Vodafone.

[Richy888]

I've been trying out the networks on payg where I live and work and was impressed with Vodafones service. Good 4g surprised me somewhat and no other network has it here yet (if ever). I'm out in the sticks.

Anyway, no sooner take a sim only contract with Vodafone at one of their shops than the next day I lose 4g and 3g so pretty much no data service. Connection keeps dropping occasionally but best I can expect is 'G' currently. I've been intouch with Voda and see someone else has issues in my area on their network forum. Vodafone tech say there may be an issue but that is about as much as I've got out of them.

Have I shot myself in the foot signing with Vodafone. Are they reliable? Do I have a cooling off period and can cancel the contract? They may sort the job in the next couple of days but worried they may not and don't want to be stuck on a crippled phone service. I only left Three as I was having a dropped call issue. I was trying EE too who were not bad with a good 3g service here. I'm feeling I may have cocked up. Anyone's experience with Voda and network faults?

 

[Christmas themed thank]

Their 3G network is absolutely shocking.

 

[lsg1r]

vodafone are how can I put it.... 2g pretty much flawless (best in my area - king's lynn norfolk), anything else is if you're lucky or it is out my way.

You should have a cooling off period to the best of my knowledge although you could argue that they're not supplying you the service you signed up for.

I'd ring up their support and push for more info although don't expect much

 

[Christmas themed thank]

Vodafone 2G is good, 3G is ****, 4G is good-ish where you can get it.

 

[Richy888]

Yep, 4G was good when we had it here. There probably is a fault and they may fix it but if it goes on for a month then I'm out of my cooling off period. I've contacted them regards the network issue and used their online chat for another issue of which the latter was painfully slow. I'm beginning to wish I'd wandered into the EE shop next door to Vodafone Can't find anything on their website regards cooling off period.

 

[Fallen god]

From my experience Vodafone is good in big cities, in London I'm 99% 4g and the 3g is 15-20mb down. Anytime I'm traveling for work I'm lucky to pull 1mb down over 3g if I ever get 3g that is.

I believe you have at least 7 days cooling off period so give them a call if you don't want to risk it and leave.

 

[Richy888]

Got to say I'm tempted to go cancel the contract. I'd like to give them a day or two to fix the issue as realize repairs may be backed up due to the holiday season. I was working on a site 4 miles away from where I live and where I no longer have 4g. All was fine on 4g and 3g. Surprised me somewhat as assumed we'd be using the same mast really. I must be wrong on that

 

[Richy888]

My contract comes with 12 month entertainment pack. Thought I'd apply it today and choose Netflix. Follow the links and get as far as applying to my account .... and nothing happens. Does anything work at Vodafone without getting in touch with support. I've spent more time onto Voda support since signing for contract on Saturday than I have ever in my whole mobile history. I've been with T-Mobile, Three and EE. You think they're bad?? You don't know when you're well off

 

[Myshra]

OK here's the really bad guide to how cell incidents work. This is for all networks, they all have the same drama to follow because they pretty much all share sites. 4G on Voda is shared with O2 for sites, EE have a bulk deal with three through a 3rd party company they formed together and outsourced the support to.

1) Site incident happens, alarms go off in the control centre, incident opened.
2) Try to fix incident by remote, try to turn it off and on again in your best roy impression
3) When that fails, try to contact Landlord and get permission (Written ) to go on site to fix it.
4) BIG OL PROBLEM BIT - Landlords may suddenly decide to be complete pain, try to ask for money, ask for stuff not in their agreement, not allow access, "lose" the keys, you name it, they can just be a huge time waste in the process. The ones that take months to fix are these, there is no reason a network wants it's mast down, they are assets that need to be used. I assure you, mast down is a lose lose for everyone.
5) Get on site, diagnose issue.
6) Are replacement parts needed? Usually a same day thing (otherwise it's back to written permission for another day!) otherwise try to fix etc...
7) quick few tests
8) join site back to network

You can check which mast you're on with a few apps (You're after the cell ID number) if you want to track yourself. You'll probably go through quite a few masts over a 4 mile journey.

Richy, I assume you're going to offers.vodafone.co.uk? I set up both netflix and spotify in the last month through it, I already had accounts with both services and just tagged them up OK. Support can manually add them if you can't get it working but I realise that's not great news.
If you're doing netflix make sure you do the free trial first and then sign up, I think netflix is only 6 months rather than a full year like spotify (make sure you check) so you want to squeeze in that free month and get 7 free if you havn't already done it too

 

[Hxc]

For reference I never got the free spotify to link to my old account, constantly errored... I ended up just signing up again.

