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[tiffy]

Nearing the end of my 2 year Vodafone contract, 200/28 BB service with digital phone, against my better judgment and in view of the unbelivably low upgrade/renewal prices they have been offering, I signed up for 910/105 BB service on new 2 year contract 2 days ago.
I had fully intended to leave VF at end of contract due to their terrible support record but considering the free digital phone service which I wanted to retain and the offers on hand just couldn't find anything even closely comparable.

TBH, I only had one issue on my first contract which was with the digital phone, got that sorted fairly promptly.

My BB speed upgrade was actioned very quickly, activated the next morning, getting very close to 910 Mbps download speed on my normal speed testing site at all times of the day, direct ethernet connection from Win 10 desktop PC to the basic Vodafone THG3000 router, happy with that result.
However, my upload speed has remained the same as pre-upgrade, 28 Mbps?
Tried the usual things, re-booting of router and ONT, no change.

As expected and widely reported, contacting Vodafone support is not an easy process and certainly much worse that my previous experience.
Their on line "24/7" chat service "TOBi" is permanantly busy just can't access at any time of the day or night.
The members support forum no longer exists, I believe VF shut this down last April.

Resorted to phone contact, only available option I could find.
After jumping through the usual ID hoops was connected surprisingly quickly to a support agent, foreign, very poor english, required many repeat requests on my part.
Lots of silly questions, no meaningful answers.
His final prognosis was, leave it for 48 hrs it might fix itself, if not call again!!
No offer to raise a ticket or to escalate to a higher tech level.

To be continued... 

[DerisionEQ]

I recently renewed my VF 900 service. As my renewal date approached, they offered me £29 a month  going up £3 each April. This appeared to be a great deal.

I have fortunately never had to contact their support.

As a comparison, I typically get 930 down 108 up using speedtest.net. Sounds like they forgot to change your upstream profile.

Good luck!

[dee.jay]

I wouldn't touch Vodafone with a barge pole, for this very reason.

[broadstairs]

I've been with Vodafone for a while now and not had any issues which needed support. So maybe I've been lucky. I moved from BT to them as they were a lot cheaper and had a good deal for 500meg service still cheaper than BT which was only a 150 service. They keep offering me the 900 one but I simply don't need it!

Stuart

[tiffy]

My 48 hour wait period to see if the issue "goes away" as suggested by FV support is now up, needless to say, still the same, 28 Mbps UL speed.
I was paying £31.91 on my previous 200/28 service, the new 910/105 contract is £25.00, with the two April increases during the 2 year contract period it is predicted to still be under £32 in 2027 and of course I have retained the free (calls not included) digital land line.

I could of course cancel but knowing Vodafone support services that would very likely compound the issue greatly and would raise the possibility of loosing my long held landline phone number something I would hate to happen.

No real hardship at present I still have full service just not the UL speed I was promised.
Will keep at VF support, such as it is until I get a result, I don't give up easily 

[meritez]

Ask Tech Support for your username and password to rule out their router.

[tiffy]

Actually got someone at VF phone support yesterday, still foreign but with very good english, he advised that the problem was with the router, I have the basic THG3000, it is S/W limited to 30 Mbps UL speed max, says this can be removed but the only way to achieve this is by performing a factory reset and then let the router update it's FW on line a process which will involve multiple re-boots and can take some time, up to 2 hours.

Yes, would be a good idea to try another router if I had the username & PW available.
I would have changed to a 3rd party router a long time ago if it wasn't for the integral FV digital phone service, I know it is possible to configure digital phone service on VF with a 3rd party router but it's complex and beyond by technical capability.

As I have quite a bit of personal configuration on the router, static IP address reservations by MAC etc for all of my many network devices I'am reluctant to do this until I'am sure I have a full hard record of all the settings, do have a file backup as per the router interface but not sure if this would work or would return me to "square one" assuming that the factory reset actually cured the UL speed limit issue.

To compound the issue, the VF Android phone app has stopped working, think this is associated with a recent app program revision which does not now list the older VF router so can't configure.
I have previously used the app to set up my Wi-Fi PW as the router would not let me enter the existing (shorter) PW but the app does, this saved a lot of hassle changing the PW on my Wi-Fi devices.

