Vodafone contract problem.

Napalm1983

I ordered a W850i and contract sim from them two days ago. Phone arrived next day, everything hunky dory, but then I find that it takes 2hrs + for SMSs to arrive on the new phone.

Sometimes they don't arrive at all. My friend is on Voda, with the exact same phone, and she receives SMSs I send from my O2 phone straight away. If I send an sms from my O2 phone to my new voda number, I either get the sms straight away, it never arrives or comes in 2hrs later.

Anyone got any ideas?

I emailed VF support, but I had a vague reply from them in broken english (Indiaglish?) telling me to hard-reset the phone (done it a thousand times already).

Since I'm tied in for 18months, I want my phone to be able to receive sms's

Any help would be REALLY welcome.

EDIT::: I just tried a Vodafone PAYG sim in the W850i, and i'm not receiving SMSs near-instantly like I should. So either something is wrong with the phone, or Vodafone are crap?

AMO

Try and rule out the phone first. Put the Vodafone SIM in your old phone and text out.

The reason I say this is that the phone might have an effect. I wouldn't believe it myself, but I have had a friend with one of the newer Nokia phones and he blasts out texts to customers of his business. Since upgrading one of the phones, the texts from it take several hours to arrive such that people are texting back to that phone saying why is he texting at midnight or later. Personally, I didn't think the phone could possibly have an effect, but it seems so coincidental with so many texts.

AMO

Napalm1983

Yeah I've tried different variations on a theme.

Sending SMSs is no problem from that sim/phone.

I've put the contract sim into a 3310, and sent sms's from my O2 phone and they didn't arrive for hours.

I think I can rule out it being the phone. Thing is, it works intermittantly.

Do voda have any kind of free / low cost number to call? Their email support is a waste of time.

AMO

Napalm1983 wrote:

Do voda have any kind of free / low cost number to call? Their email support is a waste of time.

Dial 191 from your Vodafone - its free!

AMO

Napalm1983

Yay. Thanks

Napalm1983

Update:

Phoned Voda today on 191. Spoke to someone called Chris (genuinly called Chris, wasn't someone in India putting on an english voice . He said they were having problems with their network at the moment. He also said he'd "check my phone had updated", which was done at 12:30 today (eh? updated what...?)

I explained that my gf gets sms messages from me almost instantly, but the ones she sends back take hours or sometimes days to get back to me. He also suggested I put the phone into GSM only mode, which I did, but that hasn't really improved things.

Anyone got any more ideas?

Napalm1983

Update 2: Ok, don't mind me talking to myself - hopefully this will help anyone else in the same boat, and if not will serve as a log of what I've done

Called them again, spoke to another geordie who was pretty helpful. This time he said they know about the problem, and its network wide. No, he couldn't give me an ETA on them fixing it because if they give out estimates and then proove to be wrong it doesn't look too good.

I explained about text messages taking hours if not days to arrive, and he said "Yep" and I said "so it's not just me". "No sir, its the whole network".

Oh, just after I got off the phone with him, I had a text message I'd sent from a Vodafone PAYG sim, 1hr20 minutes ago! !!!!!!?

jnm21

Try going through the phone to find a manual network selection & choose a different network (with the new contract sim in the new phone) - when the registration fails, the phone will re register on Voda. May not work, but it's free. This came from an Orange engineer when I was with them. As for it being the entire network, how can I phrase it - I think that is bull! I've never found them very good at Voda CS (but I hear they are employer of the year, but that's another thread).

Napalm1983

Thanks for that, but it didn't work.

Another friend of mine is having problems with VF as well, so it seems like it isn't just me.

I'm going to call them up soon and tell them where to shove their contract. I'm going to Orange if I can get out of this contract without loosing any money.

jnm21

You should be able to - they may even pay the return postage - a mobile that won't receive texts regularly isn't 'fit for purpose' in my book (which is required by the sale of goods act).

Napalm1983

Yeah it's what I thought too.

I'm going to hold onto it for a few more days to see if it gets "fixed". If not they can have it back.