EE Broadband has suddenly become very unstable after years of it running so smoothly

Leard91

I've been with BT, and then EE, for well over five years. For years, the broadband ran perfectly. We had high speeds and the internet would rarely drop. 

However, since early February, it has started randomly dropping, slowing down, and some websites become inaccessible at times. According to the Windows troubleshooter, when this happens it's because of a problem with the router. 

We've found that resetting the router will sometimes solve this. Also turning the WiFi on and off on the device sometimes works. And sometimes, it just starts working again by itself. There seems to be absolutely no pattern to what causes it. 

I have spoken to EE multiple times and their useless tech support just keeps offering solutions that don't work. They've also tried to gaslight me into claiming its a WiFi coverage problem, which is a complete lie, because it happens even when you're directly next to the router. Our house is also not big enough for their routers to not reach the entire space adequately. They have even sent out a BT engineer that assured us he could resolve it.

None of this has worked.

I don't know what else to do. Surely I can't be expected to continue talking to their useless 'Guides' for more futile solutions? Do I have a case to abandon EE while still in contract?

iniltous

You probably need to do a little analysis yourself , and also accept that something previously being OK and now isn’t , can be something that you and your ISP are not responsible for, so isn’t necessarily a ‘get out of jail free’ card you can play.

When you have this issue , what happens at the router ,(and the ONT if you have FTTP )  does it or they (if FTTP) remain in ‘sync’ or reboot ( basically is there any visual indication with the router lights that  the connection has dropped ?), if the router isn’t dropping , but you have only use WiFi devices, you have no way to know if wired devices would still be OK , so you may just have a environmental WiFi issue, the distance from the router isn’t really an indicator of this , it could ( for example ) be a neighbour’s WiFi interfering with yours , another possibility, if your devices are Apple products, IPhone, IPad , Mac etc , if they have MAC address randomisation set , the router can quickly fill  up with addresses that the devices use for only a short period of time, and the router needs to reboot to clear all these short term MAC addresses or the router starts to hang/pause  ….first off you need to look at your router stats , post the stats here if you want help to interpret them .

As far as being allowed to leave penalty free from a minimum term contract, first you need them to accept there is a problem that they are responsible for (that’s not yet been established) and once it is established, that they have  opportunity to fix the issue , before allowing you to leave without penalty , TBH , this  is usually a speed issue  , for example if someone were promised 60Mb , but only achieves 40Mb (that’s demonstrable from the router stats ) , if after trying to get the speed to 60Mb , what the ISP promised originally, they fail and the speed stays below 60, that’s when this release from contract can happen , this doesn’t seem to be your situation though 

Leard91

The router doesn't reset or anything when it's dropping it's connection. It seems to only drop to a few devices as well. It's still pumping out internet, but it's like it's being selective.

The BT engineer that came round suggested it could be due to a congested network as the cause. And so he changed the channel, or something, to ensure we were on one different to our neighbours. However, the issue is still happening after that.

iniltous

What are your WiFi devices, are they Apple ? , if so it may well be MAC randomisation is causing the EE router a problem , turn off randomisation to see if this improves your situation 
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secb9cb3140c/web

You haven’t posted your router statistics 

AndyPK

I had a similar problem with an EE router ~18 months ago  (the black one with to bars/vents that lets the aqua light shine out). Eventually they sent me a new white router which sorted the issue.

If you can't get them to send a new router, consider buying an EE one off ebay.

If you can connect a computer to your router via ethernet cable and prove you still have the problem, you stand a good chance of EE doing something about it, or they should let you leave