Aberdeen - dreadful speeds tonight - line congestion?

[jellyman]

On CityFibre 900 and speeds are near unusable. Switched to the mobile dongle and they were even worse.

What is going on?

[mati169]

For the past few days from 6 pm, I’ve been having an issue with my internet speed – download speeds dropped to around 10 Mbps, while upload speeds were steady at 900 Mbps. I thought it might be an issue with my router, but I didn’t change or reset anything. Today, it's almost 7 PM, and the speed seems to be back to normal.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? I’m not sure what could have caused it since I didn’t change any settings.

[RebelRose]

Amazing, Vodafone just called to respond to my complaint -- they have cancelled my contract with no fee as requested. I'm free to to go to any ISP I want now. This is the best way to preserve your sanity folks, get your complaint written up and get outta here! =D

[Philips]

Where did you send you written complaint to? Did they immediately stop your broadband? I will definitely do the same so I can switch providers but I wouldn't want to be left without internet.

[RebelRose]

I used the form on the website, carefully hidden in their complaints section. I gave them a link to a folder on a cloud drive with all my evidence. Gave them all the stats about my correspondence (41 calls, 8 emails to hbbxperts, 2 complaints, 4 fault tickets, etc) so they could see I'd been more than patient. Explained I don't want put in touch with tech support again and I want cancelled.

They amended my contract end date to today, so the broadband is still active, but when I call another provider and have them take over, it won't trigger any cancellation charges. I can do this whenever I want, it's just as if my contract naturally expired. All I have to do now is pass to Vodafone the date that I'm switching to a new ISP, and this is their "cancellation notice". This is so they stop charging you for the service. They just need 48 hours notice. Really easy actually!

[Philips]

Thank you, I've went ahead and put a complaint letter to them as well with a link containing a folder of evidence as well. Hopefully they can cancel mine too without any exit fees. How long did it take you to receive a reply?

[Jayach]

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@RebelRose wrote:
All I have to do now is pass to Vodafone the date that I'm switching to a new ISP, and this is their "cancellation notice". 

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You shouldn't need to even do that. Under the new OTS (One Touch Switch) service which came in last month you just need to contact the new provider. It should cover all providers, not just FTTC ones like previously.

Switching broadband provider - Ofcom

Do let us know how you get on.

[RebelRose]

You were right -- I didn't have to do anything with Vodafone, just 2 minutes filling in a form on the new ISP's site and it's done. And 90% of that time was filling in my credit card number 🤣 It's so easy, no one with these issues should be afraid of going through it and switching.

Also, as a bit of contrast with customer service... I had a call with IDNet (my new ISP) to ask some questions before I ordered. They're 100% UK based, they answer instantly, no "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that", etc. And the guy I got was extremely competent -- he was curious about what went wrong with Vodafone, and was perplexed by the technical issue I was having. He was digging and wanted to get it to the bottom of it from a technical curiosity perspective (he knew more about how networks work than anyone I've ever spoke to at Vodafone). He said he can tell me for a fact there are no issues with CityFibre that would affect Aberdeen since April, and they're usually quite good at flagging issues with their network. However, he said I can go onto a rolling 1 month contract with IDNet until I'm satisfied the issue is gone with the new ISP before going for a 12 month. And if the issue ever comes back, he'll sit on the phone with me and figure it out, and let me out of the contract early if they can't fix it.

It's about 50% more expensive than Vodafone, but I reckon you get what you pay for. I'd happily pay 50% more to not have to waste my life on 40+ phone calls trying to get a working connection.

On 24th October, I whack my IDNet username/password into my Asus router, ##~## the Vodafone one in the bin, and it's done!

[Philips]

Let us know how you get on with IDNet, I'm currently torn between what provider I'll be moving to if i can get out the contract. IDNet seemed to be one of the better ones, but after reading some of their reviews and looking through forums, there were some people reporting High Ping/Latency as the company is a smaller ISP based in London so you get routed through Manchester and London but most of the people it seemed having issues were in the south of England so I'd imagine it would probably be fine with them. There was also people saying IDNet use Zen Wholesale, which affected their ping and speeds as well. But I'd be interested to know what the ping is like and if it's any higher or lower than vodafone. I'm torn between IDNet, Zen and NoOne. IDNet and Zen are both £40 for 900mbps and NoOne is £31.99 but NoOne is definitely the smallest ISP out of them all and there isn't really any info online about anyone from Aberdeen or Scotland using them. Ideally I'd want the provider with the lowest latency and most reliable speeds. 

[dfunky]

I moved to Zen from VF, on the same cityfibre line. Ping to speedtest servers went from ~24ms to ~15ms

Did have doubts about Zen after reading some reviews but I'm a week in now and it's been rock solid.

[Philips]

That's great for the decrease in ping. Zen seem mostly fine from my research, some people complaining about customer service but overall they do seem quite good. What are your speeds during peak times and do you experience any packet loss? 

Do you know anything about Zen Wholesale? I'd assume Zen would be the most reliable compared to other ISPs using Zen wholesale but there's not too much information on it online, mostly people complaining about high ping from IDNet using it.