Any way to avoid Vodafone cancellation fee?

JamieOS

I'm looking to switch from Vodafone to Eircom (call me mad) but I'm still in contract until the start of August. They want 250 quid to cancel it. Efibre is set to come to my area on the 11th, estimated, and I was hoping to switch and not lose any service until then. Is there any way to avoid paying the cancellation fees? Not sure if it might make a difference, but my service has been absolute ****e for the past year. Even worse than it was with Eircom. At least I don't have to pay Eircom for some technician work when I was with them. I've had everything from consistently low speeds, to extremely high ping (over 2500ms to a nearby server for over a week once), horrible packet loss (15-40% sometimes) and more. Occurrences like these have been happening as early as last week. Even last night my upload speed basically dropped to nothing for 15 minutes and made it impossible to enjoy a game of Battlefield.

What are my chances of avoiding the fees and how should I go about it regardless? Thanks lads.

Zack Morris

Eircom are the most expensive of the ISPs and they going to rise prices again in a few months. I'd consider Sky if I were moving.

What speeds did they promise you?

JamieOS

Zack Morris wrote: »

Eircom are the most expensive of the ISPs and they going to rise prices again in a few months. I'd consider Sky if I were moving.

What speeds did they promise you?

100mbps download. Vodafone is 6mbps and Same with Sky, but that might change when Fibre becomes available in the next few weeks. Eircom only works out at 3 quid extra a month for me. I'd rather go with Eircom because some family members work for them so I can get any repairs or callouts done almost straight away instead of waiting nearly a week.

Zack Morris

JamieOS wrote: »

100mbps download. Vodafone is 6mbps and Same with Sky, but that might change when Fibre becomes available in the next few weeks. Eircom only works out at 3 quid extra a month for me. I'd rather go with Eircom because some family members work for them so I can get any repairs or callouts done almost straight away instead of waiting nearly a week.

I should have made myself more clearer because I actually meant what speeds did Vodafone promised you? If you're not getting the speeds promised to you by Vodafone, then they're not upholding their end of the contract and should release you.

For the record, Eircom is "up to" 100Mb, it depends on how long your telephone line is. You're currently on ADSL, there is a possibility that when you switch to VDSL (Fibre) your line will improve because it's a different technology.

Sky have joined the eFibre market, too. They will be selling "up to" 100Mb just like Vodafone and Eircom do.

Another thing, when arrives in your area, you're not guaranteed to get it unless they upgrade your local cabinet by building a new one beside it. Your telephone must not be any longer than 2km between the cabinet and your home.

JamieOS

Zack Morris wrote: »

I should have made myself more clearer because I actually meant what speeds did Vodafone promised you? If you're not getting the speeds promised to you by Vodafone, then they're not upholding their end of the contract and should release you.

For the record, Eircom is "up to" 100Mb, it depends on how long your telephone line is. You're currently on ADSL, there is a possibility that when you switch to VDSL (Fibre) your line will improve because it's a different technology.

Sky have joined the eFibre market, too. They will be selling "up to" 100Mb just like Vodafone and Eircom do.

Another thing, when arrives in your area, you're not guaranteed to get it unless they upgrade your local cabinet by building a new one beside it. Your telephone must not be any longer than 2km between the cabinet and your home.

I'm about 1km from my cabinet or whatever the correct term is. Vodafone say that its up to 24Mb, but that my line can only handle 7Mb so thats what I should be getting 99% of the time, according to them. Its never gone above about 5.25Mb. I'll try to link you to a pic of about a months worth of speedtest results, but I don't send links so you'll have to fill in the "(dot)"s with "(.)"s and add the http and all that.

i(dot)imgur(dot)com/Lo7RrgH(dot)png

ED E

7Mb is an old ADSL1 exchange*. If it was good with eircom, then got poor with vodafone then theres a good chance the whole exchange is congested now, not just vodafone. If thats the case switching wont help.

If you try and leave vodafone and not pay they can just have it locked by eircom wholesale and itll go dead until the bill is paid.


When the fibre node goes into the exchange the current system will resolve itself, and the new cabs will start going live which will POTENTIALLY give you 100Mb, but at 1KM it could be 30Mb direct fed. Sit tight probably. Or post your line stats so we can verify.


*assuming its 1KM from the exchange at the moment

JamieOS

ED E wrote: »

7Mb is an old ADSL1 exchange*. If it was good with eircom, then got poor with vodafone then theres a good chance the whole exchange is congested now, not just vodafone. If thats the case switching wont help.

If you try and leave vodafone and not pay they can just have it locked by eircom wholesale and itll go dead until the bill is paid.


When the fibre node goes into the exchange the current system will resolve itself, and the new cabs will start going live which will POTENTIALLY give you 100Mb, but at 1KM it could be 30Mb direct fed. Sit tight probably. Or post your line stats so we can verify.


*assuming its 1KM from the exchange at the moment

I just check google maps and its pretty much exactly 1KM away by road. My town onlt has a population of about 3000 (probably a lot less (2175 around the town and urban areas in 2011)) and there are I believe 8-9 cabinets being upgraded for Efibre and possibly a few that aren't, although I can't confirm that.

My neighbour often gets a solid 5.5Mb and much more steady results overall, for some reason. Last summer I was experiencing some issues where my internet would slow to a crawl (about 0.13Mb download) and would stay like that for 1-20 minutes. My neighbour, who is only about 0.05-0.1KM away from me on the same exhange had no issues on Eircom with the same router as me. They replaced my router and it did no good (also they sent Eircom Engineers to fix it at my house). Then after that, I called back and said it wasn't fixed so the guy on the phone said that "I will open up your connection to 12Mb and see if that helps." because he assumed it was congested. So even though I was promised up to 24Mb if it was available, I wasn't getting it. I was able to get 6.9Mb downlaod, although it still slowed to a hault for a while. So they were throttling me instead of giving me the 24Mb I should be able to get. I think I forgot to mention that they said if a high speed becomes available in the future, you speed will automatically increase up as far as 24Mb.

Sorry for going on a bit of a rant.

hallo dare

One of the ways of avoiding the fee is to take it up with Comreg as a service that is not fit for purpose, proving speedtests and communications that have taken between you and your provider . This can only be done once you have already contacted the provider and given them the chance to rectify the problem over a certain amount of time.

ED E

JamieOS wrote: »

So even though I was promised up to 24Mb if it was available, I wasn't getting it. I was able to get 6.9Mb downlaod, although it still slowed to a hault for a while. So they were throttling me instead of giving me the 24Mb I should be able to get. I think I forgot to mention that they said if a high speed becomes available in the future, you speed will automatically increase up as far as 24Mb.

Sorry for going on a bit of a rant.

You cant get 24Mb, have to be next door to the exchange to get that. At 1KM 17Mb maybe 20Mb would be expected.

Sounds like the exchange is overloaded if you couldnt manage that. If a line is unstable reducing the profile could make it better, thats not throttling though, its just profiling your DSL.

Whats the town?