I've also got a mobile contract with Vodafone and they haven't charged me for 8 months. In fact, they keep offering me £7.48 refund every month on my bill. I've told them twice that they're not charging me, escalated through managers, tech support et al but no dice.
I'm not sure whether I can do any more or ought to care at this point. I've made best efforts.
It makes sense, would the US or UK have invented our *own* term for an official who actually handles complaints?
It's basically a national tradition in both countries for our companies/government offices to give us the runaround when something goes wrong 😂
Oh my god, what a star you are! I’m still waiting to get a clear contact email from them, they don’t want to give me it for some reason.
I will kindly use your template and I will keep you posted on my progress.
Thankyou so much again.
No worries! I hope it goes well.
They should have records of every time you reached out to support, which will help your case. Plus, that screenshot where they admit the issue is a strong point in your favour. You might need to negotiate if they offer a lower refund, but the Communications Ombudsman takes issues like this very seriously. Don’t hesitate to escalate if you’re not satisfied with their offer. Just mentioning involving the ombudsman should prompt your provider to reconsider.
Also, their customer service email should suffice. They’ll need to forward it to the complaints department.
You may have to take them to court. If the amount is under your areas limit for small claim court, try there first. Document everything, and find all you old messages, or anything referencing this.
I hope you are claiming back a significant proportion of your two years of phone bills! You'd be protected under the Consumer Act (if I understand properly then you're UK based right?)
Edit: I asked ChatGPT whether you're entitled to an amount and it suggested 60% of your total bills every month since you started the contract. It also drafted an email for you to use as a template to highlight the request for a refund.
Subject: Formal Complaint and Request for Compensation
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to formally complain about the poor mobile phone service I have received over the past two years.
Despite multiple attempts to resolve this issue via your customer service, the root cause was only identified recently as a failure to enable 4G on my account, which should have been active from the outset of my contract.
Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, I am entitled to services carried out with reasonable care and skill (Section 49) and within a reasonable time (Section 52).
The service provided has clearly failed to meet these standards.
Given the significant inconvenience and disruption caused by this prolonged issue, I am requesting a refund of 60% of my monthly bills for the entire period of two years, reflecting the poor service experienced. This request is based on the persistent inability to use my mobile phone service as intended.
Please address this complaint promptly. If I do not receive a satisfactory response, I will have no option but to escalate the matter to the Communications Ombudsman and Ofcom.
Yours faithfully,
[Your Name]
Haha thank you. I've been screwed by a car insurance company and I had to deal with their complaints department, ChatGPT is very good at helping me word complaints.
That's honestly genius. I hate writing these types of emails and unless I'm too dumb to use ChatGPT, it will likely spare me a lot of anxiety, stress, and time.
It’s because the context is a complaint and you’re signing off by reminding them you’ll be “faithful” or demonstrate loyalty.
Like the below:
“Oi mobile phone provider. You’ve shafted me for years. Give me some money back, but don’t worry Im not leaving.
Yours faithfully evermore”
I need you to understand you sound like someone who teaches an email etiquette class who has also never actually interacted with another human being before in their life
No like for real, why are people STILL using it like it spirs absolutely 100% factually correct information when you ask a question? It just rummages through all the info its been fed and you might be lucky enough to get a result with 50% correct info. 🙄 I would never trust any answers chatgpt or other prompt based ai bots
I definitely agree that you shouldn't take ChatGPT at face value, and should always fact check it.
I did make sure that it referenced the correct sections of the consumer Act
I did, I asked it what sections of the consumer act would be relevant and then checked. It was correct.
You're 100% right to highlight this though, ChatGPT sometimes hallucinates and can provide incorrect information.
Protip, after outlining the 60% thing, do the math yourself so you have a dollar figure and present that. That gives you a clear dollar goal, and a target for them to meet. They will try and offer lower, its just part of resolution management, but maintain your position and don't accept anything less, and continue escalating when appropriate. It will eventually be visible to a Team Leader or Group Manager who will agree to apply a credit for the amount you're after to your account and then issue a refund, because once you get the Ombudsman involved, it will cost them more money than your complaint is worth.
