4G Mobile Router;...”to buy or not to buy, that is the question”.

Biggus_Dickus

molerat wrote: »

Just got a 3 SIM to give it a go. Map shows excellent coverage but only get a 15 download speed so whilst reasonable and above ADSL speeds not really a replacement for fibre. My granddaughter is waiting for Openreach to come and install her line as O2 was the only network giving her any reasonable speed.:(

That’s a pity ;...this type of ‘Three’ 4G Router isn’t suitable for every household is it.

‘Location location. Location’!

My daughter lives in York and she gets between 85Mbps to 90Mbps download.
I live in Cheshire,..I’m getting 50Mbps to 60Mbps download.
My son lives just a few miles from me and the ‘Three’ 4G router is the wrong side of useless at his house. Really crap ‘Three’ mobile signal.

DCFC79

This is something that I may end up doing in the future especially if it means I can save some money but also get a decent connection to boot.


Looking at the coverage map I should be ok but will need to test it before I commit to anything.

molerat

Biggus_Dickus wrote: »

That’s a pity ;...this type of ‘Three’ 4G Router isn’t suitable for every household is it.

‘Location location. Location’!

As for my granddaughter, living in Scotland's oil capital city you would expect more.

Biggus_Dickus

OP here;..update for anyone interested.

Well,...I’m afraid it’s all turned to rat-sh*t !!!!.

My glowing praise for ‘Three’ and their ‘cheap’ 4G router contract has turned out to be somewhat premature and mis-guided. :doh:

The internet connection started to play-up big style yesterday. Went offline for 5 or 10mins at a time on numerous occasions. Settled down for a while then started dipping out again. Same today. Deeply disconcerting.

However,...to put the icing on the cake I got my very first communication today from ‘Three’ outlining the wonderful ‘cheap’ deal that I signed to last week.

The first thing that caught my eye was my monthly unlimited data cost : £70 per month!!!.....then (rather confusingly) they listed 5 differently priced ‘recurring discounts’.

The discounts took the price down to £30/month....unfortunately, still way in excess of what I signed-up to;...it’s a good job I read the letter properly.....the £30/month is in very small print.

After spending 86 !!! minutes (single call at my expense) on the phone to ‘Three’ they could give me no firm reassurance that they would, or could, correct/amend the £30 per month D/D and the guy at Three reluctantly advised me that probably best if I cancelled the contract altogether,....which I did. The internet connection was totally disabled 30mins after I put the phone down.

Totally crest-fallen to say the least;....I’ll need to go cap in hand back to Virgin now.

Sorry if anyone was buoyed by my earlier posts. I genuinely believed I was on to a winner,...I couldn’t have been more wrong.

tehone

Meant to add I've not experienced any downtime [that I have noticed], but I use it in a Huawei MiFi device rather than a router (which I keep planning to get).

tehone

Fair enough - does that mean you've got a router you want to get rid of? If so then drop me a PM.

I'd probably use Virgin myself if I was in one of their areas still, it was great!

Biggus_Dickus

tehone wrote: »

Fair enough - does that mean you've got a router you want to get rid of? If so then drop me a PM.

I'd probably use Virgin myself if I was in one of their areas still, it was great!

It’s a Huawei B535 4g router;...it has to go back to ‘Three’ I’m afraid.

tehone

Oh well. never mind, I'll look at these brand new and see if I want to get one

mnbvcxz

Bad luck, of all the possibilities for it to fall apart I never thought of them just refusing to honour the deal. Particularly grievous when the offer is still running and showing up as £20 when you click through!

Still silver lining at least it went wrong while you were still able to cancel.

Well done for trying to be a pioneer and blaze new ways forward. Sorry you paid the price...

Biggus_Dickus

mnbvcxz wrote: »

Bad luck, of all the possibilities for it to fall apart I never thought of them just refusing to honour the deal. Particularly grievous when the offer is still running and showing up as £20 when you click through!

Still silver lining at least it went wrong while you were still able to cancel.

Well done for trying to be a pioneer and blaze new ways forward. Sorry you paid the price...

‘Blaze’ being the operative word;...I went down in flames big time on this one.

As you say, I was able to cancel the contract so everything is back to square one;...however, if I’d bought it in the local ‘Three’ shop there is no ‘right to cancel’ so things may have been a whole lot worse.

I’d have got the contract at the ‘shop’ advertised price, that’s for sure,...but I may also have been stuck with an iffy internet service. It started very well,...but then developed worryingly long periods of ‘signal outage’ in the week or so that I had the 4G router.

Would ‘Three’ have allowed me to cancel a 24-month contract on the basis of random signal outages;...perhaps,...but knowing ‘Three’ from old, probably not. :eek: