New vodafone customer left without internet for 6 days what can i do

bob_mcbob

Apologies if this sort of thing is answered elsewhere, but im currently struggling to browse the net because I have no broadband at home.

I recently changed to vodafone fiber broadband. The go-live date was last Wednesday. I expected there to be the potential of Wednesday not having any Internet and I accounted for that. The man came to fit the new open reach box at lunch time it has not conencted since then. I raised the issue Wednesday night and have had nothing but grief talking to Vodafone. It is now Monday afternoon and still have no Internet.

I am self-employed, usually, work weekends, work from home and I am in IT, so basically I have not been able to work since Wednesday and I am losing money. Factor that in with me not being able to do normal stuff like play xbox or watch TV (i use netflix only) or listen to music (spotify). Basically, the last few days have been a struggle, especially with a young child in the house.

Vodafones customer service is the worse I have experienced in my entire life. Extremely unhelpful and not giving me any sort of update and whats occurring. I have to always chase. I was suppose to get a call back Friday from them, it didnt happen. I rang them and they where actually quite rude, at one point having to mute the call as she was laughing. Then after finally managing to raise an official complaint (which was significantly harder than it should be) I was told I would get a call back Saturday. Didnt happen. I then got a text this morning saying I would get a call today between 11-1. I got a call that rang for about 5 seconds then hung up. I phoned back, and got no answers before being put on hold again, in the end i had to hang up. They now tell me I have to wait another 48 hours becuase my case handler (who i have never spoke to ) is busy. They would not just switch to another case handler.

Everytime I have rung up, they run through the same procedure, switch it off and on etc, even though their notes should tell them what has already been tried. I must have spent 4+ hours on the phone with them the last few days and probably 85% of that time has been on hold.

So my question...

What can I do? I tried ringing my old provider to see if they could hook me up and they said it would take 2 weeks, same with other providers. So I am completley stuck. Do I just have to keep pestering them everyday until they finally do something? How long can this last? Unfortunately, I doubt I could charge them my day rate, but I think some sort of compensation is fair.

southsidergs

A suggestion, get a business contract if it's that important for your work

flaneurs_lobster

It doesn't help but this was pretty much my experience, wasn't even a swap to FTTP just a change of FTTC from BT to Vodafone. After a week of !!!!!!-all I gave up since I wanted to make sure that I cancelled well within the cooling-off period. As you said, reverting to your old supplier (what I did) or finding another will take a couple of weeks. 

Vodafone advertise a 4G router backup service (at additional cost, natch), could you ask about that if you have decent mobile coverage? Three have a trial of their 4G router available.

You should be due £5.25/day compensation since Vodafone are signed up to the Ofcom scheme.

Lessons? If you need a business-level of service because you're running a business over your broadband then you will have to pay a significant premium to get it.

400ixl

Ignoring the useless comment, Vodafone are part of the automatic compensation scheme and the link is below.

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/broadband/auto-compensation-hbb

Vodafone are getting themselves a reputation which is akin to TalkTalk for customer service. I would be making a formal complaint and getting compensation.

Do you not have a mobile phone you could tether to for work purposes to allow you to connect to the internet?

bob_mcbob

Thanks for all the suggestions. Forgetting the fact I use it for work purposes, £5.25 a day seems ridiculous. People spend a fortune on streaming services and I would argue the Internet is a necessary utility for the majority of people these days. Plus the time, and data usage I have wasted on the phone with them

Comments saying I should have a business line, ill look into but I switch providers every time my contract is up for renewal and never had an issue. I understand things go wrong, but leaving a brand new customer for days on end without any sort of update is just pathetic from such a large company. I will be canceling but need to try and get something going so will keep plugging away.

Lesson learnt Vodafone is absolutely terrible, do not switch to them!

littleboo

£5.25 is pretty good for something that costs sub £2/day, but in reality, most people would rather have it working regardless of the compensation. Going forward, it would be worth looking at other solutions as mentioned above. Or do you have a friendly neighbor whose wifi you can access?

bob_mcbob

I just think £5.25 is something so minor to these companies it doesn't really incentivise them to hurry up. I would also question the quality of the custom relation training they have as it is very lacking, but i suspect they will keep getting away with it.

I do have a mobile, so potentially could tether to that, but im on a small data plan...as usually I have wifi at home so no need for much!

Sounds like theres nothing to do other than try to get a different provider asap and chase Vodafone in the meantime. I signed up through the MSE link, which if i recall does flag if a company has a bad reputation...how do i give feed back on there to try and bring their score down and so no one else falls foul of these charlatans?

400ixl

Request Vodafone send you a data sim to cover the period until they get you up and running.

iniltous

Broadband can be had for less than £30 a month ( around £1/day ) compensation of over 5x the rate of supply I would argue is pretty generous…and although not what you want to hear , residential broadband although it can be used for business purposes doesn’t come with business type service level agreements and consequential loss provision…as far as streaming services , there once was speculation that streaming services should have to contribute towards the bandwidth costs of ISP’s , after all if ISPs collectively limited bandwidth to these sites , these streaming sites wouldn’t have customers and the main reason ISP have to supply massive amounts of bandwidth is to satisfy streaming sites.
Anyway , more to the point , if Openreach have fitted a new ‘box’ , assuming  that is an ONT and it’s FTTP you have had fitted , is the PON light lit on the ONT ( steady green light ) , if it is , the Openreach part of the network is up and it’s a problem at Vodafone end

bob_mcbob

With the world becoming ever increasingly reliant on the net (doctors, dentist, news, school) and the benefit that goes with homeworking (less car travel etc). I would argue that there should be more in place to stop this from happening. Indeed when you contact vodafone themselves they try to push you to their online support which is funny when you are contacting them regarding internet issues. Its interesting reading a few replies that a few users on here almost find it acceptable/not a big deal/ that after paying for a new service, cutting off my previous and then not providing that service for several days that its ok as im just on a home contract (as opposed to business). I cant think of anything else I pay for that then doesnt actually work and prevents me from getting something that does work in its place for two weeks.

The lights on the box are all good, and very oddly Vodafone support would not progress the issue until i emailed them a picture...which i couldn't do at the time becuase i had no internet! They themselves said the issue is with them, and they act like they are plugging in connections and manually setting it up, which it clearly isnt.

Also worth pointing out that since the landline comes through this, it also affects phone line. So if i didnt have a mobile and there was an emergency, or perhaps was older and relied more on landline i would be even more screwed.

[Deleted User]

Broadband can be down for all sorts of reasons, recently some road works near where I live cut through the main fibre connection putting thousands of houses offline for multiple suppliers.

Like you, it matters to me that I've got good connectivity, I'm IT support and need a fast and reliable connection 24/7 at home and out of the house so despite my broadband generally being very reliable, I have unlimited data 5G SIM in my phone for such occasions which will only get about 150mbps in the house but is enough to keep the family and me online during any kind of outage. I just create a wifi hotspot and if it is a long outage will change my main wifi router to repeater mode to give coverage throughout the house via wifi and ethernet.

It's a small cost at around £20 per month for peace of mind and it doesn't feel like it is wasted when not used because it is in my personal phone.