3 Mobile Broadband www.three.co.uk

I purchased an excellent Samsung S7 edge from the three.co.uk company in

March this year, which at the time I thought was a good offer, 30gb of

4g data a month, including tethering (hot spot) to various tablets and

laptops in the house, due to the awful current broadband at home (which

is 20 miles from the nearest exchange).

The reason I chose the three network was it was the first company, I

believe, to allow your 3g or 4g in Europe at no extra cost (as part of

your current plan).

So I was delighted at the thought of going to Spain this year for two

weeks and not having to try and find any form of internet at all, as

generally the broadband in hotels is very weak, over used, hogged, or just out

of range totally.

The three plan, said "use you phone abroad as if you were using it at

home, in the feel at home plan - advanced", hence the £50 a month.

I don't like to give bad reviews, as I generally give good reviews,

but as soon as I tried to connect my phone in the hotel to my laptop

using "hot spot / tethering", a message came up, "your phone / plan

does not support tethering abroad, only at home", and this message kept

coming up on any item we used in the hotel, so I had wasted a load of

money on something which was absolutely not mentioned in my contract

at all with the company.

To make things worse, it was the worst 3g signal ever. When I did a

manual scan of all the network providers that we were allowed to go on,

via the three plan, all of them had 4g and 3g, and no matter how many

times I selected 4g, it went straight back to 3g, and 99% of the time

the signal strength in most parts of Ibiza was "h" which is less than

1g - there was defonately some form of control taking place there.

As a result, over the two week period, I managed to consume about only 30mb

out of a potential of 30gb, and this amount of data will never be

achievable not even at home.

I have to say, I was more impressed the year before, where I was on 02,

and paid a mere £1.99 a day for all the data I needed, even tethering.

So instead of paying a one off £27 odd with o2 for internet abroad (14 x 1.99), I

have ended up paying £50 a month for two years, for something which is

totally useless.

I did have 14 days to return the item, but ordered it much too soon

before my holidays, so the moral of this is, if you are buying a contract

to use for a week abroad, make sure you take the contract out just

before you go abroad, in case you have to cancel contract with the

14 day evaluation period.

Next time in two years, I am back with o2.

I am sorry if this feels like a bad review, but what a waste of £50 a month

now for 2 years, that is a lot of money - £1200 for nothing.

Good price plans. Reasonable coverage. Sales staff and customer service staff lack the appropriate training and enthusiasm. In car terms this is the car lot level of service, where they are in a market along with the likes of say, Mercedes Benz and Porsche. Point being, there is no sense of urgency or element of treating customers fairly.

I rarely write reviews but more recently, I have been compelled to share my experience.

I had been mis-sold an add on to my phone contract back in May 2014. I was told that the cost of also including an iPad would be an additional £5 a month. BARGAIN, I'll have that. Thanks 3, that's really good of you.

I asked the advisor to confirm this, on three occasions during our 70 minute chat, which he did.

I later found that I had been paying £25, in addition to my phone line rental.

When I spoke to 3, they had no record of this conversation because their call recordings are erased if the initial call was over a certain period of time.

Three have made no efforts to reimburse me for this and have further denied that I would be sold something on this basis.

I would have no inclination to take that offer if I had been given correct information.

Be very careful with this phone network. Sales and CS Staff are very incompetent, very robotic and are most certainly not UK based call centres.

I'm from Southampton.

I use it for at least 5 years now. Used to be good, a year or so ago it was great, now it is just bad

I have to admit that between 7am and 5pm i get great download speeds, up to 15 Mbps, really nice. Problem is I'm at work from 8:00 to 16:00.

While at work i use my mobile (also from three) with the One plan, and i have to admit I abuse it :D 70Gb of data downloaded a month average (You Tube in HD = 15 to 20MB per minute :))

Problem:

I get home at 16:07 :D still getting good download speeds on BOTH devices 10-15Mbps, but after 5 pm, it magically goes down to 0.1-0.9Mbps. WTH

Weekends: 1.0-2.0Mbps only till 5pm, cause after 5pm is same as weekdays.

If You are a gamer AVOID like fire.

Oh, almost forgot.

PING from 60ms to wait for it, wait for it....850ms LOL, it gets so slow at times, that browser refuses to load a web page,

As far as I'm aware, three has introduced some kind of a software to divide download capacity (fairly) between all users, and that this software kicks in at peak, evening times.

