They tend not to send the routers out too early, incase the customer cancels and then there is the issue of returning the router (or you'd most likely get charged for it if it wasn't returned).

My last 3 ISP's have all (deliberately) timed my router arrival for the day before service was activated.
That was BT, Plusnet and Virgin.

I'd be very surprised if they dispatched the router 2 weeks before your activation date in December

That’s useful to know. Installation is due Monday week, so hopefully I’ll see something soon the .

In reply to a post by EAEA:

I have an installation date in early Dec - it’s now a week since this second order and the status page still shows that the router hasn’t been dispatched.

My Gigafast router arrived the week of my install, so I wouldn't be too worried.

Hello,

I had mine installed today. The lead-up was a nightmare with two (!) cancelled orders due to 'a problem with the system', lots of on-hold waiting and an army of ill-informed sales staff. Still, I thought I'd risk it, what with the 2 week cooling-off period and the fact that I wouldn't cancel my VM first, so I wouldn't be without.

My router turned up last Friday. The installation was smooth with a great engineer (Art) who was thoughtful and courteous and did a great job. The service came up immediately and I'm getting over the advertised peak DL speed and the upload isn't far short (939-918/79-94). The latency is lower than VM (~8 vs ~18) and the quality monitor on ThinkBB show a much more stable connection (so far: https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...
). I'm going to be watching it closely over the new couple of weeks.

The only problem so far is that I can't get my router (ASUS RT-AX88U) to sign in to the service. Getting the broadband login was a simple case of calling their support (including a 20 minute hold and disconnection :/, quality awful, they're all working from home with poor headsets I reckon but they did call back), but I'm getting a CHAP auth failure. Something to look into in the coming days. Currently running it behind the Voda router (which isn't too bad to fair) with a double NAT (no modem mode), but I still have better latency than VM.

So I foolishly called to get the Black Friday deal.
The guy on the phone quickly cancelled the old request but was unable to generate a replacement order!
A return call was promised but never happened.
So I rang again, hour long detour around the wrong team on the phone- it seems only the ‘gigafast’ team are of any use on this.
A ‘John’ managed to get it sorted out, having to force it to openreach when their system keeps trying to force it to cityfibre. There was just one problem to go.
Or so it seemed. To be fair he did call back and say it might be the next day before everything was done...
Two days later and still no texts/email. So another call next week for me.
It’s the hour it takes getting past the first tier of call handlers that’s the worst.

Maybe the next call will be the last...

In reply to a post by willsatroyd:

The only problem so far is that I can't get my router (ASUS RT-AX88U) to sign in to the service.

I got my user credentials over their online support chat, that way it's a case of copying and pasting it, rather than the possibility of someone reading a letter or digit over the phone incorrectly or being misheard.

You may also need to change the VLAN ID in your router to get it to connect. 911 is the VLAN used for CityFibre based GigaFast connections, I'm not sure if this applies to OR based connections too.

Thanks Carl. I have the credentials correct I think: they sent them by text. It would be a lucky coincidence if OpenReach were using the same VLAN ID as CityFibre and I'm unsure it's even required but it may be worth a punt.

In reply to a post by willsatroyd:

Thanks Carl. I have the credentials correct I think: they sent them by text. It would be a lucky coincidence if OpenReach were using the same VLAN ID as CityFibre and I'm unsure it's even required but it may be worth a punt.

It's not the same as OpenReach tagging all VDSL2 traffic with VLAN 101.
That was an OpenReach config added on the modem.

The OpenReach modem in this case (the ONT) is locked. No special VLAN's from OpenReach.

The ISP can also VLAN tag their traffic and Vodafone could do this on their OpenReach FTTP.
This is applied in the router rather than the modem.

Vodafone don't VLAN tag any of their other OpenReach offerings so they probably don't tag their OpenReach FTTP.

Hello and thanks for all the helpful comments.

An update:

I had another look at this today and contacted support again to ensure I had the right credentials. Turns out an @domain portion of the username was missing the first time I received them. Posted for anyone else looking at this. The username is in the form:

dsl<9-digits>@broadband.vodafone.co.uk

My ASUS router is now connected with all default settings. No VLAN ID set.

Cheers,
Conan