 

[Fallen god]

I got a text with a link for Spotify as soon as I signed on and I just need to connect it up and it worked. I've never tried Netflix as I already have that.

 

[Clairvoyant]

I cant wait till july and ditch vodafone. Crap most of the time no signal at home. All they want to do it charge me £100 for a new sure signal.

 

[Richy888]

OK here's the really bad guide to how cell incidents work. This is for all networks, they all have the same drama to follow because they pretty much all share sites. 4G on Voda is shared with O2 for sites, EE have a bulk deal with three through a 3rd party company they formed together and outsourced the support to.

1) Site incident happens, alarms go off in the control centre, incident opened.
2) Try to fix incident by remote, try to turn it off and on again in your best roy impression
3) When that fails, try to contact Landlord and get permission (Written ) to go on site to fix it.
4) BIG OL PROBLEM BIT - Landlords may suddenly decide to be complete pain, try to ask for money, ask for stuff not in their agreement, not allow access, "lose" the keys, you name it, they can just be a huge time waste in the process. The ones that take months to fix are these, there is no reason a network wants it's mast down, they are assets that need to be used. I assure you, mast down is a lose lose for everyone.
5) Get on site, diagnose issue.
6) Are replacement parts needed? Usually a same day thing (otherwise it's back to written permission for another day!) otherwise try to fix etc...
7) quick few tests
8) join site back to network

All this I can believe. And yes I can believe getting access is an issue though one would ask why that wasn't sorted in the initial agreement with the landlord?

You can check which mast you're on with a few apps (You're after the cell ID number) if you want to track yourself. You'll probably go through quite a few masts over a 4 mile journey.

I've used Network Signal Pro app on android and seems to sometimes tell me I'm connected to a mast shown on its map where I know for sure there is no mast (out in the country). Not sure how many 4G masts Vodaphone has in my area but guess it won't be many yet. I should have checked which mast Network Signal said I was connected too when I was elsewhere in area connected to 4G.

Last week I tried Vodafone on a PAYG sim before signing (as I always do and never go by coverage map) and it was very good indeed. Vodafone told me I have 14 days to cancel from signing in shop. Hopefully I'll see an improvement before the 14 days are up.

I'll probably check this for myself, but once you have a cell ID number can it then be positioned via a search on internet? Network Signal Pro isn't reliable enough possibly?

Richy, I assume you're going to offers.vodafone.co.uk? I set up both netflix and spotify in the last month through it, I already had accounts with both services and just tagged them up OK. Support can manually add them if you can't get it working but I realise that's not great news.
If you're doing netflix make sure you do the free trial first and then sign up, I think netflix is only 6 months rather than a full year like spotify (make sure you check) so you want to squeeze in that free month and get 7 free if you havn't already done it too

Yes I've been on Netflix some time. Yes I go through the site as directed by their text. All seems to go as you would expect and get to the page where you get congrats you have a netflix gift and either create a new account or if you already have one log in. I duly log in and the page opens my account .... what happens next as this is where I get no further. No message to say anything has been added to my account?

Probably have to use their support AGAIN. I've forgotton how many years I've had a mobile phone contract and think the only times I've connected any support is to get my pac.

Got a text just prior to my number porting from Three to say my bill would be ready to view. By the time I had chance to go grab a copy my number ported and seem unable to log in now to get my bill for accounts. One daft thing after another currently.

 

[UberTiger]

For reference I never got the free spotify to link to my old account, constantly errored... I ended up just signing up again.

I got a text with a link for Spotify as soon as I signed on and I just need to connect it up and it worked. I've never tried Netflix as I already have that.

I used the netflix one and the website didn't work. Called support, gave them my number (which was my old one I transferred over) and they sent me an email couple days later with a new link to try again and it worked.


I switched to Vodafone a month or two back after moving to London. Had been with O2 for years, but couldn't get any signal at home.

Was lucky to get basic audio signal for longer than a minute at a time where I live. Calls were constantly going to voicemail.

I tried Three and EE too, they were pretty similar.

Tried Vodafone and now I get reliable 3G/4G where I live. At least I can make normal call again without having to walk outside and know I'm not missing any calls when inside.

 

[Hxc]

Voda's 2g/4g is great, it's just 3g that is pretty dire. Coming up to contract renewal. In all honesty just hoping they can repeat my current deal for another 12 months

unlimited/unlimited/4gb free spotify £13.50.

 

[Myshra]

All this I can believe. And yes I can believe getting access is an issue though one would ask why that wasn't sorted in the initial agreement with the landlord?