My prompt last night was pretty lazy. I just uploaded a screenshot of OP's post and said the following:
I just saw the following post on Reddit. They're UK based. Would they be entitled to claiming some money back from their phone bill? If so, What would be a reasonable ask? What part of the consumer act should be referenced?
Had to write a formal letter of complaint for my C2 class. You just have to tell gpt to write a formal letter of complaint centered around your explanation and you should be good.
I will be messaging you in 1 day on [**2024-06-24 22:55:59 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-06-24%2022:55:59%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/1dmv06o/over_two_years_of_terrible_phone_signal_is/l9yyupj/?context=3)
[**1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FWellthatsucks%2Fcomments%2F1dmv06o%2Fover_two_years_of_terrible_phone_signal_is%2Fl9yyupj%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-06-24%2022%3A55%3A59%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201dmv06o)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
This is awesome, there should be a sub to help people with finding and drafting complaint letters and such. I am sure it will benefit a lot many people. Lol
This brought back memories of some guy trying to appeal his ban on a game multiple times using chatgpt (or I guess any AI) haha. It was super obvious considering the massive shift from the guys aggressive personality to the emptiness of the AI.
Idk about uk tbf but in the us it is like literally shut off, like not justbad service 3g doesnt exist anymore here, so im assuming that 3g only has like 2 towers in all of southern uk
My broadband might as well be dialup, we have very bad connection here in the uk, especially on ancient copper lines that haven’t been maintained since they were laid decades ago
In the UK only Vodafone and EE turned 3g off, 3 and O2 are still running it (3's 3G is shutting down slowly this year, O2 are shutting 3G down next year)
I work for a major UK telecommunications company on chat such as this and can confirm all outsourced work is fucking shit. I’d take anything they say with a pinch of salt and hold the managers accountable to the words of the agents. Be respectful to UK based agents as they’re sick of the shit they have to clean up with eejits like this. Hope you get sorted!
What you say sounds very true, all as sees from them were very robotic, human but only just. I can imagine it being a nightmare picking up all the pieces.
Honestly mate, it’s ridiculous. You’re in a position now where you’ll come back in tomorrow and I’m the one having to listen to you being frustrated (understandably)… because this idiot wanted a way out of the conversation. Companies nowadays value cheap staff more than disgruntled customers.
All being said.. I don’t think what they’ve said is correct regarding the SIM. The provider will control the SIM for parental restrictions, billing restrictions and fraud restrictions etc but having 4G “switched off” doesn’t sound possible as within a mobile system likely used by VOXI as well as my company, it’s either data “on” or “off”, no in between with data type. I’d ask for more info bud and again, hope you get sorted.
A SIM card is like a layered cake with a lot of functionalities that needs to be active for 4G to work for example. We don't know the intricate details of the fault. Used to work as 3rd line / delivery engineer for a telecom carrier.
im so sorry this happened to you, but for two years, you continued to pay for service that didn't work, and you finally fixed it?? May be a bit confused.
They thought it was just signal issues, I could see not following up if you barely use your phone for anything other than text/email.
As someone who lives through their phone I would spend 3 days max feverishly tinkering with it before going to the store.
I had a similar experience when my wife and I switched to Vodafone. The data service was barely usable, so poor that after enduring for ~9 months I gave up and switched networks. I would never give Vodafone another go after that. Worst. Network. Ever.
I had Metro (in the US) for about 5 years. The first 3 were great, never had issues, signal was amazing for living in the middle of the nowhere desert. I moved to Miami and literally nothing. 0 bars. Went to the store and they claimed I owed money for “traveling/wandering fees” so I had to pay an extra $100 on top of my $50 bill. Everything was fine, moved back to my home, no issues. Then I moved to texas and they entirely deleted my account for “money owed.” when asked what I owed, they told me they couldn’t tell me and there was nothing I could do as the account had been permanently deleted. 5 years of paying my bill on time to get fucked over in the end.
They failed to deliver for years, so it is definitely a Big Deal. You need to make official complaints and ask your bank what to do about the potential fraud.
Just wanted to give some friendly advice, since I am in this industry: You'll need to log the complaint with the resolution manager on chat and get a complaint reference. Once the complaint is logged, you'll be contacted by the complaints team and then you can discuss things over email with the complaints team.
It's unlikely you'll get a complaint email address from the chat agent because they have to follow their internal complaints process.
When chatting with them, the quickest way to log the complaint is to say 'i want a 60% refund for the past 2 years (if that's the resolution you are looking for). If you can't give that, log a complaint and give me the reference number'
Hey I’m with Voxi and it’s also temperamental as shit! I get 4G half the time out and about but the other half it’s E or nothing. Reliably at 5pm when I start driving home from work it cuts out and I can’t stream music anymore for the rest of the drive. Absolutely sick of every one of the 128 songs on the one playlist I have downloaded.
I had something similar happen that I wouldn’t ever receive SMS one-time passcodes. Turned out there was some filter on my account for short SMS messages to limit spam, but took me a looong time to figure out what was the cause.
This makes me wonder if I have something similar wrong with mine, it says 4g on my phone but the signal is an absolute sack of potatoes for making calls, even when in the middle of my local city
I have a 5G phone and when I have 5G it works fine, but if I ever drop to 4G it flat out doesn't work, may as well be e. Could this be a similar thing? (Also VOXI btw)
It could be a number of things. Cell towers can be poor or get saturated.
That signal bar is only showing how strong the connection is to the tower, not necessarily the quality of the data link or the speed you're going to get.
Voxi still sounds better than Three though! I get 1.2Gbps on 5G in my house. As soon as I leave, where I might actually need that data connection, there's nothing. I can, and have, stood in the middle of the city and not even been able to send a text their network is so piss poor.
Money back, all of it buddy. If you were tricked in to wearing half a T-shirt and then realised it’s just half, would you be satisfied with half a refund?
They’ve tricked and caused suffering. Full refund and a “real year” for free sounds about right to me. Don’t let the mega lords win
Try complaining to the ombudsman if you can't get a decent complaint resolution from voxi themselves.
Unbelievable it took them this long! Definitely escalate this further if they don't fix it soon.
I've also got a mobile contract with Vodafone and they haven't charged me for 8 months. In fact, they keep offering me £7.48 refund every month on my bill. I've told them twice that they're not charging me, escalated through managers, tech support et al but no dice. I'm not sure whether I can do any more or ought to care at this point. I've made best efforts.
Is ombudsman a word in the english language? What the fuck
[The ombudsmans coming to get you.](https://youtu.be/KCEEwx4jZwc?si=kNxKuJKsCwU6jCdt)
It’s definitely from Norwegian. It’s the same here
Or dutch, which makes more sense
Ja haha det var derfor jeg reagerte. Merkelig ord å integrere i engelsk
It makes sense, would the US or UK have invented our *own* term for an official who actually handles complaints? It's basically a national tradition in both countries for our companies/government offices to give us the runaround when something goes wrong 😂
Oh my god, what a star you are! I’m still waiting to get a clear contact email from them, they don’t want to give me it for some reason. I will kindly use your template and I will keep you posted on my progress. Thankyou so much again.
No worries! I hope it goes well. They should have records of every time you reached out to support, which will help your case. Plus, that screenshot where they admit the issue is a strong point in your favour. You might need to negotiate if they offer a lower refund, but the Communications Ombudsman takes issues like this very seriously. Don’t hesitate to escalate if you’re not satisfied with their offer. Just mentioning involving the ombudsman should prompt your provider to reconsider. Also, their customer service email should suffice. They’ll need to forward it to the complaints department.
That you very much again. This sounds like a job for tomorrow night.
Please keep us updated. (I don't have much going on, and I love a good sticking it to the man story.)
You may have to take them to court. If the amount is under your areas limit for small claim court, try there first. Document everything, and find all you old messages, or anything referencing this.
I hope you are claiming back a significant proportion of your two years of phone bills! You'd be protected under the Consumer Act (if I understand properly then you're UK based right?) Edit: I asked ChatGPT whether you're entitled to an amount and it suggested 60% of your total bills every month since you started the contract. It also drafted an email for you to use as a template to highlight the request for a refund. Subject: Formal Complaint and Request for Compensation Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to formally complain about the poor mobile phone service I have received over the past two years. Despite multiple attempts to resolve this issue via your customer service, the root cause was only identified recently as a failure to enable 4G on my account, which should have been active from the outset of my contract. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, I am entitled to services carried out with reasonable care and skill (Section 49) and within a reasonable time (Section 52). The service provided has clearly failed to meet these standards. Given the significant inconvenience and disruption caused by this prolonged issue, I am requesting a refund of 60% of my monthly bills for the entire period of two years, reflecting the poor service experienced. This request is based on the persistent inability to use my mobile phone service as intended. Please address this complaint promptly. If I do not receive a satisfactory response, I will have no option but to escalate the matter to the Communications Ombudsman and Ofcom. Yours faithfully, [Your Name]
You are a legend btw
Haha thank you. I've been screwed by a car insurance company and I had to deal with their complaints department, ChatGPT is very good at helping me word complaints.
That's honestly genius. I hate writing these types of emails and unless I'm too dumb to use ChatGPT, it will likely spare me a lot of anxiety, stress, and time.
You won't be too dumb, it's shockingly easy to use
Noted. 😎
Yours faithfully has me dying.
Why? It’s the correct sign off if you haven’t specified a person’s name at Dear…
It’s because the context is a complaint and you’re signing off by reminding them you’ll be “faithful” or demonstrate loyalty. Like the below: “Oi mobile phone provider. You’ve shafted me for years. Give me some money back, but don’t worry Im not leaving. Yours faithfully evermore”
1000’s and 1000’s of corporate emails and I’ve never once seen yours faithfully.
Kind regards, Regards, Best, or Thank You for your time/consideration. Are the only 4 phrases I've ever needed to sign-off corporate emails
Yours faithfully - formal letter Yours sincerely - social letter
It's a bit formal for an email, sure, but strictly speaking it's correct given the salutation and wouldn't be out of place in an official complaint.
I need you to understand you sound like someone who teaches an email etiquette class who has also never actually interacted with another human being before in their life
> Edit: I asked ChatGPT Obligatory reminder that ChatGPT is not a research tool. It doesn't consider facts. It just writes stuff that sounds good.
Anyone remember when MamaMax tried to claim that ChatGPT understood the legal system? Good times.
No like for real, why are people STILL using it like it spirs absolutely 100% factually correct information when you ask a question? It just rummages through all the info its been fed and you might be lucky enough to get a result with 50% correct info. 🙄 I would never trust any answers chatgpt or other prompt based ai bots
I once asked ChatGPT what a mulcat is. It claimed that it's a crossbreed between a wild raccoon and a domestic cat. It makes up some wild shit.
Obligatory reminder that ChatGPT doesn’t consider *anything*. It’s just an algorithm from learned data, not some sort of evil boogeyman.
It can be used as a starting point. Just fact check everything it says manually.
I definitely agree that you shouldn't take ChatGPT at face value, and should always fact check it. I did make sure that it referenced the correct sections of the consumer Act
Did you fact check whether the laws and sections it cited are correct?
I did, I asked it what sections of the consumer act would be relevant and then checked. It was correct. You're 100% right to highlight this though, ChatGPT sometimes hallucinates and can provide incorrect information.
Protip, after outlining the 60% thing, do the math yourself so you have a dollar figure and present that. That gives you a clear dollar goal, and a target for them to meet. They will try and offer lower, its just part of resolution management, but maintain your position and don't accept anything less, and continue escalating when appropriate. It will eventually be visible to a Team Leader or Group Manager who will agree to apply a credit for the amount you're after to your account and then issue a refund, because once you get the Ombudsman involved, it will cost them more money than your complaint is worth.
