3 is the cheapest, but is it best

k984942

Handset:  nec616
 
Most commonly used location: canterbury
 
Ease and reliability and connection: poor
 
Any other problems: re-initialising
 
Overall service and rating (out of 10):2

smart-saver

Handset nec e606 not bad really a bit chunky.

Most commonly usedin my town of chelmsford but have travelled all around essex and get ok signal

Ease and reliability very little signal in north norfolk when visiting the family, also my flat is right on top of a 3G area which means i can video call, BUT it only has one bar so the phone calls always wave in and out, if it had one less bar i would have 2G which is O2 roaming - if that makes sence

Other problems - LOADS had the phone stolen ( in other words dropped in a river when drunk ) had to wait 3 months for their next day replacement as they lost my claim over and over for the first week and then when they finaly processed my claim they tolp me it had been too long since i reported it even though i had reprted it and they had lost the claim a week earlier!!!! it months of shouting histerically to sort it out.

oh and also i have only ever had one bill from them  so everymonth i ring and they appologise and say they will e-mail the billing dept as they cant put me through because they only have internal contact by email and i never get them!

Oh and their call center is in india which is fine until they triple charge your card by mistake because they didnt understand what you said and that they never repeat the same letters when you tell them your post code over and over.

the only good thing is the fact that they sent me two replacement phones so after informing them and waiting for 6months for them to collect it i sent it back return to sender ( via a £70 bid on ebay!!!!! JUSTICE)

NOT BITTER! - JUST DONT BOTHER REALLY, THERE SHOULD BE A WHOLE THREAD ON THIS COMPANY IN THE CRAP CUSTOMER SERVICE SECTION

rating 0/10

freebie_2

I lost my NEC e606 on the 13th Feb and was offered a replacement. I asked how much it would be to buy myself out of my contract instead of replacing one pile of rubbish with another ...

apparently for just £75 I can restore my sanity, my friends & family will be able to reach me, and frankly if someone with dishonest intent found my phone and thought they had got lucky, any attempt to make a call would convince them otherwise and they would provbably just dump it !!

Me ?! ... I'm spending the money to dump 'em 'Nuff Said!!

PoohBear_3

Handset: Motorola A835 - a bit chunky but fine for me

Most commonly used location: Staffordshire/Birmigham but used all over UK

Ease and reliability and connection: No problems about connectivity. Excellent service. Have used the Customer Service line and had very lopite and efficient Scottish people everytime

Any other problems: None at all.

Overall service and rating (out of 10): Very good value and excellent service 9/10 [never give anyone 10/10 as there must always be room for improvement

PoohBear supports 3

System

HANDSET - NEW NOKIA 7600

MOST COMMONLY USED LOCATION - Leeds & Wakefield area

EASE AND RELIABILITY AND CONNECTION - The phone was great, had it for all of 5 days, didn't want to part with the handset but the network was shocking!!
I love 100 miles away from my family and am a full time mum so make most of my calls during the day, and I use a lot of minutes! so i thought the 3 tariff - talk 500 would be best for me - 500 anytime xnet mins and 50 texts for £25 a month, bonus was line rental was half price for 3 months, but for the 5 days i had the phone, my calls were forever being dropped, the signal was shocking, even though was told would be great in big city areas.

All i can say is thank god carphone warehouse give you a 14 day peace of mind thing! If your not happy, you can take it back, no questions asked, contract cancelled.

I then took out another contract with my old network, O2, but was disappointed I couldn't have the Nokia 7600, I really liked that phone!

Network rating (out of 10) - 1

simon_hzero

Handset:
Motorola A835

Most commonly used location:
North London (N13/N22)

Ease and reliability and connection:
Near 99% of calls connect first time and no line drops - ie. 3 line drops since i got it at end of Jan and 2 "unable to connect". Seems as good as any other mobile i've had - bit big but right size for talking (if you know what I mean).

Any other problems:
3G Services not loading up properly (to read email) but I can use the phones inbuilt email client to read mail if i wanted to. No probs with customer support. I get billed correctly - ie £12.50 for first 3 months for 500mins!! The £100 cashback from The Link would reduce the total bill for the 12months to the equivalent of £13.50/month for 500mins.

Overall service and rating (out of 10):
7 (and improving)

rmotters

Handset:

2 x NEC e606 (Mine and Partners).

Phone is a bit bulky, but otherwise full-featured.

Most commonly used location:

Nottingham, Sheffield & Edinburgh

Ease and reliability and connection:

The phone is easy to use and the quality of the call is good. The reliability of the service though is questionable. Having access to phone, it is intriguing why the two phones do not behave in the same way. Sometimes one could be on 3G and the other has no signal in the the same location.

I use the video function a lot, whilst on the road, saying goodnight to my little girl and it is very impressive anmd good qaulity.

Text messaging response sometime leaves a lot to be desired. I could send a message and it not be recieved for a day (similar to the vodafone voicemail service ;D).

The extras button provides a good range of free content, unlike other providers.

The only thing missing is the ability to access world-wide information sources. The contect that you can access on the 3UK is provided by 3 only. You cannot access external Web/WAP sites. This would be nice (But has saved me money, as I cannot get to my bookmaker)

Any other problems:

Quality of the signal is sometimes a problem. For example I have had problems with handover between base stations, if I am talking, whilst on the move and even though a base station is close (under a mile), I have a strong signal in the Car Park but, I do not have one at my desk.

