I feel compelled to post here because I have tried EVERY other method of contact, I can say that this issue has now wasted hours of my time.
We live rural in a village called Downholme, North Yorkshire, four of us who use the internet at home, at most maybe two will be streaming at one time. At most.
When we contacted Vodafone at the start of the year, we were assured that we could get fast broadband speeds using their £50p/m Gigacube service and that assurance covered our area. After being ripped off for substandard speeds and not enough data by satellite companies, this was exciting news. So we took out their plan not minding that £50 per month was above average for household broadband if it gave us decent speeds.
We got decent speeds to start with, a solid connection 4-5 bars and everything seemed good. Then a few month back everything went very bad.
The speed dropped to less than 1mbps during tests and even when it was 'better' it rarely got better than 10mbps. I was perplexed because we had done nothing to change the wifi conditions or router position. We even tried moving it around to optimise the signal.
Nothing, absolutely zero improvements.
Having seen the Gigacube achieve 40-50mbps at around 4 am I knew that it wasn't a signal issue or a wifi issue. Nevertheless, after hours in live chats with Cs and over an hour on the phone, I have now
- Reset the router.
- Updated DNS settings.
- Removed SIM and cleaned it and cleaned sim socket.
- Tried different locations for the Gigacube.
- Connected to the router via ethernet (same low speeds).
- Tried different wifi channels and 2.4-5ghz
All of the above I have done several times and despite this being an ongoing issue, it is a route that I have t go down every time I contact customer service as they just don't seem to grasp that this is not going to be solved by general troubleshooting. I have even explained that I have been in IT technical roles and typically I perform all of the troubleshooting BEFORE I even contact CS.
So my last attempt yesterday was an hour-long phone call, we did all of the things listed above and at the end of it, the advisor outright lied and told me that it would improve over the next few days and that sometimes the signal simply is not strong enough and that perhaps traffic was too high. ("try moving router, try resetting again, blah blah blah")
I mean I live very rurally with only a part-time training camp nearby. Not just that but paying £50 per month for that ridiculous explanation is offensive.
My theories are:
- Vodafone is throttling speed drastically, this is backed up by my speed generally plummeting around the middle of the month and the end of the month for the past 4 months at least.
- The masts in the area are not set up to cope with the demands, this could be because rural masts are not set up to expect a few hundred trainee army men in the area at intervals throughout the year.
Other possibilities could be maintenance but not for 4+ months or COVID causing higher traffic but I don't see why allowances have not been made for such a thing by now?
What I really do not want is for another few hours of time wasted being told to troubleshoot the router once again. This is clearly a problem outwith my home and at Vodafone's end and it is extremely frustrating! I can't ever see lines being taken to our village and I had high hopes for this service so what is going on?
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