Mobile t'interweb?

I have Orange mobile, with Dongle, download speed is varied, from next to nothing in North Norfolk, to so-so in West Wales and Lightning fast in Weymouth.
 
Mike - thanks for that info. Really useful stuff. I've been reliably informed by my better half that iphone 3GS won't do the wifi hotspot thing.

Orange wouldn't be any good for the places we visit. According to their website there's no coverage at all.

Bitten the bullet and bought a cheap 3 dongle and a pre-loaded PAYG sim card. Will see how I get on. :wave:
 
t-mobile

For the last 12 months we've been fulltiming in our Dethleffs. 2 laptops running Windows 7. We've been using T-mobile dongles. You have the usual choices such as £2 a day, £7 for a week (or any 7 days in a month) or £15 for a month. For the £15 you get 1gb. The reason we opted for the T-mobile one is mainly that you don't get cut off when you've used the 1gb - you can carry on for the full 30 days, emailing, facebooking etc., browsing, banking - in fact everything we need. And wherever there's a mobile signal it works. It's fast too. :)
 
We have used contract Vodafone for 18 months now for 2 phones and a dongle since going full time Last April they contacted me while I was in Spain to renew the contract and as I didn't need an upgrade of my phone they cut the price to £10 for 300 mins + texts which I never use on each of the phones. I was told to go into a Vodafone shop when I got back to the UK to upgrade my dongle, but he still cut the price to that to £10 for 3Gb of data.

This all worked fine on our laptop running vista. At the end of July we had a system crash (not the hard drive) and had no system backup on the laptop or disks. We need the laptop so went out and bought a new on which runs Windows 7. Then the problems started with the E172 dongle. It would not run. After spending the Bank Holiday weekend (at Solfest in Cumbria) trying to get it to work I went into a Vodafone shop at Barrow in Furness on the Tuesday as we were planning to spend the rest of the month over there. The assistant tried to get it to work and decided that it neded to be returned to their repair centre. To get us going we bought a PAYG K3770 dongle which worked fine. After 10 days the E172 was returned to the shop and we went to collect it. I took the laptop to make sure it worked. They had replaced to old E172 with a new one. The shop manager spent an hour and a half trying to get it to work with help from their telephone support team. He even tried a brand new one from his stock with no success. As the shop was closing he gave me the returned dongle and told me to contact support myself next morning.

I did this and spent many hours on the phone to various frontline second and third line support people on numerous occasions during the rest of the month. I was told to go to www.business.vodafone.co.uk and download the latest software but that just came up as gobbledygook on the windows 7 software. It had worked fine on vista before the breakdown.

After returning to the North East I went into the vodafone shop in the Metrocentre at Gateshead to get a new sim as advised by another support technician however she sent me to a new store in the complex where they have technicians in a booth sorting out problems. One of the online support staff had suggested that the E172 was not windows 7 compatible but Sales would have none of it as their website said it would work. The technician worked away and eventually got a cobbled together system going that I am using at present, with the PAYG dongle and contract sim card. This works but had non of the support features of either the PAYG software which it resembles and the contract system info is not available. I was willing to take out a different plan which I found while tring to get the dongle working. This gives 5Gb UK Plus 2Gb Open Zone and 2Gb while abroad per month. This plan is £35.50 +vat per month and should be better for our mobile needs. They will not upgrade to this plan either until the present one expires. I would have thought £35.50 is better in their hand than £10 each month but they are so blinkered they do not see it.

I have now tried to get vodafone to acknowledge that the E172 is not compatible and to replace it with one that works. They tell me that because I renewed on an 18 month contract in April they will not replace the dongle until October 2012 when a new contract is due. I explained the conversation I had in Spain with the gentleman that renewed my contract but they say he made no note of the matter so they will not upgrade the dongle. Last saturday I sent them a detailed complaint and and recieved a stock reply that they would contact me within 24 hour. I have had no reply (following Friday pm). I sent in a further two complaints quoting the same reference number and have still had no reply or acknowlegement from them, so I have sent a reply to the original contact reply asking if they intend to reply at all.

I have been a Vodafone customer for over 20 years. I am now a very dissatisfied one.
 
Sorry double posting
 
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An easy solution John....just cancel your direct debit and go with three, 5gb for £15 a month...and ignore the threatening letters, it is Vodafone who have not honoured their part of the contract by not providing you with the means to access the web...keep it simple.:goodluck:
 
Vodafone's warranty/repair service is rubbish, I'm currently going through a dispute with them, which is almost sorted, I found using their eforum worked well, as after slating their incompetence, once of their guys contacted me and looked into the case, I didn't quite get what I wanted, but have had £55 taken of my next bill.

The eforum is under the support button on vodafones website
 
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