Urgh – I hate to moan on and on about Three, but I will – partly to document, partly to moan, and just get it out of my system.
Firstly – I’ll say this – Three, when everything is working are THE BEST network for overall coverage (I’ve found) in most of the UK. They used to be appalling, they really sucked coverage wise and their Customer Service was appalling, now the coverage is generally good and the CS is a bit less shit.
Since Tuesday 29th October, the coverage at home has pretty much gone, everywhere else I go, it’s just as good as ever, but there is a fault with the mast that is metres from my door. It’s had a few wobbles in the past year, but it’s REALLY broken now. I spoke to the Twitter @ThreeUKSupport team on Tuesday and they confirmed there was a fault with the mast, annoying, but okay. Come Thursday, it was still faulty, I decided to bite the bullet and ring India to see what was happening.
The guy was perfectly polite, and took me through ‘troubleshooting’ which consisted of telling me to turn my phone off and on. He said there was a fault and it’d be fixed in two working days. I thanked him for his time, and said goodbye!
Two days later, still broken – so I decided to give it an extra day for luck and rang yesterday..
First off – if you’re having signal issues you can only really call Three on their National Rate number from a landline / other phone. Knowing that I’d be on hold for 10-15 minutes, I found an alternative Freephone number for Three – 0800 3588460 – Ring that and press 2 to get through to the normal CS.
Anyway – again, I got through to another rep, and he was polite. I was told some bad news though.. It would be ANOTHER five days. To say sorry, they’d credit £5 to my bill.
I lost my temper.
£5 for Twelve Days without service wasn’t really good enough.
The guy apologised and said he couldn’t do much as he was in First Line Support – I asked if I could talk to someone more senior, or in second line support. I couldn’t, the reason..?
“I’m sorry Sir, they are all busy at the moment working on your local mast”
Wow – REALLY? ALL of Three UK’s Senior people or Second Line Support were working on my mast and couldn’t take a call? I disbelieve that somehow.
My next line of questioning was perhaps loaning me a Home Signal device while the signal was down. For those not in the know, a Home Signal is a router sized box that plugs into your internet connection and creates a ‘mini phone mast’ for the household. They are used in areas where there is a poor signal, and Three also loan them to customers without signal – look here – or below..
The chap told me I could of course have a Home Signal. YAY! But – I could only have one AFTER they’ve fixed the fault.
HUH?
Yep, you read right, once I get my great signal back I can have a Home Signal box. I pointed out how ridiculous this was! The explanation was that the Home Signal box ‘boosts’ the signal from the mast. This is a lie. It doesn’t. The chap was adamant that I could only have one AFTER the fault was fixed, and he eventually said he’d refund my line rental (and Loz’s) for the period of downtime. (Around £30). That was satisfactory, although the lie about the Home Signal narked me.
I got in touch with the @ThreeUKSupport team and begged them for a Home Signal. I got this response..
I pointed out I’d seen it on their site that it said they do lend them out..
They didn’t reply.
I can tolerate shit customer service, I just can’t stand the LIES.
Right – that’s my last moan for now on Three. I’m as bored moaning about it as you probably are reading about it..
“I decided to bite the bullet and call India” … LOL :’D
I thought ‘My final Three moan’ would lead to you *actually leaving* – not just deciding to grin and bear it. Ah well.
It’s final in the sense that I just CBA to moan about them any longer, their PR / Customer Service team don’t really give a shit.
I’ve learnt if you want to be a Three Customer, you have to expect the signal / QoS itself is good (mostly) but the customer service would be better run by a team of lobotomised chimps.
I live in North London and recently both myself and my wife switched from O2 to Three. Their website coverage checker states our area is great for indoor and outdoor signal. Plus they undercut everyone on the contract we were both after. Sweet, I thought.
This was September. From day one there was zero signal in the flat (less than zero – an X and ‘Emergency calls only’ displayed constantly on our screens.
I contacted Three via email and twitter and got the usual turn-off-and-on-again thing, but mostly I’d get missed call notifications when I next went out (and picked up signal – two feet from my front door) that Three had been trying to call me.. on my phone.. that can’t receive calls.
Anyway, to cut a longer moan short(er) they finally did call the home number I’d been supplying them and was told over the period of a month and a half that there were mast issues and would be fixed by date A. This came and went. I rang back. Mast issues, will be fixed by date B, definitely? Yes, definitely. B came and went.
It’s not the mast they say, it’s scaffolding around building work near it.
This went on until I too discovered the Home Signal Box. I pretty much demanded it and finally got one a week or so ago after answering eligibility questions:
do we have a router with free Ethernet port? – yes
do you have unlimited internet? – yes, Sky unlimited, even pay the extra £7.50 a month so it’s truly unlimited
do you have a free plug socket? – yes thanks.
But here’s the rub, the box does indeed give us full bars, excellent phone signal in our flat. Perfect, could have done with this a month ago when I missed all those calls about my niece being born I thought to myself. However, despite the info on the HSB stating it only uses about half a gig (or something) a month of our internet, repeatedly if it is plugged in and idle – not being used by our phones, we can’t even load twitter on our phones, can’t stream Netflix through PS3, all wifi or ethernetted into the exact same router. The data connection essentially craps out.
It appears to overide even the wifi we’re connected to (full bars) and says nope.
And so we are in the position that I have to unplug the thing REPEATEDLY just to do things online, then remember to plug it back in. Ridiculous.
And so, now locked into almost another two years of this I am left with the vein hope that the advertised free 4G will be significantly better when it debuts in a month or so.
To state a positive my Three signal everywhere else is fine. Faster than O2 even. It is gutting.
To state a positive my Three signal everywhere else is fine. Faster than O2 even. It’s gutting.