EE Want you to leave their network

[BrendonH]

So for around 3 months I have been having little to no network in my home. (Yes I have WiFi) I have been in contact with EE over the past few days they tell me on Tuesday to wait until 6pm they are working on my local mast.

Nothing has changed since. I have just got off the phone to an executive complaints handler. Her first resolution is to use WiFi calling.

I come back saying I have a couple points where that is an issue. I begrudge paying you a service to have to pay another company a service to then to be able to use your service. I pay £54 a month for my 600mb FTTP so if you want me to just use that you need to make my bill free with EE because ou are not then providing me the service.

Her come back to that was well EE invented WiFi Calling. I'm like it doesn't matter who invented it. I still have to pay Gigaclear to use EE's service.

I said my second point is I have a big garden. It's nearly an acre full of trees (I live in a forest, and yes I know this could effect signal but when I moved here in 2020 I had no issues with signal anywhere on my property) On my days off I am outside working on my garden fixing fencing because the wild boars love to break the fences to come into the garden but having dogs I need to make sure they can't escape. My wifi doesn't cover all my garden.

She went off to speak to the technical team or whoever. She came back saying they don't see any major changes in the area happening anytime soon as the mast is optimised and working. I'm like sorry but something has changed because I am not getting any signal and neither is my wife.

She noticed I was out of contract as I haven't renewed my sim only. She goes just leave then. So her solution is for customers to leave rather than fix an issue.

My wife isn't out of contract and relies on me gifting her data every month as we deliberately gave her a low data allowance as I was able to gift 100GB a month. They have given me an option that I am thinking about there but surely they want to keep customers. Fix the issues rather than telling the customers to leave.

I also told her so your 14%+ you are increasing bills this year is to degrade your services rather than improve them then? Because something has happened for me and my wife to stop losing signal at the same time. I have posted on my local facebook groups to see if others are having the same issue because if it was just my phone I would say yes OK it could be a phone issue but it's multiple.

[James_B]

Hi @BrendonH,

Hope you're well.

I'm sorry to hear there has been a change in your signal quality at home.

Please can you drop me a PM with your postcode and I'll do my best to find out what has changed.

Thanks

James

[BrendonH]

Update on this.

So both my local Facebook groups (I live between two towns) have come back stating they have been having the exact same issue for near enough the exact same amount of time. Quite a few people I may add. So surely this is proof there is an issue with EE network in this area? Or I guess the executive complaints handler just wants people in the Forest to leave their network. 

Many have said they just ditched EE and went to Vodafone. Ironicall I do have a Vodafone sim in my device and the signal is near enough perfect on it.

[Leanne_T]

Thanks for the update @BrendonH 

If others are experiencing the same issue in the area they would need to report this to us either by calling or using the network status checker, the problem reports will go the right team to get this investigated and see what could be causing the signal issues. 

Please keep us updated with how you get on when the executive team get back in touch with you. 

Leanne.

[bristolian]

There is nothing wrong with having to use WiFi-calling to get good service indoors, I've had to do so at my current address for many years. It's a free coverage enhancement service, allowing for the fact that no network will ever provide 100% national indoor coverage, it's unrealistic. The alternative is simply to have no service just because you "shouldn't have to use my broadband".

Any degradation in outdoor coverage over time could have numerous root causes, very likely optimisation activity which is always intended for the greater good.

[BrendonH]

@bristolian sorry but having to pay for 2 services to use 1 is just wrong and you are playing into the capatalism that is going on in the world.

It isn't an issue using WiFi calling when there is signal issues in the area whilst they are being fixed but to rely on it because EE wants to degrade a service in the area is a different matter.

Degrading outdoor service. How can you say that's better for the greater good? I'm sorry how is giving people less service but increase their bills better for them?

You are loving in cloud cookoo land of you think that's ok.

EE need to think about how they operate and improve things if they are going to increase bills but to degrade a whole area as evident in my findings on my local Facebook when I asked on there is not improving service is it.

[bristolian]

It's common for network optimisation to improve overall service under a site's footprint, but at the expense of individual locations - all network operators do this. It shouldn't usually leave any location without coverage where it was previously available, unless there's a good reason.

I don't believe EE have ever asked customers to get a new broadband connection to use WiFi-calling, but suggesting WiFi-calling over an existing broadband line is a totally valid mitigation for indoor coverage issues, which are unavoidable with the best network planning intentions.

[BrendonH]

@bristolian 

You are missing the whole thing here.

I don't live in the town where I posted the post on Facebook. The mast is in-between me and the town.

This isn't effecting an individual area. The whole mast is not working properly and EE doesn't want to fix it. 

Optimising a mast shouldn't make users lose signal completely.

You keep saying indoor outdoor coverage.  I am not saying the issue is only indoors so I take it you never actually read my post at all and just what you want to read. I get no signal outside. My WiFi doesn't cover my whole garden and my days off tend to consist of me doing work in my garden albeit fixing the fence the wild boars have destroyed or putting up new fencing for our growing small holding. 

This is outdoors. The coverage checker states I should get perfect signal in and out. I admit my property is a massive thick walled old cottage built in the early 1900s. I never expected to get signal indoors when I moved here and would rely on WiFi then but as long I got signal outside.

When I moved in I got near perfect signal in and out. Now I get next to nothing anywhere.

Degrading a service is not optimising or helpful to anyone. They are saying I should get signal but don't want to fix it just tell me to leave.

A company shouldn't want to lose their customers but EE doesn't care. 

[bristolian]

Without knowing specifics of the network architecture in your specific area, I can only speak in general terms, but I assure you site outages are treated with importance and to say that EE "doesn't want to fix it" will be categorically untrue. It's the nature of easy fixes that they are quick - when something takes longer to resolve, it's often because there's something complex causing it.

Extended outages are incredibly frustrating, but are often due to factors outside EE's control. That may be legal, technical, or other third party - again, every situation is different.

[BrendonH]

When I say EE don't want to fix it. I mean they don't want to. I was on the phone to the executive complaints handler for about an hour. They say nothing has changed nothing will change to make you get signal again so just leave 

They don't want to even look at a fault. They just don't care.

You are coming on here to defend a company that is degrading their network  and trying to say it's out of their control. This isn't. They have every power to fix a mast that is already there.  They aren't attempting to fix anything. There only solution they have me is to leave. 

They offered 50% off my wife's contract which is still within the minimum term and to give her an extra 10gb allowance as she wouldn't have me there to gift her days every month. But this doesn't fix the issue. If they said we'll look into it but I don't know how long it's going to be and we'll look into fixing the fault that is causing you and many others to have no signal (in a wide area not just my home location) but bare with us that would be better. But now the ONLY solution is to just leave.

Fancy telling your customers to leave. If I did that in my job I'd be disciplined no matter how rude the customer was.

There is only 2 masts in this area that EE has. The closer one to me doesn't reach me due to the massive hill I love half way up as it's on the other side of the hill. The mast that covers me is further but again I had near perfect signal only 6 months or so ago. No buildings have gone up. No trees have been planted in the path of it. It's farm landm it's in the fields that actually doesn't have trees on it 

So unless you actually have anything productive to say other than sorry it's not EEs faultnforndegrading a network because all theybwantnis profit rather than improve things then I suggest you don't bother to reply again.