In the meantime a friend of mine gave me a Linksys wireless-G notebook adaptor, which I have been using to connect to the Internet on my travels.
After troubleshooting the problem myself as above, I decided to give Vodafone Customer Services a call in order to rectify the problem. I spoke to a male Customer Service phone operator and after listening to my query for a few minutes and asking me some questions he decided that the modem was faulty and needed replacing. I thought this rather odd as I have not used the modem extensively in the time I have had it, which is just over two years. I have the Huawei E270 modem which Vodafone were using 2 years ago. As I was talking to the Customer Services representative the phone suddenly cut out, I couldn't decide whether he hung up on me or whether the phone had genuinely cut out. I redialled, thankfully they don't have long phone queues or else I would have been walking on the ceiling. The lady I spoke with next was extremely polite and nice to speak with to the point that I was bouncing around after I got off the phone and grinning from ear to ear. However, my Vodafone modem worked for about 5-10 minutes before it packed up again. I was frustrated!
On Tuesday 17th of November, I called Customer Services again and this time the person I spoke to could not make out what the problem was and asked me to visit a Vodafone store where they would be happy to do an exchange or repair. I was left with no choice, as the thing was not working so I decided to take my dongle along to one of their stores near Bond Street in Central London. Once inside the store, I was given a ticket and waited a few minutes to be seen. I honestly thought the experts in the store would be able to do something about the problem I was having with the modem, however, I was wrong.....
After speaking to a Customer Services/Sales Rep in the store, and then to three people over the phone explaining the problem in detail, I was back to square one, my modem was not working (it hadn't even been looked at or touched) and I had been in the store since 18:09 and it was now 19:00. I was getting frustrated again, an hour in the store and no solution. Again, I asked them to call technical support and I was told by a rather obnoxious and rude technical support person, who refused to give me his name, that the options open to me were to
1) Buy another modem (I have found out that they cost about £66 and in the store they could not give me this information) or
b) Send my old modem away for repair which would cost me £40.
I was adamant that the modem was working and we tried the sim card in one of their demo phones in the Vodafone store and the Internet was accessible and was working fine. The problem was indeed related to the actual modem itself and not the sim card. I had already established this fact at home with one of my old phones and I also knew that it wasn't as a result of my laptop or computer not working. I left the store at approximately 19:35. My friend, who had accompanied me to the store was fast asleep and snoring *
sarcasm* (however, she was sleeping), I went to meet her when she finished work and we had been in the store for over one and a half hours, so she fell asleep. I was completely furious and I told the customer service representative in the store, who was nice polite and helpful, but unfortunately could not help me. He offered his name but I was cross with the company, not him. as he had been helpful with the knowledge and information he had been equipped with. I shook his hand and left the store with the address for their head office in order to write a concise complaint letter.
However, I thought it was more fitting to write a blog post about my experience. I started out paying £30 a month on an 18 month contract for my mobile broadband to Vodafone and the least they could do was send the dongle off for repair free of charge. However once you read this whole post you will realise that this was not even necessary. While searching for information online, I have read of other people who have the same problem of their modem just not working suddenly. These people are busy trying to bid online for new modems when the ones they have are perfectly fine.
The above scenario happened on Tuesday of this week. I spoke to a few more people over the phone at Vodafone between Tuesday and today which is Thursday, I have spoken to nine Vodafone employees in total trying to resolve this problem. Kind of pathetic, don't you think?
So, what is the problem?The Vodafone broadband dongle/modem connects to the Internet with the VMC lite software., which is pre-installed on the modem. When you try to open web pages with a web browser, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc it appears as though you are not connected to the Internet when in fact you are connected with the modem software.
A quick look at the Vodafone connection software and I can see that the bytes or data sent and received in the up arrow fluctuates between zero and six and then back to zero again. The down arrow shows no data and is constantly showing zero. There is no data passing through the Internet connection at all, but the modem is on and showing either a constant blue light (3G) or a constant green light (2G). I know for a fact that the modem IS working. A modem which has given up the ghost would not even switch on. Besides, I hardly use it and therfeore it hasn't had much wear and tear. Let's face it the old brick mobiles I had over 10 years ago still work and I dropped those plenty of times and they still work 10 years later, although they have now been relegated to antiques.
Anyway, back to the topic...After visiting the vodafone website today to find out the price of a new modem and then visiting some online auction sites and browsing to see how much secondhand or new Vodafone modems were going for, I decided to call up Vodafone to find out exactly how much I would have to pay for a new modem. As I had stated previously, I was not prepared to pay £40 to fix an old modem, which may or may not be guaranteed to work afterwards.
I have spoken to three Vodafone Employees today. The first Customer Services guy I spoke to over the phone was again quite unhelpful talking over me each time I tried to get a word in. I was so cross I had to explain to him that the Customer Service was unacceptable and I expected better, considering
a) I am an excellent customer and pay all my Vodafone bills on time, everytime and not a troublesome customer in anyway
b) I hardly ever call this company
c) how can you help me when I can't even explain to you what my issues are to you when you constantly keep talking over me as I am trying to speak?
d) my other mobile phone provider, although they are not great, I have never had this kind of issue with them and I have been with them since I was a teenager. I told him I was completely and utterly dissatisfied!
After this conversation, he appeared to calm down and of course gave me the number to call in order to find out the price of a new modem. I rang off, dialled the number which he gave me and it was an incorrect number. *Big sigh and a deep breath*
After going online to try to get the number myself, I came across an 0808 number on their site for sales etc and I called it. The first person I spoke to was very cheerful and friendly and most of all, helpful. I explained to him what the problem was and he immediately told me that it sounded as though my sofware on the Huawei modem needed upgrading......Eureka, there was the problem. He explained to me that the old modems needed their software to be updated and told me that he would transfer me to someone in their technical team who would be able to help me....The call was transferred....
I spoke to another nice friendly voice and this time we got down to business. I am pleased to say that one of the guys in the 2nd level Technical Support team realised what the problem was and had a solution....I booted up my laptop and he talked me through exactly what I had to do in order to get my modem working again and was very surprised and disappointed to hear that I had spoken to 7 other people between last week and this week who were not able to rectify my problem.
Indeed, you have to wonder at the third world customer service in some UK companies at times.
The solutionThe modem software needs updating and there is also a new server. the old servers have been turned off, therefore the older modems are not working because these are pointing to the old servers. You need the vodafone e270 firmware update.
In order to fix this problem, you will have to either download some software updates from the Vodafone website (
Vodafone Mobile Broadband Software Update - Firmware) or adjust some setting on your Vodafone modem connection software as follows:
1) In your Vodafone Mobile Connect Lite Software, go to
SettingsRemove your Vodafone software from your computer and then reboot your PC. Try to load up some web pages. If the settings and instructions do not work then you will have to download the firmware which will update the software on the modem/dongle.
Hopefully, this will be useful for somebody and will stop you wasting your money on a new modem when you do not need one.
If you have any other problems, call Vodafone on the number above or go to their website to get the information.
