Smart Wifi Pro range is awful - BT/EE refusing to pay for ONT Move

[dliskevich]

Been having issues with connection and speeds upstairs since I moved into a new home, started with BT 500mb FTTP with a Smart Wifi Discs, got upsold to an EE Wifi Pro  500mb and told it would solve all my problems

But it hasn't. I live in an old terraced home, where the ONT has just been put on the front corner of the house, the router has awful range and my Smart Wifi Pro Disc upstairs neither keeps a consistent connection or gets remotely the speed I'm paying for. I get a max of 70mb upstairs, and the disc always has an orange light.

I've called them so many times explaining the issue and they keep refusing to do anything useful, and keep offering new discs which won't do anything

Had one advise finally say they'd credit me £130 to cover the ONT move charge, when she called back later to confirm said I had to get an engineer visit first to confirm there wasn't another way to help me.

Played their game - engineer came and agreed with everything I'd been saying, even put down "ONT Move Suggested" as part of his notes.  He said the disc upstairs was getting around 15mb when he measured

When I called back today, they're acting like there's been no notes left whatsoever that they would cover it, tried to get me to pay it or offered me another disc, which won't help.

I brought up their Smart Wifi Pro Guarantee  (100mb in every corner of the house) and the advisor said "I can't even see you've got Smart Wifi Pro on your account" - They're lying to me at every single turn. So even won't give me the £100 credit in this scenario, that would at least cover most of the cost.

Has anyone ever managed to get something like this accomplished? THey're treating me with utter disdain and don't care remotely about my experience as a customer or their own obligations

[dliskevich]

@Chris_B Well in the case that it wouldn't help, I would just give up , not much else I could do beyond then spending my own money on my own mesh router with better performance+support for daisy chain. It's just really clear right now that the front corner of a old, long terraced house is not a suitable location without internal ethernet wiring - which I don't feel should fall on the customer to sort.

But I would have very high confidence moving the ONT + Router to the central location would get rid of the issue with my extender, it's purely a distance issue, If I carry the extender out of its room and leave it loose at the top of the stairs I can see the light change from yellow to blue and performance improve in that back room. It's just not something I can do permanently as it's literally on the top of the stairs

[JimM11]

@dliskevich It is always a difficult situation when the ONT gets placed at the entry point off a outside wall and as you are aware the Fibre cable is far more delicate than a copper cable, getting the router to a central position falls under the user to take care off, different days now where the BT engineers would run and pin cables where you needed phones. And with wireless there is never the guarantee that where the router goes is good, can be trial and error.

You may even struggle with a good mesh system given that you have some area issues, so may be worth looking at ceiling mounted AP's instead. Looking like walking your fingers through the yellow pages, you may be lucky and there is a company that can do/advise what would work best.

Asus RP-AX58 units are good, little awkward to get set up on EE Routers, but the latest EE FW update on the Plus made them play not nicely anymore after a year trouble free, EE said go so i went, just not prepared to listen. Hope it all gets sorted for you in the end...👍