Three - £25 Amazon Gift Card for referring a Friend - possible SCAM + awful customer service!

Carmate

If you are about to change SIM provider, you might be tempted to go to Three when you see their referral scheme:

When do you get your £25?
If you refer a friend to Three and they take out a 12-month SIM Only or phone contract online, you’ll both get a £25 Amazon Gift Card sent by email.

According to their terms and conditions, you need to wait 3 months before both Three users receive their £25 gift card :rotfl:

Here is what's been happening so far:

02 / 10 / 18: I signed my Three contract and placed an order for my new phone (Huawei P20 pro). Phone came faulty by the way :mad: But that's a whole different story.

07 / 01 / 19: Three months are gone, check my referral status online. My purchase order with "three" keeps shown as pending. Weird considering they have been getting my direct debits for all this period :rotfl:

I open a live chat. They confirm they will fix this, need to wait a couple of days. Perfect.

18 / 01 / 19: No gift card received.

I open a live chat. They apologise and insist on fixing the issue. I am promised we will receive the gift card in two to three working days.

24 / 01 / 19: No gift card received.

I open a live chat. They explain they are having technical difficulties :dance:

They now "require to chat with the person who referred me" to authenticate the users, requesting all sort of information. Obvious attempt to get rid of me in the chat.

Luckily that person is my co-worker and was nearby.

They thank me for my patience, and end up confirming there is nothing they can do about my issue, literally explained: "offer had to be fulfilled by a Third party. We would request you to contact our offer partner by emailing them directly"

I explained this was unacceptable and they said I could escalate this by talking to their advanced customer services. I accepted, they pass me through in the live chat, 10 minutes wait while chat was attempting to close due to inactivity, finally same customer service advisor explains all lines are busy :rotfl:

I am promised a phone call back within 24 hours to deal with my issue, which is priority to their management.

Still waiting

Of course I also emailed their "Third party" company... still waiting

Will update this, not only to show everyone that their referral scheme seems to be a total scam, but also how terrible Three's customer service is

UPDATE 29/01/2019

A very polite gentlmen named Hitesh has confirmed the voucher is to be released before 3/2/2019 :rotfl:

let's see!

UPDATE 05/02/2019

Surprise! No gift card received :rotfl:

New chat, again an advisor asks for details, date of referral, email of the person who referred me... can't they keep note of this information?

Advisor explains there had been "an issue" and that I would receive the gift card "in 5 working days"

When I mention I am updating this thread, he immediately offers to elevate this to the higher customer service chat. I accept, let's check the response time!

I am transferred at 9:50, after several attempts to close chat, I finally speak with representative at 10:32. Not to bad Three, 42 minutes :rotfl:

EDIT 12/02/2019

Still No amazon gift cards received. The keep asking over and over the same info. sometimes "your postcode does not match", other times "there seems to be an error", or "your order seems to be pending" :rotfl:

Kingsd316

How many bill credits did you get? When i had an issue i ended up getting £5 for every time i live chatted them about it, got my voucher in the end took just under 4 months

pmduk

Inefficiency is not the same as a scam. I hope the rest of your tale is more accurate than the title.

Carmate

pmduk wrote: »

Inefficiency is not the same as a scam. I hope the rest of your tale is more accurate than the title.

That is quite right, I have updated the title.

I must have got over frustrated when I wrote my post

Many thanks

mobilejunkie

Carmate wrote: »

That is quite right, I have updated the title.

I must have got over frustrated when I wrote my post

Many thanks

If you did it hasn't changed it much.

pmduk

OP, I'd contact them, in writing, pointing out that they are responsible for the deal and that you will be asking the ASA to rule their promotion as in breach of the British Code of Sales Promotion Practice if they don't sort it out by such and such a date.