Overall service and rating (out of 10):

7/10

BTW, I am on the 3togo tariff (not available anymore). I brought both phones for £300 and have a monthly bill of under £10 for each phone. A lot cheaper then the current ThreePay tariff. You can see why they dropped this tariff.

System

:-/

Ok .. currently using a motorola A835 .. the phone is very much a brick , but has got some great features . Looked the deal of the decade when i got it . however it does have problems .. £ network says it covers at least 70 percent of the country . It doesnt! .. I use it in the west midlands mainly and the distance from J17M6 to J4 it drops calls like a bad case of "ouchies" .

additionally the help desk is based in India which does cause some communication problems , they are polite but damn hard to undestand . Even harder to get any probplems resolved . Regularly get charged "included" minutes for no apparent reason . So far 4 out of 4 bills have had errors on them .Currently cant access the browser for the last 6 days "they are working on it" .

In all honesty i would give it back tomorrow if i could , but with luck they will improve the service , just be careful when you sign up to 3 as its not all its cracked up to be .

LD

Handset: Motorola A835

Most commonly used location: Wembley

Ease and reliability and connection: when there's a signal - good but I too often see no service or emergency calls only

Any other problems: First Bill £78.24 >:(
It seems I have been put onto 750 videotext instead of Videotalk, three initial reaction was to blame the supplier (their agent) despite pointing this out and the fact that my invoice from the supplier clearly states Videotalk 750 it had to be their fault, anyway I relented and phoned the supplier who checked their system and stated I was on Videotalk 750 - back to three - having to relate the whole story again I was told to fax the invoice to a number I was given - I had added the 'extra' information that I had on several times as an answer to their security question what plan are you on that I was on Videotalk 750 why wasn't that questioned? - no response!

this game of ping pong is still on going, even when they sort that out, there is the matter of pro rata billing which they insist is 'normal' but there is no mention of this on my invoice or in three's term's and conditions or in the 'Before you do anything' leaflet so because I heavily used the phone in the first couple of days they reckon I owe them for the excess.

I threatened to stop the direct debit they said they would cut me off.

not a happy bunny

---

Well after a copying my complaint to oftel, they came back and credited my account with £46.85, I replied to this stating that they couldn't add up, and they have now credited a further £6.85,
which bring there calculation of my first bill to the same as mine, however

With regards to refunding monies owed on your account, this unfortunately cannot be done. It is an income reversal and will lye as a credit on your account.

or in other words I'm paying up front for more than three months

No applogy for the threats made by their staff, no offer of compenstation for 6+ hours of my time.

And a service that still has a habbit of not being there when you wish to call!

And I still don't have a clue as to the chargable time used on the account

above was two posts made by me on another forum

Overall service and rating (out of 10): 4

Lady_K

Handset: Motorola A835.

Most commonly used location: Nottingham, Bradford, Leeds, Hertfordshire & all the areas in between these and their surrounding areas.

Ease, Reliability and connection:
Phone a little big but I got it because of the cheap calls & thought it was worth putting up with for that.

Very unreliable, countless drops in just 1 conversation EVERY TIME!.

Service not available notice very often & sometimes phone completely shuts down for hours on end for no reason.

Very bad reception when there is any with constant breaking up of voice, missing words about every 5th word & often voice goes so quiet as though receiver is covered but it isn’t so you cannot hear whats being said.

At times in a conversation suddenly only one will hear the other & strangley the other just gets a dead line even though your still connected so call has to end.

Phone will ring I pick it up but the other person doesn’t know I've answered as it doesn’t give a dialling tone to them just a dead line...

SIM not recognised notice comes on out of the blue and I have never tried it in another phone... Just a nightmare... list is endless...

The coverage and quality of it when it is there is just dreadful, completely dreadful.

People get put instantly to my voicemail for no reason either.

Any other problems
Most I've put above but added to that the customer service is just terrible They are very polite but they just cannot help you... and they are very difficult to understand with the accents ect as it is in India... I struggle to do this. Plus because the reception is so bad & I get cut off so much I have to use a landline phone to call customer services which is an 0870 number.

The facility to check remaining minutes & texts is not working... it states I have none every time but if I ask customer services they say I have texts left so I hope I'm not going to get charged for those later.

I am really quite shocked at just how bad the 3g network is... I really thought that with all their new campaign they probably had something to shout about now and they must have improved their service greatly or they wouldn't be making such a fuss about it... but it's not the case I feel as though they have been dishonest as I enquired before I went into the contract about the coverage and quality of reception I was to expect & obviously all I got was a load of bull from them with all the rubbish about o2 taking over the areas where 3g fails on… it’s rubbish.

I also had a higher 1st bill than expected. I was mislead on that too as I was told my minutes started from 18th when I rang the day I got the phone. When my bill came they had actually started the free mins & texts bundle I had on 25th so I was charged individually for all calls & texts made between the 18th and 25th but trying to get anything back for that is just impossible.

I don't understand why they try to offer a service like this as they obviously are not ready to provide one properly. The most basic things needed are good reception and customer care but they are failing abysmally on both. If they can't provide that why bother.

Charge time of phone to me is just over a day for the same way I used my Nokia which was a charge time of about a week. I don't use video calls and I don't use picture messaging.

PICTURE MESSAGING AND VIDEO CALLING I WILL ADD ARE ONLY AVAILABLE BETWEEN OTHER 3G USERS Which was another thing I was misslead about too. I was told that picture messaging was possible to all other phones but the video was just between 3g's


Overall service and rating (out of 10) 1/10