WiFi upgrade is far from an upgrade.

[Ady-L]

Needed a better for signal around the house so decided to go for the WiFi max (white) router upgrade. Went through the setup on Wednesday night. Got the Q box connected no problem but everything wise has been painful, and right now this is nowhere near as good as the previous black model. As I write this on Friday morning, I have had poor connectivity everywhere since the switch over, my miniQ box keeps losing the network, and the process constantly requires a reset and setting up connection all over again. My home office at the back of the house was the main reason for wanting the upgrade, but right now even with a sky booster in between, my signal is awful, and both laptop, Samsung phone and printer struggle to find the signal at all. With all the gaming and streaming that takes place over the weekend, unless this gets significantly better I will be trying to find a person to talk to about cancelling this completely. There is no way this is even equivalent to what I had and definitely not worth paying extra for.

[jamesn123]

@Ady-L 

Not sure why its sold as an increase in WiFi coverage because it simply isnt. Sky's WiFi Max product is simply a router with upgraded internals to support WiFi 6. This does not come with a coverage increase, infact many people report it comes with a slight coverage decrease. Perhaps because its sacrificing range for speed. 

Additionally because your on Sky Q your previous router would have meshed together with your Q boxes to create 'hotspots' to cover your home in WiFi. Sky WiFi Max is not compatible with the hotspotting feature of Sky Q so you would have lost all of that meshing capability. To replace this you'd need to get some Sky Max pods from them. 

[Ady-L]

Very interesting comments,  which whilst I understand them,  completely contradict the statement I used to go down this route to begin with. The advert on MySky was specifically attractive as it promised to improve connection speed in every room of your house,  nothing about higher speeds in the room the router sits in, which was clearly not a problem for me. I'll be trying to track down someone to actually speak to on an automated helpline then!

[jamesn123 · Accepted solution]

---

@Ady-L wrote:

Very interesting comments,  which whilst I understand them,  completely contradict the statement I used to go down this route to begin with. The advert on MySky was specifically attractive as it promised to improve connection speed in every room of your house

---

So this part of the advert is referring to the fact that by taking our the Sky WiFi Max subscription, you are entitled to claim free booster pods to increase the coverage in different rooms of your home. 

However the router on its own has no additional range benefits compared to the previous Sky hub. 

Your next steps should probably be to report the connection issues to Sky so they can send you out a pod to increase coverage. 

[Ady-L]

It would be really helpful if you know how to actually get to someone to do that very thing. I have gone round in huge loops in the sky help system, both in the app and on the Web pages. Any number I get to call goes to an automated answering service where I get directed back to online help or service checking through the app. Not a single actual person seems to be around. 

[jamesn123]

@Ady-L 

I have escalated your post to Sky, look out for a message on the forum

[Lisa-P1987]

Thanks for escalating this. We’ve sent Ady-L  an invite to chat.

[Ady-L]

I managed to eventually get to a person on the helpline late Friday afternoon,  who agreed to send me a single pod to try and improve the situation. It arrived yesterday (monday) afternoon, I plugged it in and waited about 15 mins,  and then got a pretty good signal in my home office which had previously been awful. I would have liked to be able to get at least one more pod to give the same mesh effect as the Q system gave me. According to the helpline that needs an engineer visit to set up.

Thanks for the help here... it kind of got there in the end... but could still do with another pod Sky!

[jamesn123]

Hi @Ady-L 

Thats correct, the 2nd and any further pods require a 'WiFi engineer' to attend so they can check your current WiFi setup with the specialist tools they have to make sure that pods are being placed in optimal locations. This is because adding pods/boosters where they are not needed or in the wrong place can actually cause a worse WiFi experience. 

[OAP3]

Just had a new max box deliveredas part of a contract renewal.  judging by the remarks on here, I think I may play safe and leave it in the box and continue on the old one

[Ady-L]

Can you please contact me again?