Slow evening internet

[spudgun629]

As reported by others I am experiencing extremely slow download speeds between 1900 and 2300 every night. The connection is very good for the rest of the time, always between 65 and 70Mbps. At the time of writing, 21:30 the speed is currently 2.58Mbps.

Having now spoken to five people on the online chat "support" service, and having near-enough been told I am lying or that it is my fault by all of them, I set up a quick script to test the speed through speedtest.net every five minutes for 24 hours. One "support" person had told me get three tests from this site, then cut me off - and then the the next guy then had no interest in seeing the screenshots the other had insisted I obtain.

Each of these "support" people gave a different version of blaming the wifi (even though I am connected via ethernet), my usage, router settings (for wifi, which they believe affects ethernet even when switched off), etc. The latest one insisted on the old "test socket for 72 hours" ruse, to shoo me away again rather than deal with it. He even promised that as soon as I plugged the router into the test socket "you will see the improvements in your broadband connection during the peak times". It made absolutely no difference whatsoever.

So the 72 hours runs out late tonight. (By the way, this last chap gave me his assurance that he'd have the problem fixed in 24 hours before saying I had to wait 72).

Here's my graph from Saturday into Sunday just to show them I wasn't lying. You can see how it tails off up to around 1900 and then quickly returns to normal after 2300. Every day. And no, it is not usage from my side.

So that is at least off my chest for all the good it will do. At the moment I cannot face speaking to these imbeciles again when the 72 hours are up but I will attempt to give it one last try.

[Jayach]

It is strange, there were loads of similar posts not long ago, but they had died away. 

So the assumption was they had improved their back-end capacity, but they are now reappearing. 

I  just suspect they cannot keep up with the increased demand. All we can hope is they will slowly be improving their capacity.

[siNN]

Exact same problem, no solutions or anything productive from vodafone regarding the issue. I've just signed up to nordvpn to see if that makes a difference and as soon as I connect my speed is back to normal, turned off it drops back to 2mbps. That's throttling no?

[spudgun629]

That's very interesting indeed siNN, I will ask them about this when I speak to them. They had previously assured me that they absolutely never ever throttle anyone's connection. 

[embattle]

Mine is doing the same it seems, I'm going to test again tonight at 16:00 then 17:00 and so on if there is no quick fix then I'll probably ask them to cancel my contract as they aren't providing the service they claim.

[spudgun629]

So I summoned up the willpower to contact them again this evening.

I asked about using a VPN: he ignored the question

I asked about throttling: he ignored the question repeatedly

I told them current speed test is 2.22Mbps. His answer:

"we are providing more than promised speed at the moment."

I said between 7 and 11 every night the download speed drops below 4Mbps. He said:

"In that case, you will need to get back to us at evening so that we will run sync test and help you accordingly.

As there is no issues at the moment." 

(It was 21:30)

He did not want the screenshots that the last people asked for as  "There were issues at that time. Its fixed now." The speed at that point was 2.87Mbps.

I asked to be transferred to somebody who understood the problem. He said:

"Since there is no issues on your line connection, we won't transfer your chat to any other department."

I asked for the number of the complaints department. He said:

"I am sorry we don't have calling services for complaint department."

Thankfully he was able to quickly recite the number to end the contract, he must be giving it out all day. I no doubt have a battle there too as believe I have a year left on my contract.

Fuming.

[Jayach]

That unfortunately sounds typical for Vodafone "support".

The complaint number and other contact details are here: Complaints Code of Practice | Vodafone

[embattle]

This doesn't bode very well for me when I try and contact them today, I take it you are using the router they provided which I ask in case they say I need to put mine on which I already have a reply for but would be helpful to have additional ammo.

[spudgun629]

Hi @embattle, yes I am using the provided router.

Good luck!

[Evie]

Hi @spudgun629 - It's disappointing to hear of the experience you had on our livechat service - We'd like to turn this around for you today. If you drop us a message on social media with your landline number, a link back to this forum thread and your community ID we'll be able to assist you and it saves you having to repeat yourself.

@embattle If you could do the same and drop us a message on Facebook or Twitter we'll look into this for you and get your speeds up to where they should be.