TLDR!
Yes, I am absolutely burning VodafoneZiggo to the ground in this rant of an article.
Yes, this is an extremely long rant.
And yes, if you ever suffered through HorizonBox PTSD, unstable coax internet, telemarketing, packet loss, bridge-mode roulette, or support engineers replacing random objects in your house while praying to the DOCSIS gods…
You will probably love this.
Enjoy! 😛
(you might want to grab some popcorn at this point)
Introduction
I am registered in the Dutch “Do Not Call Me” register and everywhere possible I explicitly opt out of phone marketing, or really any form of marketing at all.
I am actually getting orange and green spots on my back from companies calling me to see if I am interested in their product, and from door-to-door idiots who are absolutely “NOT” trying to sell me anything, but are somehow there to give me “advice”.
My guess is that many of you readers can relate to this.
VodafoneZiggo
Yes, at 10:19 AM this morning I got a phone call from +31 43 569 0209. Because I was already inside another app, my CallInsider app did not warn me about this specific number before I picked up.
Unknown phone number detected.
Thus, my usual script gets triggered.
- Me: “Hello”
- Female voice: “Hello, am I speaking with Martin Kleinman?”
- Me: “May I ask what this phone call is about?”
- Female voice: “This is VodafoneZiggo. You already have a phone subscription with us. Did you know that when you use more of our products you can get a significant discount? Am I disturbing you right now, or do you have time to discuss this?”
- Me: “Yes, you are disturbing me, and I would really appreciate it if you remove me from your phone list. I am not interested.”
- Female voice: “Okay, after this phone call you will hear a tape about the ‘Recht van Verzet’.”
- Me: “[CLICK]”
Yay!
VodafoneZiggo!
You’re not supposed to call me!
I do not want to be called!
I am perfectly capable of finding the right internet provider for me and my family all by myself.
You’re not supposed to be calling me in the first place. FFS.
And besides that:
The answer was already a hard “NO” before the phone even rang.
Pricing
And no Vodafone, you are not really cheaper, faster, or more feature rich than my current provider.
Can you provide symmetric 1000/1000 Mbit fiber connections?
NOPE.
1000/100 Mbit asymmetric.
Can you provide a fixed IP address?
Not on the regular subscriptions.
Only on the business subscriptions.
Are you cheaper?
No not really.
4 euros a month, for less than what I have now.
Do I need those WiFi “enhancers”?
HELL NO.
I already have proper access points mounted in strategic places. Ubiquiti FTW!
Do I want that “free” Samsung TV or PS5?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. That TV or PS5, paid by the customer!
Can I re-use my Protectli OPNSense router/firewall setup?
Ehmmm…
Probably not.
Because with Ziggo the setup basically becomes:
Coax -> Ziggo modem -> bridge mode -> OPNsense firewall/router
And then comes the really exciting part:
The gigantic IF.
- IF the modem actually bridges everything properly.
- IF bridge mode does not randomly break functionality.
- IF the firmware behaves.
- IF the box does not suddenly decide it also wants to be a router anyway.
- IF the Horizon-box-from-hell’s spiritual successor behaves itself.
- IF the box does not suddenly decide it wants to become a router again after a firmware update.
Which, if memory serves me correctly, would not exactly be unprecedented…
With fiber I can usually go:
ONT -> OPNsense -> Done.
Simple.
Clean.
No weird coax black magic.
No provider box pretending it is the center of my digital universe.
Networking history
Oh, and your internet sucked monkey balls.
We had Ziggo / UPC years ago, and it was the proverbial hell on earth.
The funny part?
Before that we had regular ADSL and later ADSL2 for almost 10 years.
Practically flawless.
Then came UPC/Ziggo.
Within days:
- Packet loss.
- Random slowdowns.
- Unstable internet.
- WiFi so unreliable it became a feature.
And TV channels containing more artefacts than archaeologists ever found in Egypt.
After three different “engineers” visited our house trying to solve the problem, and after replacing the wall outlet during every single visit because apparently that was causing the issue, the final solution was apparently:
“Let’s add another router.”
Which somehow made everything even worse.
At that point the home network started resembling a small enterprise environment designed by drunken raccoons.
No thank you!
HorizonBox PTSD
Oh, the sweet irony of that name.
“HorizonBox.”
As if the thing came screaming out of the future.
Factory (TM)
Meanwhile, in reality inside my Factory!:
CEO Bob immediately scheduled an emergency meeting.
Including Randy and Dandy.
And of course Roger.
Within approximately 2.0 picoseconds they all came to a unanimous decision:
mv VodafoneZiggo /dev/null
That basically means moving VodafoneZiggo straight into the giant black void of the garbage bin.
“YES ROGER! Clean this shit up!”