Will have to try the suggested solution of course but not until I'am satisifed that all backup/restore information is on hand, not a good time to loose BB and LL phone service a week before xmas should the worst happen   

[broadstairs]

I don't understand what they are saying about the THG3000 router, this is what I've had all along (since 2023) and it runs fine. I just ran a speed test and got 565Mbps down and 79Mbps up on a 500Mbps contract! So unless your THG3000 is very old and has never had any updates I don't see why it is limited. I did start with the 500Mbps contract when I first went to VF so perhaps that's why my router works but some how I doubt that.

Stuart

[tubaman]

Sounds like nonsense to me as it should be able to update its firmware without needing a factory reset. I suppose you can only try it and then get back to them if it doesn't work, which I suspect it won't.

[tiffy]

Very much inclined to agree with all the comments, I will be surprised if a factory reset produces the desired result.
The last VF support person I spoke to was adamant that he could see that the router US data link was clamped @ 30Mbps max, that's assuming he knew what he was talking about of course 
Suppose I must go through the motions as he suggested to make any progress!!

When I changed ISP to Vodafone in 2024, for convenience, I changed the Wi-Fi SSID & PW to same as previous to avoid having to re-configure all my wireless devices, the Shelly and Google devices in particular can be very time consuming to set up again.
On the VF router GUI the SSID was easily changed however the Wi-Fi PW in use was "too short" and not accepted, however it was on the FV Android phone app so did it that way, strange I know but it worked.

As previously mentioned, for whatever reason the FV Android phone app doesn't work any more on my mobile, worked perfectly until very recently, yet another FV anomaly.
So, can't now re-configure the Wi-Fi PW to suit!
Will certainly hold fire with the factory reset until I get this sorted.

   

[broadstairs]

As previously mentioned, for whatever reason the FV Android phone app doesn't work any more on my mobile, worked perfectly until very recently, yet another FV anomaly.
So, can't now re-configure the Wi-Fi PW to suit!
Will certainly hold fire with the factory reset until I get this sorted.

Yes that app can be very flaky and I often find it does not work. I have a mesh system (not VF but BT Home) and it never works unless I am connected directly to the routers wi-fi despite the BT Home system being connected via Ethernet to the VF router! My wi-fi passwords have always been 9 characters though.

Stuart

[DerisionEQ]

These are my THG3000 software versions that work fine with VF900 service. Last sw update was 170 days ago if the router is to be believed. This is the same router I have had since I started with VF100/28 in Sep 2022. No factory resets ever performed. As you say though, you need to jump through their hoops to get this resolved.

Firmware version
19.4.0551-3261161-20250523100548-7efccd9e333e995b72430e4ef45c0f27f265fb5d

Bootloader Version
19.02.1146-0000000-20190110090550-897d2844f012557134a272eb8a8a90f85e9a7a8d

Hardware Type & Version
Vox3.0v

[tiffy]

@broadstairs:
The VF web site states that he latest VF Android phone app revision doesn't work with the older THG3000 (Vox) router although I'am positively sure it was still working for me a few days before the speed upgrade.
Perhaps the router FW was updated as part of the speed upgrade or when I re-booted afterwards?
Have managed to find older versions of the phone app on a 3rd party site, none of them work either!

My Wi-Fi PW is 9 characters but from memory the router GUI required a min of 12 characters that's why I had to set PW on the phone app..
That may have changed of course with later FW updates.

Would appear that VF have abandoned phone app support for users of the older Vox hub's?

@DerisionEQ:
Many thanks for taking the trouble to post your router's FW revision, much appreciated.
Just checked my router, it's exactly the same!!
Begs the question, same model hub running on the same FW, you get contracted UL speed I don't?

Could I possibly be getting the run around from VF support, surely not 

Edit: Typo corrections.

 

[tiffy]

Wondering if anyone has had occasion to or tried to use the Vodafone supposedly "24/7 available" TOBi chat/help service recently?
https://www.vodafone.co.uk/contact-us
I've been trying to access this many times a day/night since the 16th Dec when my BB was upgraded, the web site access icon just permanantly "spins" and does nothing 
Have tried 3 different browsers on my Win 10 desktop PC, same result.

Is this just my system or much more likely Vodafones??

[tubaman]

TOBi chat loads up ok on my Linux/Firefox laptop and I can chat with it.