The contracts are iron clad and signed off but there are clauses like any contract e.g. arbitration during issues etc... The worst is when we get huge storms that knock over a multi net site and ALL networks start raising hell.

During the free signup system, after you sign in with your netflix acc you get a little message saying "it's done". You can check it's active under my account in netflix, you'll see something like "You have £34.95 credit which will be applied to next month's bill." in green text under your billing method.

TURBO EDIT: Web support is actually OK on Voda, if you have time i'd use that over calling them if you're just browsing ocuk etc.. at the same time.

 

[Richy888]

Voda's 2g/4g is great, it's just 3g that is pretty dire. Coming up to contract renewal. In all honesty just hoping they can repeat my current deal for another 12 months

unlimited/unlimited/4gb free spotify £13.50.

Always why I've never gone with Vodafone - their 2G has been OK round here but 3G was (and still is) patchy. 4G arrived into the mix and it was good. More so as EE and Three will be some time (if ever) before they get 4G to our local market town and surrounding areas. O2 have BTW 4G is said town too, but doesn't spread out into the woods where Voda does.

This 4G roll out job is all a big secret and in a UK style, chuggs out at a snails pace. Kind of surprised we have Vodafone with 4G in our area. Whatever, without 4G on Vodafone round here looks like a pretty silly move. To think I grumbled about Three and dropped calls. That was the only issue I ever contacted Three support about in about 3 or 4 years I was with them.

On the high speed job, BT installed a fibre cabinet in my local village this back end. I am around a mile out from it. My ISP said I could get up to 37meg fibre so thought there wasn't a lot to lose and put an order in. Duly installed and to engineers disbelief we now get 37/8+ speedtest with a 20ms ping. Like I say the cabinet is a good mile away. Never in a million years would I thought we would have such speeds and that BT would install a cab in the village. Why I dunno, other than one fella was drumming up support for some sort of high speed sat broadband. I declined at the time as wasn't convinced about the job but others went ahead with it.

 

[Richy888]

The contracts are iron clad and signed off but there are clauses like any contract e.g. arbitration during issues etc... The worst is when we get huge storms that knock over a multi net site and ALL networks start raising hell.

Well, we've had no storms but a little bit of frost

During the free signup system, after you sign in with your netflix acc you get a little message saying "it's done". You can check it's active under my account in netflix, you'll see something like "You have £34.95 credit which will be applied to next month's bill." in green text under your billing method.

I don't get the final bit - 'it's done' or anything that suggests anything has been credited to my account.

A lass from support has contacted me offering to sort it for me but I'm kind of sick to the back teeth of the dozy sods. My number was to port this afternoon for definite I was told after 3 hours onto their 'so called' support the other night. Of course it hasn't I'll have to wait until my number ports as don't really want to lose it and then cancel account and get my pac. I'll be lucky if I don't lose my number I've had for years. As used for business as well it could be a right PITA.

TURBO EDIT: Web support is actually OK on Voda, if you have time i'd use that over calling them if you're just browsing ocuk etc.. at the same time.

Are you kidding?? I've used it and it was painfully slow. Took 45mins just to go through security checks before we got onto issue of porting. He'd ask a question to which I'd reply and then it was a good 10 mins until he aknowledged my response. I said to the mrs 'This ****** is in the pub!' But yes, you've plenty of time to browse the forums whilst you wait

 

[chanjy]

No complaints for me with Voda, been an early 4G adopter and it's been pretty damn good. It's always fine with H/H+ too so maybe I'm just lucky with the 3G signal?

 

[Richy888]

No complaints for me with Voda, been an early 4G adopter and it's been pretty damn good. It's always fine with H/H+ too so maybe I'm just lucky with the 3G signal?

Vodafone are the only ones with 4G in my area which is out in the sticks and somewhat surprised me. It was good while it lasted I think they're on the job so hopefully sorted by next week and before I lose my nerve and cancel my contract within the 14 day cooling off period.




Myshra

You can check which mast you're on with a few apps (You're after the cell ID number) if you want to track yourself. You'll probably go through quite a few masts over a 4 mile journey.

Turns out it's the mast on my doorstep that is the problem. If so they have good access to it as it's tagged onto a local radio mast next to the road.

Going on signal strength I always thought I'd be connected to that as it's dominates the skyline up on higher ground about 2km to the east. We live on a hill too so reception isn't a problem. Anyway, Network Signal Pro app has always said I was connected to masts elsewhere up to 12 miles away. Always ignored the mast on our doorstep. Basically I'm thinking the app is useless?

Anyway no data service still with Vodafone and very variable 2G for voice calls. Another site I work on not far away all is fine.