3 Mobile New User

johndrake_2

Hi im not entirely sure if this is the right place to post this, if not im hoping you might be able to point me in the direction of people that may be able to help.

Anyway in december i signed up to a 10 pound contract with 3 mobile for my mum who is 65. They sent her a handset which was broken and would not work. anyway we contacted 3 immediately and told them of the issue, they then sent her another reconditioned mobile which didnt work either. this all happenend in the first week of having the contract. due to the fact 3 mobile were so difficult to contact and converse with she decided she would cancel the contract. this was in the first week.
They then sent her a bag to send the phone back in and that was fine. we phoned 3 over xmas period and we managed to get onto an english member of their team(the first and only english person ive manged to get hod of), She told us everything was fine and she would get the relevant paper work out to us and we would have to pay for the first month.
After that we didnt think much of it until around about the 7th of january when we phoned up to check the cancellation had gone through(as no paper work came through) and the company said that they still hadnt received the phone back.Now when we spoke to the company over xmas they had said they had received it.
Anyway after that we had to give it another few weeks and before we phoned 3 back we were contacted by a company called telecom solutions(or something like that), demanding the first and second months payment.
Obviously we said their had been a mistake and that the contract was cancelled. Once again we got onto 3's customer service and were given the run around by their foreign based staff, passed from pillar to post and on 3 occasions just cut off. Ive been looking through my phone bill and there were 10 calls to 3 in january that were about 25 mins long. this went on through Febuary i think i counted 6 or 7 phone calls to 3(obviously by this time we were very upset) in the middle of febuary i logged a complaint through their website as they have no complaints phone line. At this time i contacted the communications ombudsman. who told me to give them 2 months to respond to the complaint. Incidentally no one has ever replied to my complaint. In march we contacted 3 onother few times and also contacted the telecom debt collection people who kept putting the debt on hold, until it could be sorted.
Towards the end of march we were told by the debt collection agency that 3 were due to refund the entire balance of the account and that we were to contact them.
We contacted 3 again an were told that they would refund the money that we owed but we would have to keep the contract which they would send another phone and sim card. obviously this was unacceptable after what they have put us through over the last 3 months.
Then i contacted the ombudsman for the second time and have sent me out a package which we are just completing now.
But just after we have done that 3 rung once again and has told us that if we were to acpt the refund and take the contract for another 3 months that they would cancel it after that..?
I couldnt believe my ears. i can only assume that they know that they are in the wrong and have been trying to get something out of us i dont know?


Anyway what has prompted me to come here and start this thread is that my mum has recently just gone to change her 0 percent credit card over and been rejected. we went on to her credit report and they have a red mark saying that she has missed 3 payments. My mum has never missed a single payment in her life and is now being rejected for credit cards.

I was just wondering if there is any legal action other than the ombudsman. or can the ombudsman get this mark taken off her account?
All in all ive never know that a company like this would be aloud to ruin other peoples lives like this.

grumbler

johndrake wrote: »

...
All in all ive never know that a company like this would be aloud to ruin other peoples lives like this.

All mobile companies do this easily and that's why if you buy a contract you must take the cancellation very seriously, that clearly wasn't the case with your contract.
If you can prove what you say, including that you sent the phone back and it was delivered, then you do have a case against '3'. However, it seems that the only way to get the proofs you need is to get the records/transcripts of your phone calls to '3' that will not be easy to do even if they still have the records.

You should have posted the phone back by a recorded mail and at least took a note of each call to '3' with the exact date, time, name of the person you speak to and the result. Event better was to record the phone calls yourself.

Start with complaining to '3' and demanding the phone calls records to be checked.

EDIT: I should have read your entire post, but I got bored and jumped from the middle right to the end...:o

johndrake_2

They have admittted they have the phone and that theyve had it and its not been used since 2 days after weve had it

johndrake_2

Also i can prove how much time i have been on to the company. Phone logs and everything. but obviously i havent got actual recordings of the convos

liubeliu

email [EMAIL="executive.office@three.co.uk"]executive.office@three.co.uk[/EMAIL]

or post blog.three.co.uk and one of the mods may take you complaint up.

The two complaints I had were settled very quickly by executive office in Scotland. One was a moan I had on the blog and Mod contacted me a passed on for resolution

Buzby

You also need to ensure you ask them to remove all detrimental information regarding payment history. It probably is accurate as far as they are concerned, but in view of the mess, it remains a consequential problem that also needs to be fixed in addition to cancelling the contract.

As she discovered, the contract mobile is an accident waiting to happen, as the consumer has more to lose (usually, their sanity). Stick with PAYG - it makes sense.

johndrake_2

Hi, thanks for your replies. im pretty much in the same position now as i was last week. the 3 blog doesnt care less and also the email you gave just sends an automatic reply.
Ive have 3 30 min phone calls to 3 over the weekend. Trying to get the foreign customer support to help me is useless.

Can anybody confirm to how many days i had to cancel the the contract after signing up. im sure we phoned up to cancel approx 7 days after we to

Never the less when i originally had phoned them there was no problem regarding contract cancellation

BUT 3 foreign customer services have now changed their tune once again and are telling us that we had no right to cancel the contract after it was taken out. theyve said this on about 4 different occasions to me. Has someone got any info on this?

Buzby

Under Distance Selling, 7-10 days, but this is for you to return the handset and request cancellation. If you hold out for a replacement handset to fix a problem, it then becomes a SOGA (sale of Goods Act) issue, and if you accepted the replacement (even if rejected later) then the DSR protections evaporate.

johndrake_2

But i understand that the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 comes into play if i have a faulty device???? no?
We gave them the opportunity to resolve the issue which they didnt!