Solution: Switch the bloody thing off, used to be better, never had problem with connection before. I understand that more people are going with three nowadays, unlimited mobile data is addictive and super useful. But if that is the case IMPROVEMENT should be a priority. Plus mobile broadband (dongle one) is limited to 15GB (unlike on mobile phone with unlimited or TheOne plan) so please let me use it, give download priority (wider channel) for dongle users, its limited, so it will not get abused.

Side note for smart ones :P

Issue IS NOT area related (tested it all around Southampton)

Issue IS NOT hardware related (got fastest available modem, and smartphone)

Issue IS time related

seigneur je suis tres fatigues,j suis ne fatigues,je

What the hell is going on with 3?

I started using a 3 mobile dongle some years ago and it was brilliant, both at home and on the move. Now though, a few years down the line, I just use it at home and it is absolutely appalling. I have found that the only time I can get online with few problems is between midnight and 3pm, not very good if you're asleep or out during the day! Between 3pm and midnight is an absolute nightmare, never had this problem in the first few years.

What is there to like about 3? At the moment, nothing!

Time to ditch 3? Maybe, if things don't improve very soon!

Would I recommend 3 to a friend? At the moment, no!

I have been on three for around three years, hmm coincidence.

started with a 3.6mb dongle which was fine, could get 1.5mbps download all day long, upgraded to a 7.2mbps dongle and again it was fine 3mbps all day long 6mbps on the night. im currently still using the 7.2mbps dongle and for the last month their service has been absolutely appalling, i was expecting there to be work going on the network but a call to customer services verified their was no work happening and it should be fine.

seriously im lucky if i get 0.5mbps download and 1.6mbps upload (the upload has always been of that speed.)

sadly this is the case even on the night.

if you asked me 1 month ago i would have been singing threes praises but as of rite now and for the foreseeable future since it should be fine i wouldn't touch three with a bargepole.

The first review I have written! So appalled by threes customer service over the past year. I just called to end my contract. I told them why and I was disconnected ... Sums it up. Please don't bother .. You cannot top up your allowance, aggressive sales people who will not take no for an answer. Can t even get a password to enter my account

I am writing this knowing that before I reach the submit button, the connection will be already dead. I am using a PC in London It used to be just slow, now after some works, if you just read a page without constantly loading something, connection goes from working HSDPA to 3G with 0 kbps speed. It requires re-starting to have 10 sec to press the submit button before it goes dead again.

total boll ocks thats all i have to say on the matter.

I guess people only review when something is wrong. So I will try and balance that a bit.

What 3 service do I use?

The one Plan

Cost:

£32 a month

Features:

tethering - unlimited internet - minutes im not sure without checking. Think it's 2000 + 5000 3to3 texts again cant remember never got near - around 10000

So why am I so happy?

Tethering and unlimited internet.

I was previously a virgin broadband customer for my home broadband and phone. At a cost of over £30 a month - only 10 Meg internet because I signed up over a year ago.. no upgrade without signing a new contract. Constant connection issues. Wifi router they provide SUCKS.

Now on 3 - I get 10Mbps download speed at home constantly - 2.5mbps upload speed. This is the same as I had with virgin - but with less freezes - a steadier service - and averaging around 30ms latency.

I regularly use 80GB + month of data - no extra charge - no throttling - no limits.. truely unlimited internet .. even peaked at 120gb one month.. no issues at all.

I really dont understand people paying so much for dongle contracts and then coming on here complaining, virtually any phone on the one plan will act as a tether - via wifi hotspot or connected directly to your phone.

Recently dropped my phone - needed a quick replacement while I waited on insurance replacement - bought a cheap alcatel - expected a drop in performance for tethering - not at all! still 10mbps + at home steady.

I'm a courier - I drive all over the country - yes there are places it drops out. But I've been on several networks and had the same problems the same amount of times. In the last year - I have lost service where i Noticed it maybe 4 times.. I drive around 80000 miles a year around the UK and am a very heavy user of my data - sat nav - emails - phone - etc, all work when i need them to. Speed drops in more rural areas to around 1 or 2 megs.. but that's not abnormal on any network.

Very Happy.