'Super' wi-fi and 'expert' support

[Toweliechaos]

So, for reasons known only to itself, my broadband app suddenly had the super wifi button greyed out. after having worked fine for weeks. Nothing I could do made a change. Cleared cache, force stopped, uninstalled and reinstalled, all the same. Clearly the boosters were still working and devices were still attached but I couldn't see any of it.

So I called support. I seem to remember that with Pro broadband you are supposed to get 'immediate support'. Funny, because I had to dial the same number as always and got put in the same queue as always. Funny definition of immediate or indeed any change from my non-pro support experience.

Then the fun started. The support analyst clearly did not listen to a single word I said. Tried to run me through all the previously listed steps and then announced that he would need to perform a factory reset. I told him do not do that please as I am in the middle of activity and I've got things I need to do right now and I've contacted you about your app not working so hardly expecting my entire network to be reset. He chose to completely ignore this and responded with "oh, I've already done it".

I have managed service desks in my life. If I had a SA that factory reset someone's router without their permission and against their express wishes, I would have him sacked. The damage that could have done. As it was, my data transfer activity was not corrupted and just had to re-start. I did however miss most of the first half of the match I was about to watch as the whole "this will just take 5 minutes" process ended up taking 45 minutes.

And after all that (and all of the laborious reconfiguration I then had to do to make things work again), although I got Super Wifi button back, I then lost the 'Connected Devices' button which has remained greyed out ever since, meaning I cannot block devices or trace them around the network.

For additional fun, for reasons I'm sure are excellent, once you activate Super Wifi, you lose the ability to perform any administration from the web portal. You can only do any of it through the app. Which is garbage and doesn't work. Who makes these decisions?

Does anyone know of a way to a) control your wifi from your web portal like you'd expect and b) how to re-activate the connected devices option?

[Toweliechaos]

I take it no-one from Vodafone responds in here then? Or are they just happy with dangerous service analysts working for them?

Does nobody else have these problems? I can't even use the web portal to accurately identify the items on my network without it constantly refreshing itself and/or not saving the changes I made.

[Effie]

Hi @Toweliechaos I hope you are well. I'm sorry noone has responded to your previous message.

I can certainly appreciate your frustration and concern with the experience you recently had with one of the broadband agents.

We do have an internal feedback system and we can report this to the agents management team so that it can be investigated and appropriate actions taken. Unfortunately as we have no account access on the community you will need to drop a message to the Social Media team here so that they can raise this for you. 

They can also look into the app issues you have been having and help get this resolved. 

[Toweliechaos]

So I 'dropped a message' to the Social team. I explained the situation. They asked for details (of the sort that shouldn't be asked for in something like Facebook messenger) and I begrudgingly supplied them. Well, most of them as they wanted a screenshot of the greyed out 'Connected Devices' bit but you'd think they would know that their own app prohibits the taking of screenshots from your device - handy feature that.

Anyway, they had the details. And then they told me this:

"Thanks for confirming those details. Something I need to clarify, currently we're not able to diagnose and troubleshoot anything related to the Pro service over the social channels. This can only be done by the Wi-Fi Xpert team through 03333 040 191. I know you've not had the best experience with them recently, however I recommend reaching out to them as they can escalate this within their department. More about the Wi-Fi Xpert team on this link https://vodafone.uk/3cMYSPb."

I mean, you can't make this stuff up can you?

[Cynric]

They ask for far too much personal information. I have never seen anything like that with other ISPs.

[Alexh-m]

It’s absolutely ridiculous. They tried to offer me £13 compensation after 2 weeks after install with no broadband, and still nowhere near hitting the 900mbps promised (it’s still 500, but still). Just useless.

[madmuso]

It makes no sense to be told that you have the Expert Wifi team you can get straight though to when you can't.  You have to go through the voice recognition menu which doesn't respond to "I want to speak to the Wifi Experts Team".  Here is the only way I know.  Keep saying "No" to the robot when she asks if she has got the right option.  Then you get to use your telephone keypad.  After that select options that are open ended, like I need technical support.  You will be told to use chat, or look at some online help guides.  You will get text messages with useless links in, you will be told a message that sounds like you call is going to be ended.  But if you ignore them all, eventually you get asked for your PIN.  Then put on a standard queue - where you are always told that we are experiencing higher demand than usual  [quick note to Vodafone - that's not actually possible - the demand can't always be higher than usual - that's not how usual works].  Then you get to speak to a non-member of the wifi experts team.  Then you can ask specifically for the wifi experts team, then you have to explain your problem first, but then they put you on hold again, and finally connect you to the wifi experts team.

There you go - SIMPLE - direct access to the wifi-experts!
Just think how much time it wastes for both customers and vodafone not to have an actual system that detects that you are entitled to speak to wifi experts as per your contract and let's you connect!  All the useless text messages sent, and the use of the network whilst we all go through that waste of time above.

[Alexh-m]

I am similarly fed up of their “expert” support. I know for a fact that my broadband isn’t working after Cityfibre installed it on Friday because Vodafone haven’t authenticated it properly on their end, but they’re refusing to even try resetting it. Just more stalling until they call Cityfibre on Monday, probably pretend there’s nothing wrong from the Vodafone side, and then wait another 7-10 days to send an engineer out to say “yeah it’s not the fibre line” and still have no internet. I’ve specifically asked them to try something there end that I’m fairly sure might work, and they’re refusing. Absolutely useless.

[Ye]

I had similar problems with my first router. Other than a reset the only way I could get it to work was by rebooting the router.  However, as my mobile back up was not connecting properly and I proved it I made them change the router. Since then I’ve not had any issues and everything has been working as I expect.

i haven’t seen a way of turning off super WiFi other that doing a reset unfortunately. 

[madmuso]

Hi All

Not sure how widely it has been shared but for chat, this URL gets you to slightly more qualified people directly.  I think they may consider themselves to be the Wifi-"Experts". 
Wifi Experts
Today, just like the OP we were troubleshooting performance issues on my broadband when they decided to do a firmware update.  Like that was going to be the issue!  And as part of the update they reset my router to factor defaults loosing my wifi customisations and my password changes and all the devices that I had updated detail on the icons etc.  I had a config backup which I was eventually able to apply but they told me this would not work with the new firmware.

Doing a firmware update without permission is a big fail, doing a factory reset without permission is inexcusable.

During the config restore a Firmware version was quoted, I didn't get a chance to write it down to see if doing the restore has actually reverted the firmware as well as the config,  So far it is working, but I have checked for a firmware update and that has been spinning for about 20 minutes "Checking for firmware update"