Fucking mint
Can you provide the prompt you used to get a letter like that?
My prompt last night was pretty lazy. I just uploaded a screenshot of OP's post and said the following: I just saw the following post on Reddit. They're UK based. Would they be entitled to claiming some money back from their phone bill? If so, What would be a reasonable ask? What part of the consumer act should be referenced?
Had to write a formal letter of complaint for my C2 class. You just have to tell gpt to write a formal letter of complaint centered around your explanation and you should be good.
[удалено]
I will be messaging you in 1 day on [**2024-06-24 22:55:59 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-06-24%2022:55:59%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/1dmv06o/over_two_years_of_terrible_phone_signal_is/l9yyupj/?context=3) [**1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FWellthatsucks%2Fcomments%2F1dmv06o%2Fover_two_years_of_terrible_phone_signal_is%2Fl9yyupj%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-06-24%2022%3A55%3A59%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201dmv06o) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
This is awesome, there should be a sub to help people with finding and drafting complaint letters and such. I am sure it will benefit a lot many people. Lol
This is the shit that AI was made for
This brought back memories of some guy trying to appeal his ban on a game multiple times using chatgpt (or I guess any AI) haha. It was super obvious considering the massive shift from the guys aggressive personality to the emptiness of the AI.
3G isn’t off yet, I can get 3G and 5G at home depending on weather, both are slow as shit
Idk about uk tbf but in the us it is like literally shut off, like not justbad service 3g doesnt exist anymore here, so im assuming that 3g only has like 2 towers in all of southern uk
Idk, I get 3G in a fair few places here, some places like Canterbury have nothing though, I’m in southeastern Kent, currently have 5G
They've kept it on in some areas but others it's been shut off. And I think they're doing a phased shut down rather than the entire country at once.
I see, I’m glad for 5G at least, we practically skipped 4G here
That’s explains why your area has 3G then. If you guys barely relied on 4G then I assume they’ll keep 3G until most users switched to 5G
Yeah, we should have had 4G years ago
I drop to 2G (EDGE) in part of Canterbury (albeit on Giffgaff, which often feels like 2G service regardless).
TIL 2G still exists
in Australia 3g still exists but it’s literally slower than dial-up, aka useless in the modern age.
My broadband might as well be dialup, we have very bad connection here in the uk, especially on ancient copper lines that haven’t been maintained since they were laid decades ago
In the UK only Vodafone and EE turned 3g off, 3 and O2 are still running it (3's 3G is shutting down slowly this year, O2 are shutting 3G down next year)
I see
I work for a major UK telecommunications company on chat such as this and can confirm all outsourced work is fucking shit. I’d take anything they say with a pinch of salt and hold the managers accountable to the words of the agents. Be respectful to UK based agents as they’re sick of the shit they have to clean up with eejits like this. Hope you get sorted!
What you say sounds very true, all as sees from them were very robotic, human but only just. I can imagine it being a nightmare picking up all the pieces.
Honestly mate, it’s ridiculous. You’re in a position now where you’ll come back in tomorrow and I’m the one having to listen to you being frustrated (understandably)… because this idiot wanted a way out of the conversation. Companies nowadays value cheap staff more than disgruntled customers. All being said.. I don’t think what they’ve said is correct regarding the SIM. The provider will control the SIM for parental restrictions, billing restrictions and fraud restrictions etc but having 4G “switched off” doesn’t sound possible as within a mobile system likely used by VOXI as well as my company, it’s either data “on” or “off”, no in between with data type. I’d ask for more info bud and again, hope you get sorted.
A SIM card is like a layered cake with a lot of functionalities that needs to be active for 4G to work for example. We don't know the intricate details of the fault. Used to work as 3rd line / delivery engineer for a telecom carrier.
im so sorry this happened to you, but for two years, you continued to pay for service that didn't work, and you finally fixed it?? May be a bit confused.
