3 is the cheapest, but is it best

bigup

I previously said 3 were fine and had no problems with them. I have changed my mind since making those remarks.

The customer services team are as thick as mud. Having come to the end of a contract i wrote to them and called to explain that i wished to cancel. I paid off the remaining balance owing and settled the final bill. However, i am still being billed and getting letters/phone calls asking for more payments, when there is nothing more to pay as the contract and line has ended. Speaking to the customer services team gets you no where as they do not understand what the hell is going on and simply quote standard lines back at you which they have been trained for.

If they sort out the customer services, the company is fine, but while they retain these morons theres no hope!

djurmann

Like others I find customer services a misnomer. Even after numerous letters, settling out of court etc etc they are still trying to unjustly bill me. Next stop OFTEL or any other regualtory body.

They are now ignoring my wife's request to end her contract and I wonder how much money they make by not ending accounts and then sending threatening letters.

"Once in never out", I thought that was the IRA not 3 but apparently not.

zipman23

Handset:
Was Nokia 6680 on Three...now N70 on Three.

Most commonly used location:
Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Ease and reliability and connection:
Nokia 6680...Utter rubbish! Nice phone, rubbish network/coverage/customer service assistance etc.
Got phone July 2005 on an 18 month contract - Talk and Text 600 priceplan. Ever since buying it from 'The Link' it would cut out pretty much non-stop. Been back and forward to the shop and spoke to every one of its 12 employees about it. Each time I went in, they all pretend to be busy and all offered a different excuse...sorry reason! An example of the problems I had is that in a 15 minute call to my girlfriend it would cut out more than a dozen times by going silent for a few seconds and then beeping and disconnecting even though the network coverage for where we are at the time is perfect for what network we're on. One excuse given by the customer service team was that if I moved around alot whilst using the phone, it was bound to cut out at some point. If that was the case, what the hell is the point in calling it a mobile if I have to sit still whilst using it?? Anyway, I was sitting at my computer at home at the time when I was using it and my girlfriend was sitting at work on her dinner break so we weren't 'moving about'.

After being pushed from pillar to post by The Link and by Three Customer Services who blamed each other for the problems I was having thus excusing themselves from blame and for fixing the problem, all the time whilst I was still paying line rental and £8.99 a month insurance, the phone was booked in twice to be picked up by a courier to be taken away to be fixed. Each time I would have been without a phone for upto three days, without a replacement or anything in return for the line rental I was going to be paying without actually having a phone. Never mind though because nobody turned up either time and all I got was 'sorry' despite losing two days pay! Fair isn't it?! It has been replaced 6 times in store and once at a different store because I wasn't satisfied with the outcome! Who would be satisfied?

Each time it was replaced, the same problems occured with more added each time. I eventually managed to get it swapped after 6 months for the Nokia N70 - free, despite it costing more and my girlfriends 6630 was swapped for a Motorola flip (can't remember model but its pink. not the pink RAZR though). We haven't had many problems despite the odd call dropping so I'm sort of happy. I was offered a £10 goodwill gesture for ALL my trouble! I told them to stick it where the sun don't shine because I had spent £150 so far on line rental when I wasn't getting the full use of the phone so £10 was hardly gonna make up for it!

Any other problems:
Apart from the above, the phone would constantly freeze, switch itself off, delete contacts, pictures, videos (most of them sentimental), refuse to let me use the internet etc.

Overall service and rating (out of 10): 0/10
The Customer Service is in India. I'm a Geordie. How do you expect me to understand their accent and them to understand mine? Its virtually im-bloody-possible! I have spkoen to so many people, argued with them for more than 45 minutes at a time and got absolutely nowhere whatsoever with them just repeating themselves constantly and one of them actually blamed me for teh problems by saying that his records didn't show that I had reported any problem with the handset. It might be the best value for money but whats the point if you can't use it properly. I'd love to hear from someone who has the 6680 and has had no problem with it. maybe I'm just very unlucky!

:edited: Forgot to mention that I had told them 4 times to end my contract after all the problems I was having when nobody would sort it out and they told me in no uncertain terms that it would cost me the remainder of my contract which at the time was £450. Charming!

scotsblood

Handset:
LG8120 on Three for past 11 months. (x two, one mine, one the wifes!)

Most commonly used location:
Boston, South Lincolnshire

Ease and reliability and connection:
Well very good really!! We live in a smallish village five miles outside Boston and suffer problems with all networks whilst in the house and generally in our part of the village. Vodafone works very reliably in just two rooms, the dining room and downstairs loo, strange!! Three works, via O2, variably all over the house and outside around our local roads, but we need to go a couple of miles towards Boston to get 3g.
Very few dropped calls once connection is made but you do seem to need a couple of attempts to get a connection even in the 3g zone.
Handset itself appears good, whilst in france this summer was on campsite with loads of other brits, we never failed to get decent connection even when others sitting next to us using same roaming network were dropping calls and getting poor signals.

Any other problems:
Continual niggle about Three blocking general internet use, when will they understand if customers want a guaranteed "best experience" they will use the Three portal, almost all those who want to surf outside of this will already know the internets limitations and certainly not blame Three for a poor site layout.

Overall service and rating (out of 10):
Three- cant say really never called!
Club Mobile - who we got the phones from 6/10

The Customer Service at Club Mobile initially made a complete balls up of the whole affair by trying "loosing" in dispatch our phones and on multiple occaisions blaming a computer failure. We received four bills the first month! True they did sort it out but only after me getting very irate and finally speaking to a supervisor who was the one and only person big enough to first apologise for the mess!

