Anyone on 3?

Zapp Brannigan

Thinking of maybe porting over to them to get an N73? They seem pretty dear for calls but excellent for texts which is a big bonus for me.
Just wanna see if anyone else is on 3 and if they can tell me if its any good. I'm currently with Vodafone so pretty much any network will prolly be better.

Rockiemalt

I had a three phone for about a month. Where I live the signal isn't great on any network and three was no worse that vodafone. o2 or meteor. I had no problems with it at all and wouldn't hesitate to change to them. Another good thing is if you are away roaming calls cost the same as here in ireland. Had to give it back after a month and was very sad to part with it.

Zapp Brannigan

Cool, what were their 'Live' and 3G services like?

Rockiemalt

The 3G stuff is pretty good, lots of little videos and things to watch, weird news stories and videos to go woth them. 3 music store is great also if thats your kinda thing.

thund3rbird_

just changed over myself & got this phone

previously with O2 & had no 3G signal unless I was within 2 miles of the city

no probs with it on 3, haven't lost 3g signal yet (in a 10mile radius) & phone is set to dual mode

phone is good, camera crystal clear, plenty of apps / settings / features to explore. bluetooth to headset / Mac is fine.

still playing around with the phone so not fully up to speed yet.

only issue so far is having to look at dunphy in 'services' on planet3 :eek:


PS: woo hoo - 250 posts

Minto

I've been on 3 since christmas. Porting my number over from vodafone was an absolute disaster, took nearly 3 weeks. Also, the call centre is outsourced to India (I think) and I didn't find them too helpful. Also lately, I seem to be having trouble texting to meteor sometimes, but that could be due to dropping it on the wooden floor in my room, but maybe not. I must bring it into the shop one of these days **makes note to self**. Other than that, it has been an absolute pleasure being on 3, the texts are cheap (Yay!), the downloads are brilliant and I find the coverage to be good also. I only wish they had 3g coverage in Tramore though.

rogue-entity

I have been with 3 for about 18 months. They were a little rocky at the start with a few issues and glitches popping up here and there, but things have smoothed out in the last few months. I have an N73 with them now, and I am happy to stick with them. If I had to choose an alternative, I would move back to O2.

Pros:
Cheapest rates: 30/35c to any number in Ireland or Britain (bar the obvious ones like 18/15 numbers). 30c a minute for some european countries as well. Free Voicemail if you are a 3Pay customer, included in your bundle/15c if you are Bill Pay.
Loads of content on their portal, with plenty of video content and the music store also.

Cons:
No open internet access, you can only access "Planet3" and select mobile websites. So you cannot use your phone as a 3G modem, nor can you access the regular internet, check your regular email.
Wierd repeating texts when texting customers on foreign networks without a roaming agreement with 3.
Admin fee for unlocking your phone.

What you should do is pop over to callcosts.ie and plumb in your useage figures. It will work out the cheapest tariff to go with, and if you dont like the phones/network etc, switch to the cheapest plan on the network you want to use. 3 worked out cheapest for me.

Sam Vimes

rogue-entity wrote:

Pros:
Cheapest rates: 30/35c to any number in Ireland or Britain (bar the obvious ones like 18/15 numbers). 30c a minute for some european countries as well. Free Voicemail if you are a 3Pay customer, included in your bundle/15c if you are Bill Pay.

how is 30/35c the cheapest? meteor is 20c to non-meteor numbers and 5c to meteors. the roaming may be cheaper, i haven't checked but they're definitely not cheaper in ireland. and meteor's voicemail is free on prepay and bill

rogue-entity wrote:

Admin fee for unlocking your phone.

and if you're in contract they won't give you the code unless you end the contract and pay it off

rogue-entity wrote:

What you should do is pop over to callcosts.ie and plumb in your useage figures. It will work out the cheapest tariff to go with, and if you dont like the phones/network etc, switch to the cheapest plan on the network you want to use. 3 worked out cheapest for me.

i don't think callcosts is a very good resource because it doesn't take account of very important things like free meteor-meteor calls on talk 300 or free meteor-meteor texts on all tariffs and prepay

another con: on april 17th, the bill pay customer care is moving to mumbia in india. the prepay care is already there. one of their scottish staff posted on boards to say there's loads of complaints about them in england. apparently they don't have very good english

rogue-entity

Commander Vimes wrote:

how is 30/35c the cheapest? meteor is 20c to non-meteor numbers and 5c to meteors. the roaming may be cheaper, i haven't checked but they're definitely not cheaper in ireland. and meteor's voicemail is free on prepay and bill

http://www.meteor.ie/payg_plans_anytime.html
According to this, Meteor charge 20c to Meteor numbers and Irish landlines/mobiles only, they charge you 50c to call UK numbers. I have a lot of friends in the UK, so 3 are cheaper, especially since I can use my monthly minutes to make the calls. For all my other international calls, I use Skype.

