3 - possibly the WORST mobile company ever?.....

PrincessJR

Hi,

My husband signed up with 3 just over 12 months ago (his 18 month contract ends in Sept - woohoo!), and we have been appalled by them.

The reason he went with 3 in the first place was that we live in the countryside and mobile reception is pretty poor. His sister was with 3 and always had signal at our house. So we assumed he would too. Not so!

When his new phone arrived (Nokia N95), there was no signal whatsoever. We called 3 several times and were eventually told it must be a phone fault, and to send the phone back to get it checked. This we did.
By the time they sent a new phone, 3 months had gone by and my husband had been billed each month (£35).

The new phone has had signal intermitently, even when in built up areas (the centre of bham for example) the reception flickers, and when he makes a call, it only stays connected for a few minutes before the signal drops and he is cut off.
He has complained, and told 3 he wants to cancel his contract several times, but each time has been told that he will need to pay roughly £400 to be 'released' from the contract - Can they do this even when they are not fulfilling their side of the contract i.e. providing a mobile sevice????

He has coped with it and cannot wait to cancel in Sept.

I feel that he should take his complaint further, in total he will have paid £630 over the 18 months for an unreliable, largley un-useable, poor service. At least 80% of the time, no matter where he is, he has no signal.

Has anyone else had this kind of experience with 3? :mad:

What should we do? - Is there any chance of him claiming his money back, or part of it?

robt_2

Why did it take 3 months to get a replacement phone?

PrincessJR

3 months had gone by between taking out the contract, and being sent a 2nd phone. he had the original for about 3 weeks before 3 sent out a prepaid packet to send it back in.

The original was then sent to Nokia for testing.

All in all, he got a 2nd phone, the one he has now, which is no better, after 3 months.

LeeSouthEast

Yes they can do this. It's effectively "paying" for the remaining contract period up front.

What your husband ideally needs to do is complain for 2-3 months regularly (i.e. at least every 3 or 4 days) about the lack of reception. Three will eventually offer a cancellation to you with no penalty.

Malky

How can he be out of an 18 month contract in September when he only just over 12 months in? I know you can get an upgrade after month 15 but then you would be on a new 18 month contract plus the 3 months you upgraded early

PrincessJR

Its up the end of Sept, so at the moment he has been tied in for 15.5 months.

macman

If the problem is not area-related, then it is either a SIM or a phone fault. Get them to swap both (a different model phone).

woody01

To be fair though, it isn't 3's fault you live in the middle of nowhere and out of range for a signal.

Snakeeyes21

Every phone can pick up different amounts of signal. Im on 3 and my SE W200i gets 1 bar and my viewty gets a 5 bar HSPDA signal.
you cant blame 3 for bad signals in your area.
where i live you cant get any on O2 or virgin.

Tigsteroonie

PrincessJR wrote: »

The reason he went with 3 in the first place was that we live in the countryside and mobile reception is pretty poor. His sister was with 3 and always had signal at our house. So we assumed he would too. Not so!

When his new phone arrived (Nokia N95), there was no signal whatsoever.

Does his sister also live in a remote area (countryside) and, if so, has she had her 3 phone for a few years?

The reason I ask is because I signed with 3 a couple of years ago, at a time when they piggy-backed onto O2 mobile transmitters in rural areas. I could pick up a signal in the remote Scottish village where I lived, because of the O2 mast.

Since then (about a year later), 3 stopped the deal with O2 and transferred this service to (I think) T-mobile. Now there was no T-mobile mast in the village but, because my account was an older account, it continued to piggy-back on O2. New phones & accounts would only have coverage in 3 or T-mob areas.

After about three months of living down in Manchester, I returned to the village .... and discovered I didn't have 3 coverage anymore - my phone or account had somehow become "reprogrammed" to work with the T-mobile arrangement rather than O2 in remote areas.

I'm just thinking, his sister's phone could still be using O2 in the countryside, but his newer phone won't.

(Sorry, there's a technical term for all this piggybacking, but I can't remember what it is!)

austin

PrincessJR wrote: »

Hi,

My husband signed up with 3 just over 12 months ago (his 18 month contract ends in Sept - woohoo!), and we have been appalled by them.

The reason he went with 3 in the first place was that we live in the countryside and mobile reception is pretty poor. His sister was with 3 and always had signal at our house. So we assumed he would too. Not so!

When his new phone arrived (Nokia N95), there was no signal whatsoever. We called 3 several times and were eventually told it must be a phone fault, and to send the phone back to get it checked. This we did.
By the time they sent a new phone, 3 months had gone by and my husband had been billed each month (£35).

The new phone has had signal intermitently, even when in built up areas (the centre of bham for example) the reception flickers, and when he makes a call, it only stays connected for a few minutes before the signal drops and he is cut off.
He has complained, and told 3 he wants to cancel his contract several times, but each time has been told that he will need to pay roughly £400 to be 'released' from the contract - Can they do this even when they are not fulfilling their side of the contract i.e. providing a mobile sevice????

He has coped with it and cannot wait to cancel in Sept.

I feel that he should take his complaint further, in total he will have paid £630 over the 18 months for an unreliable, largley un-useable, poor service. At least 80% of the time, no matter where he is, he has no signal.

Has anyone else had this kind of experience with 3? :mad:

What should we do? - Is there any chance of him claiming his money back, or part of it?

yes, i had virtually the same problem with this pointless network.

i had a nokia on an 18 month contract, and i could guarantee, every call i made would drop within a minute. the signal was all over the place, if i moved a foot in one direction the signal would shoot from '0' to full and back!

i too got the same excuse that the phone was faulty but i knew it wasnt the phone as id tried various 3 handsets and all of them acted the same. but would those robots listen? would they hell. they just carried on with their pre-programmed speech as if you never said anything at all!

after the faulty phone excuse, i was then told to manually switch my network to orange. that didnt work either.

honestly, if i didnt laugh at the time, i would have smashed the thing up! but i got the last laugh though, because at the end of the contract, i took great pleasure in letting them grovel to me for days on end to upgrade, and kept telling them id 'think' about it and ask them to ring back. when id finally had my fun, i simply said "nope!" and took the sim card out!

never again!