only way to actually get support is through an official complaint but that may be the way we all have to go until it's fixed as the standard support methods clearly aren't working.

[Dtkwong]

I am glad I found this forum - I have the exact same problem (Youtube hanging and buffering) for a couple of weeks. I called the Vodafone help line and spoke with three different support resources, each time I was in the line working with the resource on remote trouble shooting, each time it went over an hour.

Having done some trouble shooting (from scratch) with the support resource tonight, she concluded that since she tested the line and equipment and found no error, and the problem is with WiFi and Vodafone doesn’t guarantee Wifi, there is nothing she could do for me. What a blow ! I had to put on mute to let out the loudest scream!

Now I see the problem is much bigger and wider and I trust the social media team is working as hard as can be to find a fix. I hope it won’t take far too long !

It looks like the Help Desk front line resources are not aware of this problem, it would be best to share the intelligence such that the front line resources could serve the customer more effectively and waste less time and energy !

[Jayach]

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@Dtkwong wrote:

Now I see the problem is much bigger and wider and I trust the social media team is working as hard as can be to find a fix. I hope it won’t take far too long !

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Sorry, but whatever the social media team is doing, will not make a blind bit of difference,

Raise an official complaint, that may possibly help. 

Complaints Code of Practice | Vodafone UK

[daern]

Have spoken with technical support again. My case was closed immediately after they called me for the first time without further notification and they won't reopen it - I have to start all over again. This I have declined to do and will raise a complaint as others have above as this seems to be the only way to escape the morass of social media support and actually get heard. If I could share my twitter DM conversation with Vodafone, it's an almost hilarious model-example of how not to run support.

Complaints are having another go to get some form of escalation on this issue. See what happens next.