What to do about reliability?

[AlarsV]

Background:  I live in a SE suburb of London which was 'forgotten' when broadband cabling was being laid - we have no cable access whatsoever and therefore are totally reliant on a Vodafone cellular dongle for all of our internet, TV (Sky Glass) and smart home devices (including electric and gas smart meters).

We have contacted Vodafone on numerous occasions over the past few months because signal reliability sucks - at any time of day or evening our Mbps can go from 10 to 2 to 5 to 0 from one second to the next. You can imagine what kind of hell this plays with the TV and other devices. Frontline tech support are so poorly trained and so poorly equipped to deal with problems that they have no no use at all - always polite but not useful and, at times, providing totally incorrect information.

Yesterday (after several weeks hiatus because we had simply given up) we tried again. Once again the frontline tech support was unable to help - our situation is simply not in their script. I asked to speak with a Resolutions Manager. I was told I would be called back.  I was called back about an hour later and put on hold for 5 minutes before Vodafone hung up. I called back and reached a different frontline agent. Of course I had to go through all the usual garbage as he ran through his script. This time I said I would not accept a call back and needed to speak with a manager on a priority basis.  I was on hold for over an hour before the agent came back and said he was still waiting for a manager.  Since the frontline staff are stupidly working from home they have no direct access to a manager - they have to wait in a telephone queue! I reluctantly agreed to a call back.  Needless to say I was never called back.  

In the meantime my service is as atrocious as ever.

Is there anything I can do - either to stabilise the signal I receive (probably not) or reach someone at Vodafone who might be able to provide some reasonable level of customer service?

PS and BTW I was also told that I would be credited for lost service time but no credits have appeared on my account. Another point I would like to discuss with management.

[Davidch]

I am in a similar position. See the topic immediately under yours from me, posted a few weeks ago (particularly my closing comment). For this sort of issue there is simply no route through the obstacle course of Vodafone's support systems to anyone who is capable of answering, or indeed evinces any interest in doing so. My experience is that if you have anything other than the most straightforward query you will eventually give up in despair. I wouldn't bother raising the matter with the social media team on Facebook or Twitter either, whatever you may be advised here; there may be much quicker ways to lose your sanity, but I doubt there is any so certain. 

[AlarsV]

Thanks for your response. Discouraging as it is I suspect it reflects the true reality.  

Community Fibre has been sending crews into this area over the past little while.  If I hear from them that cable is available (even if not high speed fibre) I will be cancelling my Vodafone contract in a hot minute - and paying whatever penalty they invoke.  It will be worth it to be done with such sh**ty service.