Vodafone Broadband any good?

Danger_Mouse

Im considering moving to Vodafone from BT because I can get a quicker speed for a cheaper price. Is anyone with Vodafone? is it reliable?

On the whole, BT has been pretty consistent, its just a bit expensive. We have fibre to the premises so im thinking that any provider 'should' be decent in our case?

jlfrs01

I'm on VDF having moved from BT due to their high costs and have no complaints, you'll need a new router but it's hardly a problem. I've had one outage in 18 months, pretty similar to BT.

Danger_Mouse

jlfrs01 said:

I'm on VDF having moved from BT due to their high costs and have no complaints, you'll need a new router but it's hardly a problem. I've had one outage in 18 months, pretty similar to BT.

Thanks. Did you have to cancel direct with BT first or did Vodafone sort that out for you?

jlfrs01

It worked very much like a bank switch with an agreed date for the switchover which allowed time for the router to arrive in readiness. VDF advised BT who subsequently got in touch and offered a lower price in an effort to keep my business but although VDF was cheaper, my move was based on poor levels of customer service I'd experienced.
I kept my DD with BT as they totted up what was owing on my account and after they took their final payment I cancelled it with the bank. Everything went smoothly I have to say and I've no regrets.

QrizB

I'm just coming to the end of an 18-month fix with Vodafone. I have FTTC and it's worked perfectly. I can't comment on Voda's CS as I've not yet had to contact them.

I'm probably switching away but that's simply because I'm expecting to find a better deal rather than renewing.

HaroldWhistler

Danger_Mouse said:

Im considering moving to Vodafone from BT because I can get a quicker speed for a cheaper price. Is anyone with Vodafone? is it reliable?

On the whole, BT has been pretty consistent, its just a bit expensive. We have fibre to the premises so im thinking that any provider 'should' be decent in our case?

When you have FTTP broadband from Openreach, in general then all providers' service is being delivered by the same Openreach network. So the BT or Vodafone or anyone else line service should be (all things being equal) more or less the same. The differentiating factor is price, customer service, contract length, discounts etc. 

Vodafone would technically be better for existing Vodafone mobile customers with a discount given on that basis on the standard price. Similarly, Sky apparently discount broadband for their own TV customers. Both BT and Vodafone currently still do long 24 month contracts with in built price rises. So whatever the headline price is, they're going to hit you at least twice with a price increase. That would increase the price probably by around 15-20% overall EACH year (the second price increase applied to the higher price already applied in the previous year).

Customer service wise, I am not sure there is much difference between either.

With the headline price being lower for new customers on either service, it might help with cash flow in the first year. If you're looking at the Full Fibre 900 product from either BT or Vodafone, then technically currently Vodafone's headline price is lower. But, you might actually be better off going with someone like Cuckoo Broadband who have a fixed price and much shorter 12 months contract or even a 30 day rolling contract. Their price automatically changes to the new customer price at the end of your contract unlike BT or Vodafone or Sky.  

The "wholesale" Openreach price for FTTP has been coming down over time which is probably why the headline price has been lowered by providers like Vodafone recently. So you might actually be better off with someone like Cuckoo Broadband (currently rated number 1 along with Zen Broadband for customer service according to the MSE Broadband Customer Service poll two years running) to benefit from any future price drop sooner.

I'd put it this way. All things being equal, even if the wholesale price didn't drop, and if you stuck with either BT, Vodafone or Cuckoo for 24 months, then factoring in price rises similar to 2023 over the next full 24 months, you'd end up paying around £120 more over the course of 24 months for Cuckoo (average of £5 a month), BUT with only a 12 month contract and flexibility to change in the last 12 months at any time and better customer service. If wholesale prices do drop, then you'd save money with Cuckoo with an immediate price drop after 12 months and still benefit from the shorter contract and flexibility to leave if you wanted to anyway. With the other two, you'd be stuck with them for 24 months and at the mercy of their price increases. Sky similarly have price rises. 

As for BT versus Vodafone, Vodafone do offer (for an increased price) a slightly better supplied Router if you pay for the "Pro II" package. Though apparently BT is going to offer a better Router later in the year. 

matelodave

I swapped from BT to VF around 18 month ago and it was virtually seamless. We have had FTTP for over four years but BT was getting very expensive. VF worked out at half the price for a faster service and BT didn't even bother to try and haggle.

The router was delivered a day or so before the agreed changeover day (which I chose) so I tweaked it a bit and gave it the same SSID and Password as the BT router to save faffing around with everything else.

On changeover day, the BT router was showing orange when we got up in the morning, indicating that it had been disconnected.

I just pulled all the plugs out of the BT router, shoved them into the VF one and "et voila" everything came to life, including the phone service - less than five minutes to swap and I was up and running.

So far we've not noticed any problems, the speed is a consistent 90-95 Mbit/s and we've never had to speak to VF so I don't know what their CS is like. The router has slightly better coverage than the BT one and has the advantage that I can name 2.4 and 5GHz independently which the BT router couldn't.

This solved a few problems that I waw having with the BT router when we got power cuts and some stuff wouldn't connect properly unless I shut of 5GHz and then re-set it when all the 2.4 stuff had booted.

flaneurs_lobster

@matelodave an aside, does the VF router support guest logins (an annoying absence from the BT Smart Hub)?

matelodave

Yes it does

JSmithy45AD

From my personal experience of them my advice is to avoid at all costs, they're cheap for a reason which you'll only discover when there is a problem.

Storms

JSmithy45AD said:

From my personal experience of them my advice is to avoid at all costs, they're cheap for a reason which you'll only discover when there is a problem.

+1 on that. Good whilst it works ok, the minute there is a problem and you need customer service it's a total nightmare

You keep going round in circles with 'first line support' who are based out of Egypt. Nigh on impossible to transfer the case to 'second line support', let alone get openreach involved. When I asked to terminate the contract early before the 18 months they laid out the red carpet!! Goit transferred to a UK based call centre! no early exit fees or anything.. felt like they were happy to shift the problem to the next ISP to sort out... may be they have to pay some kind of premium when they refer to openreach?

My experience was about 2 years ago btw