My father in law bought a new iphone 5 s from john lewis a few weeks ago. He then went to the vodaphone shop and signed up to a pay monthly SIM card deal and they installed the new card in his new iphone in the voda shop.

3 weeks in and he can get wifi fine but 3 g data doesn’t work and phone signal is almost non existent. He’s been back and the vodaphone shop fiddled with the settings but nothing changed, the tech people promise to call him but don’t.

I’ve had a fiddle with it, 3 g registers but when I open the browser and type in the bbc website details it loads the front page then says not connected to the server or something like that.

Everything’s fine on wifi but no mobile data at all ever, even in the centre of Newcastle. He’s proper stressed about it.

Anyone shed any light?

Back to John Lewis if it were me

Take phone back. Sadly as he bought from JL rather than Apple that may be a bit more tricky for them to run diagnistics. Its not really anything vodafone can diagnose (hence them taking cowards option of not calling back) it does seem strange the page loads but then it dies. I imagine they tried “reset network settings”

EDIT: listen to @wysiwyg, he’s in the know

Sounds normal Vodafone reception

Is 4G enabled on the phone? I did the same assuming it wouldn’t work as I didn’t have 4G contract, 3G was terrible, but enabled 4G and it’s grand now

If it’s an open phone, have you tried another network sim in it?

^^ thats a very good idea

it could just be vodafone’s crap data network

Can I just stick my ee sim in it and try it? No other setting to mess about with? The vodaphone shop said they tried another vodaphone sim and that worked but it wand their settings that were at fault and they’d sort it. 3 weeks later not sorted.

I’d guess that the phone is unlocked, just like buying from an Apple Store, in which case any SIM from any other network ought to work, provided it’s a nano-sim, or whatever they call the piddly little tiny ones.

Vodaphone sucks.

I seem to recall somewhere that if you buy an iPhone unlocked from anywhere else rather than apple it locks onto the network of the first sim you put in it.
Also Vodafone sucks for reception.

Welcome to Vodafone. Sounds like the problems I was having. Much time wasted trying to resolve it, ended up buying myself out of the contract

For everyone else DO NOT TOUCH VODAFONE! They really are that bad.

. . . just for a bit of balance: my four calls to O2 yesterday to (re) set-up a direct debit had me pulling my hair out!

Apple, they just work.

I have the iPhone 4s with dodgy data and WiFi. You have to Select aeroplane mode on and off to switch them on sometimes

Update network settings? Backup through iTunes?

Good luck getting help from Vodafone.

They now get 10 times the number of complaints than o2 and Three, and 4 x the number of complaints compared to EE. They also have the smallest network, the worst network reliability and 2nd slowest average speeds on data.