My new Three balance - enough to buy a Broadband Light Package at last

Yesterday I made public my dissatisfaction with Three for taking my 10 pounds but charging me £1 per megabyte before I could convert it into a month’s Mobile Broadband.

So it is only fair to tell you about their follow-up to a complaint I sent by email.

Last night – within 24 hours of my complaint, I had a voicemail asking me to call them regarding my email complaint, and shortly afterwards the phone rang again; Three customer service, very concerned that I was not satisfied and within a couple of minutes my £10 credit was reinstated with an explanation of how to use this to purchase the broadband add-on.  I can’t complain about this standard of service – and I have heard plenty of negatives about it, so congratulations Three, I am much happier now.

The remaining problem is that  their advice was to ensure that only internet explorer is active and that no other application is using the internet while purchasing future credits.  But all computers will attempt to make dozens of internet connections invisibly – ranging from checking email, updating windows, updating anti-virus, updating all manner of other programs, checking the time, Skype and so on – even viruses themselves!  It isn’t realistic to expect the home user to know how to disable all of this traffic – perhaps those who can “ban all internet traffic” with a firewall program will be best equipped to do this, but then access to the Three website would be blocked. 

I will therefore ensure in the future that I have a printed Three top-up voucher from a shop before attemting to use the online top-up service again.  This allows you to browse free of charge (as long as your three account has no credit at all) to the Three website and input the voucher code while at the same time converting it to Broadband.  Upon pressing the submit button the service will be activated.

One remaining question then.  How many people purchase a ten pound voucher and use it up with their first 10 megabytes?  I know someone who did this thrice before asking me why their 3G didn’t work apart from the first 2 minutes.  Another question then.  How much do Three make from this unnecessarily confusing system?  If you have fallen victim to this, then you may like to know that you can call Three customer service on a normal mobile number 07782 333333 and avoid the 12 pence per minute !! fee for dialing their 500 number.   (If you want to speak to someone on this number instead of listen to menu options, press 0 # in quick succession.)  Lets see if they are nice to you as they were to me last night.

Three 3G only £1,024 per Gigabyte

No T-Mobile coverage today so I decided to activate my Three 3G PAYG service. Plugged it in, connected it up and as expected no websites are available except the Three website itself, where you can pay your ten pounds and get a months worth of internet access, or so I thought.

I hadn’t registered a card with Three, but no worries – it said the first time you do so a ten pound charge would be applied to the account which could then be converted into a 1 month mobile broadband service, and so I paid up.

The thank you screen included a link to click to convert the purchase into broadband but when I did so the internet services all sprung into life before I was able to convert my purchase into broadband, and I was being charged an unbelievable £1 per MEGABYTE – thats £1,024 per Gigabyte.  This is totally unfair and totally out of order Three.

So after 30 seconds of retrying I was clearly on the verge of spending all my credit. It had cost me something betweem 94p and £1.46 (their website contradicted iteslf) to discover I no longer had enough credit to convert my £10 to broadband, and so the only option was to pull the 3G connection before it spent all my money.  I couldn’t go back to pay more as they need 7 days to re-use the newly registered card.

Normally I praise Three for their network coverage and 3G speed especially where other providers fail.  But this time I am absolutely disgusted with forcing me to waste ten quid – so please be warned – don’t try this at home!  And to rub salt into the wound, T-Mobile works perfectly here in Northwich after all.