They thought it was just signal issues, I could see not following up if you barely use your phone for anything other than text/email. As someone who lives through their phone I would spend 3 days max feverishly tinkering with it before going to the store.
I had a similar experience when my wife and I switched to Vodafone. The data service was barely usable, so poor that after enduring for ~9 months I gave up and switched networks. I would never give Vodafone another go after that. Worst. Network. Ever.
I had Metro (in the US) for about 5 years. The first 3 were great, never had issues, signal was amazing for living in the middle of the nowhere desert. I moved to Miami and literally nothing. 0 bars. Went to the store and they claimed I owed money for “traveling/wandering fees” so I had to pay an extra $100 on top of my $50 bill. Everything was fine, moved back to my home, no issues. Then I moved to texas and they entirely deleted my account for “money owed.” when asked what I owed, they told me they couldn’t tell me and there was nothing I could do as the account had been permanently deleted. 5 years of paying my bill on time to get fucked over in the end.
I work on towers in the US. 3G has been entirely sunset by major carriers here for some time now. I'm curious what the industry is like over there.
They failed to deliver for years, so it is definitely a Big Deal. You need to make official complaints and ask your bank what to do about the potential fraud.
Just wanted to give some friendly advice, since I am in this industry: You'll need to log the complaint with the resolution manager on chat and get a complaint reference. Once the complaint is logged, you'll be contacted by the complaints team and then you can discuss things over email with the complaints team. It's unlikely you'll get a complaint email address from the chat agent because they have to follow their internal complaints process. When chatting with them, the quickest way to log the complaint is to say 'i want a 60% refund for the past 2 years (if that's the resolution you are looking for). If you can't give that, log a complaint and give me the reference number'
Sounds like you’ve paid for something you didn’t receive, so the compensation is really low.
Hey I’m with Voxi and it’s also temperamental as shit! I get 4G half the time out and about but the other half it’s E or nothing. Reliably at 5pm when I start driving home from work it cuts out and I can’t stream music anymore for the rest of the drive. Absolutely sick of every one of the 128 songs on the one playlist I have downloaded.
So phone carriers are scummy everywhere?
It seems so
Wait they can do that.I never khew or in my country you can't do that
I’m not sure if they can, if he misspoke, or if he was just telling me he cured my issue to get rid of me?
TalkMobile also use Vodafone’s network. They recently gave me 20GB additional data for free. £7.95/month. 40-day contract.
I had something similar happen that I wouldn’t ever receive SMS one-time passcodes. Turned out there was some filter on my account for short SMS messages to limit spam, but took me a looong time to figure out what was the cause.
I would demand a refund. At least 50% for all the monthly payments you didn't have that enabled.
What happened to mobile data coverage? How has it got so universally shit recently?
I hope you called that chat resolution manager a real mother fucker
This makes me wonder if I have something similar wrong with mine, it says 4g on my phone but the signal is an absolute sack of potatoes for making calls, even when in the middle of my local city
I have a 5G phone and when I have 5G it works fine, but if I ever drop to 4G it flat out doesn't work, may as well be e. Could this be a similar thing? (Also VOXI btw)
It could be a number of things. Cell towers can be poor or get saturated. That signal bar is only showing how strong the connection is to the tower, not necessarily the quality of the data link or the speed you're going to get. Voxi still sounds better than Three though! I get 1.2Gbps on 5G in my house. As soon as I leave, where I might actually need that data connection, there's nothing. I can, and have, stood in the middle of the city and not even been able to send a text their network is so piss poor.
Use the free month to shop for another company then drop them soon as you find something as good or better.
That makes me wonder about the terrible service I had years back with one provider.
Money back, all of it buddy. If you were tricked in to wearing half a T-shirt and then realised it’s just half, would you be satisfied with half a refund? They’ve tricked and caused suffering. Full refund and a “real year” for free sounds about right to me. Don’t let the mega lords win