Having previously been completely screwed up by;
-the most unbelievable lack of service from O2 and their "specialist business" team (very long story too stupid to be true)
-unhappy with T-mobile who couldn't even set up a direct debit correctly after fourteen attempts!
-sick to death of Orange who after seven, yes seven, replacement handsets blamed "my" sim card for being faulty!! (Resolved by an eighth handset, now work that out!)

So pretty happy with Three. Just wait it'll all go wrong now I've written this!

damien

feels like it!
motorolla e1000, constantly resetting itself and needs recharging daily even if not used.
network coverage works when it feels like it,
i tried calling 3 to finish my contract early, they told me i would have to pay the remaining 12 months worth of contract!!
the deal was supposed to be £9.99 per month, but bills keep coming in at £50 - £60 per month, I can't afford it and am trying to find a way out now, customer services are only interested in keeping you so try to offer other things which seem no better!
all in all pretty confusing and dissapointing

byb3

I had a Nokia 7600 for a year.

After about 6 months I started getting weird dead signals, when I shouldn't have been. My girlfriend had exactly the same phone and it was also on 3, and we would be sitting next to each other and my signal would be dead and hers would be perfect.

However, switching the phone off and then back on again would fix this problem. So it was not a fatal problem, just more of a nuisance.

I got my 3 deal through e2save.com (the totally free one, where you got every month free and a free phone!), and they paid back fine. Although it seems now that the rules on cashback have got a lot more complicated.

After my 12 month contract ran out, I had read this board about haggling with your operator to get a better deal. After the free cashback deal I had been on I didn't think 3 would offer anywhere near this (obviously!), and at the time (Dec 05) there were no superb cashback offers on the go from e2save.com. I didn't know which other companies to trust, so rang up 3 to cancel.

I went through quite a process. Before I rang up I told my girlfriend that if they offer me £15/month for the same deal (500 free xnet mins, 100 free texts) then I would take it.

Although I am a Geordie and the guy on the otherside was Indian (typical 3!), the guy was surprisingly clear and I could understand everything he said. He also seemed to understand me! (Don't know who had the harder job!).

He originally offered me a years contract on the same deal with a free new phone, with the first 3 months half price if I took a 12 month deal, or the first 6 months half price if I took an 18 month deal.

I said it was not as good as the cashback deals I had seen advertised. He asked what sort of deals I had seen, and I mentioned one for £15/month after cashback (which is roughly what was available).

He then tried offering me the same deal but with double minutes and texts for the same periods for the half price introduction. I said I do not require this many minutes and texts, so it would not be worth it.

Finally he offered me a £150 cashback after 12 months if I took the 18month contract, as well as the first 6 months being half price.

This works out at (15*6) + (30*12) - 150 = £300 over 18 months
= £16.67 / month (including a free phone worth £100).

The best part about this, is that I don't have to send any bills in as the deal is done with 3, so the cashback is automatic.

NOW THE BAD PARTS!

It seems 3 have a policy of selling your mobile phone number to 3rd party companies once your contract is nearing expiry. This is a business practice I despise. Since my contract ended in December, I have had countless people ringing me up asking me about my phone contract and trying to sell me a new one. Now I have a new contract, they still have my number from this list so I am still getting phone calls from them.

The sad thing is, the calls seem to be coming from similar companies each time. One company called Tulip UK is one to be avoided at ALL costs. I have read nothing but bad reviews, and they do not honour cashbacks.

The second company have never mentioned their name as I have always told them I'm not interested before it got that far.

These phone calls are quite irritating. I average about 3 phone calls a week from companies like this for the past 6 weeks.

So all in all, 3 are a decent company if everything goes right. I would recommend using them to a friend, although only if they get a decent cashback deal. If I take into account my free phone (Sony Ericsson K608i) then I am paying £200 for 18 months service (500 xnet mins, 100 texts).

Hope this helps.

Adam

jcchandler

Having been with Three for three years now, I have seen a remarkable change.

When I was first with them:
Motorola A920
On three network, calls always dropped. Workaround was to manually change network to O2 (no extra charges). Customer service were CR**!!!!

2nd Year:
Had a lg flip phone. Phone was ok (ish) and network was better but still had occaisional problems. Had a problem with the phone, and it was fixed and returned within 2 days!! six months later, had a nother problem with phone, went to my local superdrug store to have it repaired - they wouldn't. Spoke to customer services, they repaired it, but also gave me £5 to cover the cost of the petrol that i spent driving to superdrug!!

This year:
Nokia 6680. GREAT PHONE. does everything you could ever want (except radio - which is on N70 i believe).
Network: Not a single problem!!
Customer service: only downside was that i had to wait a month before the phone i wanted came out for existing customers.

OVERALL
Nowadays, Three is exactly the same as any other phone company, the customer service centre may be in china, but they answer within a matter of seconds. And Three is the cheapest mobile phone operator as well!!

HymnsOfXi

I've had similar experiences to many posters: dropped calls, endless redialing, laughable signal. However, the real fun began when I left. Not only did it take no less than eighteen attempts to get a usable P.A.C., they also failed to close the contract and had the nerve to continue billing me. Even when I referred to my original written notice (in another letter) and they acknowledged receipt, they told me they could only take the date of the second letter as my one month's notice! Madness! They still contact me, too: best yet, they repeatedly send me their junk mail.

Avoid Three at all costs!([/I]costs being the operative word!)

robbo462003

I know of people selling these and making £1500-£3000 per week,but does any-one not question why its offered so cheap its crap,lol

3tree

I had numerous problems disconnecting my service and even when eventually disconnected they continued billing.
I have wasted too much time on the phone with lousy customer services to try and get my contract stopped.

I would seriously ask anyone to think not twice but thrice before you sign a contract with these jokers.