3 is the cheapest, but is it best

mumbles87

Device - ipad 2 and now an ipad 3 (or "the new ipad")

mainly used in the london area but make regular trips to a remote area of yorkshire to see a friend and the service is outstanding. almost always have net

problems are with 3 themselves.. first took 5 attempts to get me the ipad as they couldnt get me passed credit check (their fault due to them entering detials wrong)

now they have put my tariff up by 88p.. sounds nothing but claimed they txt me to tell me.. erm what to my ipad? they dont receive txts!

to get second ipad even worse.. passed credit check but then credit card rejected because it thought was fraud.. so cleared it up with them.. then tried again and now ive been credit refused by 3! had to get my dad to get for me

Feim

Handset: HTC Wildfire S

Most commonly used location: Home or work.

Ease and reliability and connection: I find the mobile internet is slow. The reliability is not so great as I am forever losing signal.

Any other problems: Just generally too slow. And texts are hardly sent.

Overall service and rating (out of 10): 4

Cuncha

lukephilip wrote: »

3 are definitely the worst company I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Aggressive, ignorant customer service which is more trouble than any money saved in the initial contract. Pay a couple of quid extra with Vodafone, Orange etc and save yourself a huge amount of frustration and hassle in the future

100% agreed.

If you have no issues with your phone, Three are ok. IF you need to go through customer services for anything, they'll push you to the point of suicide.

Horrible company.

Splurge

Handset: HTC Hero

Most commonly used location: Newbury

Ease and reliability and connection: Good (but good isn't good enough)

Overall service and rating (out of 10): 7

Truth be told, they are not the "best" when it comes to a reliable connection however they have excellent Customer Service. The problem is that customer service only goes so far. At the end of the day I have a mobile phone because I want to be able to use it and customer service doesn't help me send a text message when I need to.

The problem is that some days when I go to send a text it just bounces back 'Unable to send' I keep retrying to send and it just keeps bouncing back. So very annoying when I really need to reply to something quite urgently. It rarely affects calls, it just seems to be a texting issue. The only reason I am joined Three is because they are the cheapest and I love a good bargain but soon that's going to change. When I was with Vodafone a couple years ago this kind of think never happened - I had reliability.

Last month was upgrade time for me with Three. So I went for a one month SIM only deal on a rolling contract. The reason being that I did not want to continue to commit long term to an unreliable service. Of course I do want to upgrade my phone and get the iPhone 5 but there is no way on earth I will sign another two year contract with Three.

The thing is that Three, being as cheap as they are, was great for me when I was student and when I had little money. At this stage of my life I am ready to pay that bit extra to reliability so I am seriously contemplating going back to Vodafone and ordering my iPhone on a 2 year deal.

Vodafone is Cheaper than Three
Yes it is true. After upgrade time with three I called them on my phone to tell them I wanted to leave. After a bit of complaining they offered me the 1 month SIM Only great with no line rental. Afterwards I found the very same deal on their website. So I didnt get bribbed to stay with them as I had hoped.

A few years ago when I was with Vodafone at the end of my contract I called them to cancel and they offered me amazing deals that were not on their website. I'm talking about the kind of deals that are better than what Three has to offer.

My conclusion is that after the first term of contract with Vodafone customers are in a position to haggle an amazing phone deal whereas with Three they are not. Probably because with Three the prices are already rock bottom.



If this is the case then strategically I think I am better to get my iPhone 5 deal here (with Vodafone), wait until the contract term is over, then haggle a great value deal, as cheap as what Three advertises online. It’s a win win because I end up with both reliability and value.


I’m guessing that O2 are much the same but I don’t really know from experience. I’ll say one more thing; Three maybe the fastest growing network in the UK but I bet they are probably also the fastest shrinking!

markdavey

I think you'll be surprised with other networks retention 'deals' as well now a days. Each customer is dealt with based on their 'worth' to the network. If your monthly spend is low or you regularly don't use out of allowance services, you are unlikely to be offered a decent retention deal.

Splurge

Have you got any experience with Three's retention deals? I was on a £20 month contract. I always paid my bill and usually it was a bit more than £20 due to me calling 0845 numbers etc. but they didnt offer me anything great to keep me on.

muzmoz

Handset: HTC ONE X
Most commonly used location: DEVON
Ease and reliability and connection: OK
Overall service and rating (out of 10): 3

This is my first upgrade from 3 and it has not gone well. As others have mentioned, they are ok as long as you don't have a problem. I was unfortunate enough to get a ONE X with the wireless antena fault and to cut a long story short, they tried to get me to pay £80 for a cracked screen and it took a lot ( I mean a lot!) of horrible, stressful phone calls to get it sorted.

I wondered if anyone might be able to advise me on the fact that they have charged me £10 for a phonecall to the UK 3 Repair centre. This was the phonecall where they said 'pay us £80 or you don't get your phone back' and where I said 'not a chance, it wasn't cracked when I sent it'.

On phoning 3 to enquire I spent 40mins where the assistant kept telling me he knew nothing about the phone number and it had nothing to do with 3.

I have the text from 3 asking me to phone said number. Should I push this and face customer complaints again? Or just let it go?

Thanks

markdavey

Splurge wrote: »

Have you got any experience with Three's retention deals? I was on a £20 month contract. I always paid my bill and usually it was a bit more than £20 due to me calling 0845 numbers etc. but they didnt offer me anything great to keep me on.

Seems their current method is to analyse what you have used over the past 3 months and offer you a monthly sim-only deal that just about covers that.

e.g. just finished 24 months of 900 mins or texts and 1Gb data
My actual average use was around 165 mins, 200 texts and around 120Mb data

So they offered me the Internet 200 Monthly Sim-Only deal (as on their website)

Not a retention offer but, TBH, I stayed as I now only have to give 30 days notice and I still cant really better the cost for what I actually use (I already have an SGS3 so didn't need a phone)

Splurge

I also have another super Money Saving Expert tip to share with you guys. If you want to get an unbeatable deal on a contract mobile phone and you are not looking for a retention deal then the thing to do is set up your own affiliate website!
It's easy and anyone can do it. you just sign up to Affiliate Window. I know someone who did this and then they ordered their own phone through their own site and they got paid about £80 by the network (Orange) for doing. The guy then offered all his family and freinds the service and split the profits with any takers. Here's an example (I think that is his) SIM only deals site. Obviously it has changed quite a bit since I saw it last but if you do your own site it would only need to be somthing quite basic. Thoughts guys??

cinereus

Three are an absolute disgrace.

I pay £25/month for unlimited data on the One Plan. Unfortunately it has never been usable. I get constant timeouts. I get constant disconnections. When I try to ping google.com, bbc.co.uk or even 8.8.8.8 I get consistent ping times over 3000ms and between 20%-50% packet loss rates. Sometimes as high as 80%! Obviously this is completely unusable.

I have called 3 every day for the last week spending over an hour on the phone each time. Every time I have explained the problem. I have asked them to do something about it. They keep making me go through pointless troubleshooting questions as though I don't have a connection. I have a strong connection through HSDPA in a city centre! My internet settings are correct! The issue is the internet connection. When I eventually get them to admit this, they "reset" the internet (whatever this means) and it works again for approx five minutes before breaking against.

Nothing I can say can get them to fix this or make any effort to do anything. The issue is the same no matter which city I am in, which phone I use the SIM in, etc. Nobody will admit there is an issue with the network.

I'm banging my head against the wall. I don't even want compensation for all the wasted time, effort and missed appointments, etc. I just want the service I pay for!

Anyone know how the hell to get 3 to do anything?