"Three" 'Feel at Home' a complete con

graham726

Does anyone have experience of using their Three phone abroad with the Feel at Home deal?

I'm in France with a Samsung G3 (currently on wifi) and have travelled all over over the last 2 weeks with the roaming deal set up by Three that allows you to use your home allowance for free all over France and many other countries. Great deal I thought, until I arrived and found that it mainly connects to 2g networks only, and only selected ones at that. The main French mobile operator F-SFR seems to be excluded from the deal, which renders large parts of France with no mobile or data.

I am also travelling with a second phone, my work phone on Vodafone, which connects perfectly well in all locations on 3G but the most remote.

When I do a search for networks on the phone, a lot of networks come up as "Forbidden Network" on the Three, when the Vodafone phone connects perfectly well.

Consequently I have spend most of our holiday with no data access on the Three phone.

This seems to be misleading marketing at best by Three, and really a complete con. When I asked Three what French networks it supports, they won't tell me. Surprise surprise. Avoid Three!

ZhugeEX

graham726 wrote: »

Does anyone have experience of using their Three phone abroad with the Feel at Home deal?

I'm in France with a Samsung G3 (currently on wifi) and have travelled all over over the last 2 weeks with the roaming deal set up by Three that allows you to use your home allowance for free all over France and many other countries. Great deal I thought, until I arrived and found that it mainly connects to 2g networks only, and only selected ones at that. The main French mobile operator F-SFR seems to be excluded from the deal, which renders large parts of France with no mobile or data.

I am also travelling with a second phone, my work phone on Vodafone, which connects perfectly well in all locations on 3G but the most remote.

When I do a search for networks on the phone, a lot of networks come up as "Forbidden Network" on the Three, when the Vodafone phone connects perfectly well.

Consequently I have spend most of our holiday with no data access on the Three phone.

This seems to be misleading marketing at best by Three, and really a complete con. When I asked Three what French networks it supports, they won't tell me. Surprise surprise. Avoid Three!

Worked fine for me in France.

Besides you're not paying any extra for it. Where as on Vodafone you're paying extra. I'd expect more for a paid service.

I used 18GB in Hong Kong on Feel At Home and wasn't charged a penny more. It was great for me.

Here is some proof.
http://i481.photobucket.com/albums/rr180/jabbamk1/FAH2_zpsf2acbcd6.jpg

NiftyDigits

graham726 wrote: »

Does anyone have experience of using their Three phone abroad with the Feel at Home deal?

I'm in France with a Samsung G3 (currently on wifi) and have travelled all over over the last 2 weeks with the roaming deal set up by Three that allows you to use your home allowance for free all over France and many other countries. Great deal I thought, until I arrived and found that it mainly connects to 2g networks only, and only selected ones at that. The main French mobile operator F-SFR seems to be excluded from the deal, which renders large parts of France with no mobile or data.

I am also travelling with a second phone, my work phone on Vodafone, which connects perfectly well in all locations on 3G but the most remote.

When I do a search for networks on the phone, a lot of networks come up as "Forbidden Network" on the Three, when the Vodafone phone connects perfectly well.

Consequently I have spend most of our holiday with no data access on the Three phone.

This seems to be misleading marketing at best by Three, and really a complete con. When I asked Three what French networks it supports, they won't tell me. Surprise surprise. Avoid Three!

The networks to which you can connect are Bouygues and Free Mobile. It's not a secret.

graham726

Thanks for your replies, so I called Three and they would not tell me which networks I can connect to in France, and certainly did not tell me when I asked that I could opt for a paid service to receive better coverage, as presumably it would show up the inferiority of the Feel at Home service.

joeluken

Worked fine for me in the USA and didn't cost any extra. Three CS explained it used AT&T and T-mobile in the USA in case or carrier roaming issues.


"Buying a Euro Internet Pass


You're visiting a Feel At Home destination. This means that your data will come out of your UK allowance so we wouldn't recommend most people buy a Euro Internet Pass in France. If you have used up your UK allowance or you don't have one, it's usually cheaper to buy a UK Add-on and then use the data allowance from that. If you buy an all-you-can-eat data Add-on, you can use up to 25GB a month in Feel At Home destinations.


We'd only recommend getting Euro Internet Pass in France if you've used up your UK allowance or you don't have one and, for some reason, you don't want to buy any of our UK Add-ons.
Find out more about the Euro Internet Pass. "


http://www.three.co.uk/Support/Roaming_and_international/Mobile_Roaming?content_aid=1214306374696

MikeWhite

graham726 wrote: »

Does anyone have experience of using their Three phone abroad with the Feel at Home deal?

I'm in France with a Samsung G3 (currently on wifi) and have travelled all over over the last 2 weeks with the roaming deal set up by Three that allows you to use your home allowance for free all over France and many other countries. Great deal I thought, until I arrived and found that it mainly connects to 2g networks only, and only selected ones at that. The main French mobile operator F-SFR seems to be excluded from the deal, which renders large parts of France with no mobile or data.

I am also travelling with a second phone, my work phone on Vodafone, which connects perfectly well in all locations on 3G but the most remote.

When I do a search for networks on the phone, a lot of networks come up as "Forbidden Network" on the Three, when the Vodafone phone connects perfectly well.

Consequently I have spend most of our holiday with no data access on the Three phone.

This seems to be misleading marketing at best by Three, and really a complete con. When I asked Three what French networks it supports, they won't tell me. Surprise surprise. Avoid Three!

Well, I'm off soon so can compare my experience. I used the coverage map:

http://www.corporate.bouyguestelecom.fr/notre-reseau/cartes-de-couverture-reseau

It looks OK with 3G for where we are going but time will tell!

Just in case I also got a few JoeMobile sims (https://www.joemobile.fr). They use SFR.
Mike

NiftyDigits

System

3 seem to have dumped networks in many 'like home' countries.

I had coverage issues when roaming. I roamed between Orange & Bouygues with no coverage in areas that a friend automatically roamed onto SFR. I hate to think what Bouygues and free mobile would be like.

They've done the same in Finland. DNA hasn't got the best coverage and has no coverage in Aland islands at all.

ZhugeEX wrote: »

Worked fine for me in France.
Besides you're not paying any extra for it. Where as on Vodafone you're paying extra. I'd expect more for a paid service.

NiftyDigits

Better than nothing I suppose

ste_wilko

If it isn't cost effective for 3 to allow you to use your allowance on a foreign network then they aren't going to allow it. Maybe they couldn't strike a decent deal with SFR and the other networks

NiftyDigits

ste_wilko wrote: »

If it isn't cost effective for 3 to allow you to use your allowance on a foreign network then they aren't going to allow it. Maybe they couldn't strike a decent deal with SFR and the other networks

Indeed...I don't know why people expect it to be different.