OK, finally this morning my problem was solved. Basically, for me it was a carrier issue. I realized that I was also not receiving phone calls or texts from people in other networks (not before I missed a few appointments over it).
I had to phone Vodafone everyday for the last week to get them to escalate the problem to their support team. First, they tried to tell me everything from turning the phone on and off to it was my SIM to on and on and on and on.
Finally after all that, they got the technicians on it and seemingly there was some fault when I was ported that was causing the issue. No simple fix, but a fix none the less thank God.
Hope the rest of you can get it solved. It's a huge pain in the backside.