SO23 - Winchester

[highpriest]

Anyone else in SO22/SO23 Winchester experiencing extremely poor 4G speeds? I've been struggling for months with poor 4G speeds in Winchester (in the city centre mainly). Contacted Vodafone via Twitter - no help at all. Contacted CS and I've gone through every single troubleshooting technique (reset network settings, change APN, re-register sim with network, etc. etc.) in the book and nothing has helped.

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1) Does the issue happen in just one location? If so, how far do you have to travel to regain service?

SO22 (home) less affected, SO23 (work) is particularly bad. If I move outside of Winchester City Centre (even just a few miles), 4G data speeds can jump to as much as 50 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up.

2) What is the full postcode (e.g. ST1 1AA) of where the issue occurs?

SO23 8US

3) Does the issue occur if you try your SIM card in a different phone?

Yes.

4) What errors are seen or heard when the issue occurs?

Phone shows full 4G signal. Calls are unaffected but data speeds are extremely poor. There's quite a bit of variation, but speeds could be as low as 250 Kbps and sometimes between 1-2 Mbps. Upload speeds are not affected to the same degree. Speed tests show 4 or 5 Mbps upload.

Sometimes it is so bad that the speed test app will fail to even locate a server to run a speed test against and just give up.

5) Does this happen on 2G, 3G, 4G or all?

Not tried 2G or 3G (and don't ask me to). Problem is with 4G.

6) When did you first notice this issue?

A few months ago (Q3 2017).

7) Is the issue permanent or intermittent? If intermittent, are there certain times of the day when it occurs?

Permanent. Data speeds range from non-existent to ultra-slow. Everything buffers constantly or just times out and gives up.

I use an iPhone 8 Plus.

[Mark]

Thanks for providing the speed tests @Strowger. Your WiFi speed and your speed though our mobile network aren't connected, usually the speed provided via your home broadband service would be higher than those being experienced through our mobile network. If you'd still like us to take a look into the issues you've been having when connecting to our network, pop us a private message through one of our social channels and we'll be happy to help.

[highpriest]

I contacted support via Facebook and they are still making me do the most basic checks, despite demonstrating that in other locations, my speed (on both 4G and 5G) are perfectly fine.

How can I get out of helpdesk hell and talk to someone who can troubleshoot the issue at a network level?

[sappercaptain]

I feel your pain.

I can’t believe we’re still here, filling in the same forms, in the same spiral of CS doom years on from the original contact!

Somebody, somewhere in Vf must have some answers.

[highpriest]

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@sappercaptain wrote:

I feel your pain.

I can’t believe we’re still here, filling in the same forms, in the same spiral of CS doom years on from the original contact!

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It's just utterly depressing. I remember getting faster speeds on 3G when I got my first iPhone back in 2009. 12 years later, we are still talking about speeds in single digits, sometimes even less 😠 Like this beauty from earlier today:

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Somebody, somewhere in Vf must have some answers.

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I'm sure they know exactly what the problem is, but standard CS tactics mean they can never reveal the truth - so it's an endless depressing cycle of 1. blame customer's phone, 2. blame customer's settings, 3. blame customer of general ineptitude. Rinse, repeat.

This is what I got in Chichester the other day. This was on 4G, would you believe it.

But of course, my phone knows when it is geographically in Winchester and immediately decides to malfunction and all the settings get scrambled according to Vodafone CS.

[highpriest]

Fact remains - without investment in new masts and upgrades to the network, this is never going to change. It would be refreshing if the carrier actually admitted to this instead of endlessly messing us about.

Edit: Most companies have a 'email the CEO' type escalation route. Trying to find out of it is possible with Vodafone. I've had enough and want to leave them for good.

Edit 2: I'm also painfully aware that all other carriers are just as bad in Winchester. But at least I can switch to a cheaper plan with them (others in my family are on Sky and I can get a sim from them for practically nothing and use the saved data from the "piggybank"). Just as slow and useless, yes, but at least I'm not paying £28 a month for ZERO data service from Vodafone.

[Mark]

I can understand the problems you're experiencing can be frustrating. The team you're speaking to are going through every check to help get your issue resolved before raising this to our Network engineers. The engineers will expect all these checks to have been made and the most up to date information provided, as this gives them a better chance of pinpointing the issue and resolving it for you.

[sappercaptain]

To be fair, it’s not “his” issue, it’s a network issue that is well known among Winchester residents.

Attached is my own speed test result at SO22 5AZ just now.

[highpriest]

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@Mark wrote:

I can understand the problems you're experiencing can be frustrating. The team you're speaking to are going through every check to help get your issue resolved before raising this to our Network engineers. The engineers will expect all these checks to have been made and the most up to date information provided, as this gives them a better chance of pinpointing the issue and resolving it for you.

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Even if the speeds are perfectly fine in other cities? And multiple people are reporting the same problem in the affected city? Is my APN settings going to magically unscramble themselves when I move out of Winchester?

I have raised this with Vodafone complaints and the chap I spoke to was able to confirm that engineers are already aware of capacity/mast issues in Winchester. A planned maintenance (allegedly to upgrade the network) is expected to finish by the 18th of June.

So if this information is readily available, why make the customer go through unnecessary kindergarten level troubleshooting? Apart from frustrating us, it achieves precisely nothing.

[Strowger]

Mark

I appreciate your input, but surely you must realise that there have been multiple people reporting problems in the SO23 area over the past 3+ years.

Those of us who do report here, and who provide our Speedtest results, are among your most comitted - and technically competent - customers. For every one of us who comes here, reports our experience, and uploads comparitive speedtests, there are probably hundreds or even thousands of users who will just say "Vodafone are rubbish in WInchester, I'm switching to a competitor".

Can your Network Engineers not just plonk their equipment outside the Vodafone shop on Winchester High Street? If they did that, and couldn't find any issues, then there might be some arguement that there's something peculiar to all our handsets, or our accounts. But until then, many of us on this thread are telling Vodafone that there is a problem, and Vodafone are not doing anything to establish the extent of that problem.

[Mark]

Sounds like you query is in the hands of our Customer Relations team now @highpriest as they're a higher escalation point than the Customer Services teams you've been speaking to previously, they'll be unable to intervene into this going forward. If you require further updates to this, you'll need to speak to Customer Relations again using the contact information they provided.

Our engineers can trace the flow of traffic passing through our Network remotely without the need to place equipment out side any locations @Strowger. We ask for examples of speed tests or times when the networks failed customers so we can pinpoint the moment the was a problem with any of the 1000's of bits of data being transferred through any mast during any second of the day.