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Vodafone deactivates service in CM12 0– postcode

[Yet another one about Vodafone.  I’d like to point out that I don’t have any particular issue with the network — they’ve been featuring rather a lot here on SMS Text News recently.  This isn’t by design.]

My dad is absolutely seething.

I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to him the other night.  I thought I should go and say hello after I’d finished chatting with mum.  I found dad stood at the master bedroom window.  He was standing on a stool and had the phone handset half out the window. 

He was screaming into the handset: ‘YES ITS A SHIT SIGNAL, SORRY, SAY AGAIN..’

Ahh.  When something doesn’t work, my dad just cannot relax.  Someone had called him and he was trying to give them the landline number. 

In the last 3-4 weeks or so, the Vodafone signal in the ‘CM12 0’ postal area has been non existent.  Not even one bar.  It’s been driving my dad, my brother, my mother, her friends — every Vodafone user I’ve talked to in the area — mad. 

Why?  Well, they’ve deactivated their cell station at the high school down the road.  I can only assume because the school’s concerned about pupil brains being fried.  It’s a bit late now .. the transmitter must have been there for a good ten years or so. 

Since they have deactivated the transmitter, everyone in the area is now being served by the transmitter at the station which is a good few miles away nearer the centre of  town.  Ergo you’re lucky if you get one bar, for a few seconds, when you switch your phone on and force it to poll for signal.  After a few moments, the bars go and you’re left, again, if you’re lucky, with just the basic ‘vodafone’ signal – devoid of bars and thus unable to call.  Well, you can try. 

Not even text messages are going through.

I’d be climbing the walls if it was me.  I enjoy a gorgeous t-mobile signal in the CM12 area.  Orange and o2/three are perfectly fine as well. 

Pretty darn annoying in this day and age. 

Dad’s phoned Vodafone.  They explained the issue and he took away from the conversation the perspective that there’s no solution coming soon — as they need to identify a new location for a mast.

It’s a bind — he doesn’t know whether to swap to o2 or T-mobile… or just put up with it. 

Still, when he’s at home, at least he’s able to focus on getting worked up about the lack of service and avoid being interrupted by work calls and texts.   It’s only when he reaches the station (and enters proper signal range) that an avalanche of texts and voicemails arrive from the night before!

5 COMMENTS

  1. Christ, get your Dad to tell Voda they can put the mast in his back yard! Do you know how much they pay you for hosting a mast on your land !? (Like, the monthly salary of a well paid London office assistant).

    Justin

  2. Typical apathy from the operator. I wonder if any of the other operators have the nerve to advertise in the local newspaper in that area with a one page spread – “Getting no signal from Vodafone – Join us now and get free SMS, blah, blah, blah” INSTANT CHURN. :0)

    Surely we must be talking of hundreds of customers affected here, well worth the publicity to try something like this.

  3. Shawpy, you’re totally right! I absolutely love your idea. You know what, it would even be worth putting a leaflet through the door of each house in the area: “Are you a Vodafone refugee — call us and we’ll transfer you to a mobile network that cares.” It would get local, national and international press!

  4. Do you know if the mast is being put back because it may have been to do with all the building work that went on with the extension perhaps they are goign to put it back. The only place i can get signal is standing outside teh door of the sixth form block and up the top of c block where i have to run to if i need to make a call or something. Its stupid! Though i like your point if i fail my exams ill blame it on that my brain has been fried over the past 6 years 😉

  5. This just goes further to back up my comments about Vodafone. I know from experience that Billericay is a bit of a hilly place (contrary to the rumours that Essex is a flat county), but even so there’s absolutely no excuse not to be able to provide a useable service to a densely populated urban area such as this.

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