Even my pastel-chaotically-infused dynamic scrum duo reached immediate alignment on this issue.
Back on topic…
The HorizonBox is well…
Slow.
Really slow.
Power hungry.
Designed like a Luigi Colani fever dream straight out of the 90s.
And slow.
Did I already mention slow?
Dear lord.
That thing was slower than cold syrup flowing uphill.
You pressed the down button on the remote three times.
Nothing happened.
The box started “thinking”.
Then suddenly, 30 seconds later:
- DOWN.
- DOWN.
- DOWN.
Apparently the UI had a queue system from hell that buffered every remote press known to mankind.
I accidentally deleted recordings multiple times because “Remove” and “Remove all” were directly underneath each other.
By the time the box finally reacted, it was already too late.
And the WiFi?
Absolutely magical technology.
Perfect signal at 2 meters distance.
Move 5 meters away and suddenly the router behaved like it was trying to establish contact with Mars through a potato.
Then there was the telephone line.
Other people could hear us perfectly fine.
Meanwhile we heard:
“Aa… bb… grrrrk… Haa… llooo…”
Like the conversation was being routed through a dying submarine from 1943.
Honestly, I have had more stable communication using two cans and a piece of string.
I escaped that chaos once already.
And I have not even mentioned the details about third-line “support” and the supposed “line expert” who was going to swing by our house to investigate whether there was an issue somewhere between our home and the neighborhood hub.
That engineer still has to show up.
It has only been…
…years.
History
The truly impressive part is that this was not even a one-time bad experience.
I already had one of their earliest cable internet products back around 2001.
128/16 Kbit.
Back then it looked futuristic on paper.
During daytime?
Perfectly usable.
During the evening?
Absolute chaos.
The network segment was so overloaded that the internet basically collapsed once everyone came home from work and started using it.
Later I even had UPC Business for a while because I needed port 25 open for a project, flitspaal.nl, I hosted from home.
You would expect a business connection to be rock solid.
Nope.
I genuinely had more outages in a single year with UPC Business than in all the years before that combined while using Demon Internet ADSL.
And then came the HorizonBox era.
That was not internet.
That was psychological warfare delivered over coax.
Calls
And honestly, that is probably the most frustrating part about these calls.
Not only did I explicitly indicate that I do not want telemarketing calls…
The offer itself is not even remotely interesting.
Closing words
Vodafone, again: F*CK off! Pardon my language.
Not interested!
Nope.
Nein.
Njet.
No!
Not now.
Not ever!
I do not want your internet back!
Leave me alone!
Seriously Vodafone…
Do you really want this disgruntled ex-customer back?
Because judging by this entire article, I am not exactly your strongest marketing success story.
Also:
I accidentally typed “Vodadone” at one point while writing this.
Honestly?
My subconscious might have made a valid point there.
Conversion
And the conversion rate of cold-calling people is what exactly?
Less than 1%?
While simultaneously annoying the remaining 99.9% of the people you called?
That has to be one of the most effective strategies ever invented for positively branding your own company name.
*insert sarcasm here* 😛
Fiber FTW!
I am currently a very happy fiber optic user.
- Symmetrical connection.
- Fixed IP address.
- My own Protectli OPNsense firewall/router.
- My own WiFi network.
- My own access points.
Everything working exactly the way I want it to.
No mysterious packet loss.
No bridge-mode roulette.
And honestly, if I want voodoo in my life, I will just listen to “Voodoo People” by The Prodigy instead.
Which is an absolute stomper of a track, by the way.
No coax voodoo.
No Horizon-box-induced PTSD.
It all just works.
Like internet access is supposed to work in 2026.
Brain, OUT!
P.S.
Dear Odido:
If you are reading this and considering calling me in the future to “win me back” as a customer…
Please understand that this article currently exists because VodafoneZiggo called me.
Do not test whether I am capable of writing a sequel with “Odido” at its center!
Because I absolutely am.
Trust me.
After the whole ShinyHunters incident and the communication chaos surrounding it…
Oh yes.
I can absolutely make that work. 😛
P.S.S.
Oh boy…
This rant got a lot longer than originally intended.
And honestly?
There were multiple moments where I suddenly started laughing out loud at the absolute carnage coming out of my own fingertips while writing and proof-reading this article.
Including that accidental “Vodadone” typo.
Which, frankly, might have been one of the greatest subconscious typo moments in recent history.
I genuinely hope some of you managed to laugh just as hard while reading this rant as I did while writing it.
Update
I briefly considered filing an official complaint directly through the Ziggo website.
Then I discovered their preferred method for handling complaints:
Calling them.
Oh, the irony.
At this point I honestly suspect the entire telecom industry is just one giant psychological experiment.