3 is the cheapest, but is it best

asandwhen

swanny65 wrote: »

http://www.three.co.uk/Pay_Monthly/SIM_Only

was on PAYG with 3. Good service. Then 3 altered the T&C's and started charging for voicemail which i uise a lot.

This was available Saturday at £12.00 pcm until 31/05/10. Now 3 won't sell it to me as the link goes to a £15.00 a month deal on the website. Talk about offers can be withdrawn at anytime - cant see that stated on the website.

Off to O2 sim only for £10.00 a month with a small Quidco cashback.

The £12 per month deal didnt include unlimited internet so you are paying an extra £3 per month for this - Bargain I think.

With the o2 deal you signing a 12 month contract - with 3 its 30 days if you want internet with o2 the same sim will cost you £15 per month so the same.

Its up to you if you want a 12 month deal go with o2
if you want to change before this then 3 is the better deal.

musicman100

Headset- S2

Area- London,manchester,s!!!!horpe,Hexham area and Alston area

Hi,

I have had a chance to use this phone over the last few weeks in the UK. I have 2 of them but living in Austria I have not been able to use that much. although I have discovered that windows messenger works fine here and free of charge!! Skype does not!!. I have not tried messenger on non 3 networks but on Austrian 3 it works fine.

I was expecting all sorts of trouble after reading about the problems on the internet but i did not encounter any of them.

I used the telephone in London and had no problems with the internet or using skype. I had a signal all the way from stansted until liverpool street while the person I was with with his i-phone kept losing his signal.

I had set up a system of when I rang skype on my home computer in Austria it rang the normal phone and I also set up a normal number which then rang my mobile ( we have free land line calls with viop). This all work well and I spent about 2 hours of phone calls between the Uk and austria which did not cost me anything!!!!.

I also used the phone as a modem for my netbook and had no problem.

Last week I travelled from Manchester to S****horpe and up to the north near Hexham. No problem with reception apart from the Moors where nobody had a signal and in Allendale Town where my sister could get no coverage with O2 and people who live can't find a mobile to work there. Three worked well although the signal was better upstairs then down but it still worked.

I measured my speed upstairs in Allendale when using the S2 as a modem for my netbook and I got speeds of 2.5 Mb download and 0.5 MB upload. Not bad.
My son had the other S2 and we were taking to each all the time using skype.

I also used the phone to check my gmail account and again no problem and goole map worked well aswell.

So all in all for £25 it is certainly the best phone I have used. The only problem I found was the battery life was quite short- it easily lasts a day but not much more. Although I was using the internet ,checking gmail, using skype alot so I was expecting a shorten battery life. For a phone that cheap I wasn't expecting great battery life especially with all that I was doing with it.

I have had the phone about 3 months and I have not seen the problem with it turning itself off on either of the phones yet!!

Just one point - I kept getting spam skype chat about 1 a day does anyone know how to stop that? Is there an option to click when I log in to my skype account on the computer? I had signed up to ring2skype-could that be the problem?

So I hope that helps someone looking at the S2 phone I have found it works well gets a strong signal , has a great screen and does everything it says. Maybe when it first came out there was a few software problems with it- but it looks like Three has sorted out them out. For the price I don't think it can be beaten and the £5 every 3 months it is excellent value.

fyimate

Handset: Sony Ericsson G502

Most commonly used location: Greater London

Ease and reliability and connection: In my partners house the connection is mostly, if not always very good, but in my own house, just a mile or two up the road the connection is almost non exsistant, which is funny given my other Tesco mobile (o2) has brilliant connection at mine! When I rang them about this problem they told me my area has great coverage! (liars)

Any other problems: Yes, already sent the phone back twice because it kept turning off by itself and now when I make phone calls it buzzes oddly. Havent sent it back, cant be bothered, too much hassle because I know something else will go wrong with it.

Overall service and rating (out of 10): 0/10. They once had their internet connection down for a couple days but I was unaware, I rang up customer services which I am sure is based in India and not the UK, and the woman had me on the phone for half an hour talking rubbish and kept giving me a link to go to (on my mobile) even though I told her the internet did NOT work. * sigh * I popped upto the shops and the woman told me the connection was down.
I hate calling their customer service team. They are hard to understand half the time and dont seem to know what they're doing.

Miser_maz

Handset; Nokia E71

Location; live in Edinburgh and regularly travel around Scotland.

Reliability; I have little to complain about. Rarely seem to have reception issues, except perhaps inside tall buidings and occassional empty pockets along motorways.

Overall service; Been with Three for almost 4 years. Customer services are quite good, I'm Pakistani and don't want to sound biased towards the Indian workforce. Although they can sound inadvertantly a bit comical, but overall they do a decent job. Decent range of phones and prices are amongst the cheapest, what more can you ask for? 8/10

Sallyd_2

Handset; Samsung Galaxy Portal

Location; live in central Scotland and regularly travel around the edinburgh area.

Reliability; Never had an issue with this phone. Signal can be a bit weak in my flat (2 or 3 bars), but this is still good, as I can't get an O2 or Orange signal in it.

Overall service; Been with 3 on and off for a few years. I keep going back because they have consistently provided good service with no issues for me (unlike previous contracts with T-mobile and Orange). Never had issues with connecting to the internet, and the online info on usage/allowances is always up to date. Wouldn't really consider using a different provider now, the other networks are rip offs.

seaniboy

Miser_maz wrote: »

Handset; Nokia E71

Location; live in Edinburgh and regularly travel around Scotland.

Reliability; I have little to complain about. Rarely seem to have reception issues, except perhaps inside tall buidings and occassional empty pockets along motorways.

Overall service; Been with Three for almost 4 years. Customer services are quite good, I'm Pakistani and don't want to sound biased towards the Indian workforce. Although they can sound inadvertantly a bit comical, but overall they do a decent job. Decent range of phones and prices are amongst the cheapest, what more can you ask for? 8/10

Scotland's coverage on 3 has always been better, land mass & head office was here at 3's conception...Scot coverage was a priority & cheaper than England

geet

Hi, am new to the mobile phone thread but did a quick check on MSE article on cheap mobiles and compare tariffs. Three does not emerge as the cheapest option what with many offering cashbacks that makes the monthly payment almost negligible. So my question really is why does this thread say that 3 is the cheapest. I ask this also because I am with 3 and my contract is coming to an end. When I enquired about renewal, 3 told me that for 500 calls that I want the cheapest deal I can have is £18 per month for 24 months with a Nokia 2730, I think. There seem to be many better options in the Compare tariff site or am I missing something....

Lewy81

I have seen that 3 Mobile seem to offer the best deals but I am put off by the bad reputation that they have with signal and customer services.

I live in Chester and work in Manchester is the signal really that bad as I wouldn't want to tie in to a contract for a phone I can't use.

rmiller

I have not had much success with 3. Although they are cheap so I guess you get what you pay for.

Handset: Nokia

Most commonly used location: out and about

Ease and reliability and connection: ok outside of flat

Any other problems: customer service bad, phones don't work properly, aren't very helpful

Overall service and rating (out of 10): 5

xbrenx

geet wrote: »

Hi, am new to the mobile phone thread but did a quick check on MSE article on cheap mobiles and compare tariffs. Three does not emerge as the cheapest option what with many offering cashbacks that makes the monthly payment almost negligible. So my question really is why does this thread say that 3 is the cheapest. I ask this also because I am with 3 and my contract is coming to an end. When I enquired about renewal, 3 told me that for 500 calls that I want the cheapest deal I can have is £18 per month for 24 months with a Nokia 2730, I think. There seem to be many better options in the Compare tariff site or am I missing something....

The thread was started in 2004 so maybe they were outstandingly cheaper then?
I've got no complaints with 3, always gone through them instead of 3rd parties and have never had any problems with price or signal