Assistance Needed With 5G Tariff

[anrgy_man]

Hi

This is probably more one for the community mods but you guessed it. It's another poor poor showing from Vodafone Customer Service.

Late 2020, I got a new 5G handset. Rang Customer Service and they put me on to a 5G plan without hesitation. Recently however, I noticed I'm not picking up 5G in places where I used to and soI started keeping an eye on it more closely. I realised that I'm not picking up a 5G signal at all anywhere I go.

At the end of Jan/start of Feb 2021, I renewed by SIMO deal. I put 2 and 2 together and came to the conclusion that he must have removed 5G from my tariff when I recontracted but I wasn't told that this would be removed.

So I rang a last week and spoke to two different people. The jist of it was that they can't do anything and someone will call me within a week to resolve it. 8 days went passed. No callback.

I've spoken to the complaints team today and was put on hold for 25 minutes before the chap came back, took me off hold and appeared to disconnect the call. He didn't call me back either.

Rang a second time. Spoke to someone else on the complaints team who appeared very apologetic and essentially said to me that the tariff that I've been placed on is not 5G compatible, would have to be changed and he will discuss the options with the migrations team and come back to me. He's put me on hold for 45 minutes, cold transferred me to someone else who I've had to explain the issue to again and go through security again only to be told that I need to pay more than double my current monthly charge if I want to move to a 5G compatible tariff which is not something I'm willing to do.

She suggested I come here in the hope that one of the community mods can assist me in a better way than complaints team have via the phone.

[anrgy_man]

Thanks. That tools looks great. 

I'm on the fringes of a 5G area at the moment and it flashes up every now and again with '5G DCNR Restricted (EPS feature) true'.

I'll be in a fully 5G enabled area tomorrow morning so will feedback.

Thanks again. May finally be able to get some conclusive proof it's not my phone.

[anrgy_man]

Just spotted another line on it. 

5G DCNR Status          Restricted

[chistery]

As donnyguy says, check your account has 5G listed under plan details. If it does, and you still get 5G restricted=true then I would suggest you try and get your account reprovisioned. From the Cellmapper status it does sound like Vodafone are blocking it their end.  It will break everything, you will get disconnected from the network then it should reconnect.  It's a last resort option and you have to find someone in tech support that actually understands what you want, so may take a  few calls to find someone.  Let us know what happens tomorrow then.

[anrgy_man]

Morning

So, as can be seen below, it absolutely looks like it's Voda and it's restricted at network level.

In terms of my plan, it doesn't say 5G anywhere in My Account but is the 1GB Red Plan with an additional 5GB of data. 
When I check online here, the very last plan is Red 1GB and it says 5G ready.  

[chistery]

It sounds more like your plan doesn't have 5G then. If it doesn't list 5G under your plan, it won't work and would be why it says restricted.

[anrgy_man]

Well, I'm actually on the phone now (again) to Vodafone. 

Complaints have put me through to technical. Technical have finally said yes, 5G is disabled. She went away to speak to someone else and said my tariff is not 5G compatible. She then put me through to Retention to upgrade my tariff and it's the same story as above and back to square one.

Retention are telling me there's no value in changing my tariff as all tariffs are 2, 3, 4 and 5G compatible so something else is going on. That's the third time I've spoken to retention/Upgrades to be told the same thing.

Currently on hold whilst he's checking.

[chistery]

when Vodafone first launched 5G plans, there were some plans that only had 4G, though Vodafone didn't bother telling their staff that.  Upgrading to a 5G plan is probably your best bet here, or wait and see what their new plans look like, which are launching soon.

[hrym]

This prompted me to have one of my periodic looks at tarriffs.   All of them are flagged as "5G Ready" except for Unlimited and Unlimited Lite, which are speed-throttled and there is therefore presumably little point in their having it.   When 4G launched, it was rolled out gradually and only added when it became available in your area.   This doesn't seem to be happening with 5G, possibly because of the limited availability.

It's odd that a new tarriff wouldn't come with 5G unless it's one of the throttled Unlimited ones.   You could pursues this with the Social media team, as they can take your query away and deal with it offline rather than keeping you hanging on the end of a call or chat session.

[anrgy_man]

Ha. I messaged the social media team sending them the link to this thread.

They asked me twice why I've been asked to contact them despite highlighting this thread to them multiple times.
I gave up with them. Absolute comedy of errors from top to bottom.

I've taken Chistery's advice anyway and essentially demanded that my tariff be upgraded to one that explicitly states '5G Ready' so there's no ambiguity. That all goes through at midnight so I guess I'll feedback tomorrow.

[chistery]

Unlimited and lite do have 5G, it's listed under the "what's included" bit of the plan.

The legacy 1GB Red plans did not have 5G though, I think they only added them to plans with 5GB or more iirc.