Cheaper rates to other Meteor numbers is rather pointless when most people are O2 and Vodafone users. Everyone in my addressbook is either O2 or Vodafone, with just ONE meteor number. Now if the OP knows a lot of friends on meteor, then Meteor would work out cheaper, but otherwise, this is not much use.

It was better for me to say 3 are cheaper for me considering my circumstances.

Commander Vimes wrote:

and if you're in contract they won't give you the code unless you end the contract and pay it off

This is actually standard practise, you bought a phone on contract, the network "loans" you money in the form of a subsidy on the price. Until you pay back this in the form of your line rental, then you can't unlock the phone. To think otherwise is purely selfish and rather silly. What I am pointing out is the unfair charge to get your unlock code, when you are out of contract.

Commander Vimes wrote:

i don't think callcosts is a very good resource because it doesn't take account of very important things like free meteor-meteor calls on talk 300 or free meteor-meteor texts on all tariffs and prepay

Actually, this is a mute point, if everyone on your phone book is O2 or Vodafone, you wont be able to take advantage of the offer.

Commander Vimes wrote:

another con: on april 17th, the bill pay customer care is moving to mumbia in india. the prepay care is already there. one of their scottish staff posted on boards to say there's loads of complaints about them in england. apparently they don't have very good english

This is true, and I will miss the current call center. But I havent ever had a problem dealing with people in India, I usualy have no problems understanding foreign accents what so ever, if anything, they have problems understanding me.

Sam Vimes

rogue-entity wrote:

http://www.meteor.ie/payg_plans_anytime.html
According to this, Meteor charge 20c to Meteor numbers and Irish landlines/mobiles only, they charge you 50c to call UK numbers. I have a lot of friends in the UK, so 3 are cheaper, especially since I can use my monthly minutes to make the calls. For all my other international calls, I use Skype.

so 3 are cheaper for calling england but not ireland. anyone who regularly calls another country would be rather silly to use a mobile since there are far cheaper ways such as skype as you suggested. and you'd have to be calling england an awful lot to offset the 10c/15c extra a minute you pay for every irish minute.

rogue-entity wrote:

Cheaper rates to other Meteor numbers is rather pointless when most people are O2 and Vodafone users. Everyone in my addressbook is either O2 or Vodafone, with just ONE meteor number. Now if the OP knows a lot of friends on meteor, then Meteor would work out cheaper, but otherwise, this is not much use.

i know only one person on o2. everyone else is on meteor. and even without that they're still the cheapest

callcosts.ie doesn't take account of meteor's excellent offers so you can try that out and try to knock meteor off the top spot. on prepay, the only way i've found is if you make all your calls mon-fri daytime, speakeasy early bird is slightly cheaper. 3 were never near the top. bill pay is a different story because you really need to be calling meteor numbers to make it massively cheaper.

rogue-entity wrote:

This is actually standard practise, you bought a phone on contract, the network "loans" you money in the form of a subsidy on the price. Until you pay back this in the form of your line rental, then you can't unlock the phone. To think otherwise is purely selfish and rather silly. What I am pointing out is the unfair charge to get your unlock code, when you are out of contract.

its not standard practice in any way. all the other networks give bill pay customers unlock codes with no hassle because they know they're in contract and will have to give them the money anyway

rogue-entity wrote:

Actually, this is a mute point, if everyone on your phone book is O2 or Vodafone, you wont be able to take advantage of the offer.

as i pointed out, on prepay meteor are still the cheapest even without these offers. bill pay is a slightly different story. if you don't call any meteor numbers 3 is usually cheaper. until you run out of minutes of course, where they go to 30c and meteor goes to 20c

rogue-entity wrote:

This is true, and I will miss the current call center. But I havent ever had a problem dealing with people in India, I usualy have no problems understanding foreign accents what so ever, if anything, they have problems understanding me.

i've only called them once and when i asked to be transferred to the bill pay section because she couldn't help me, she refused to because she said they were closed. i tried to explain that they're 24 hour but she wouldn't listen.


the main problem with 3 is not their prices. they can be the cheapest under certain circumstances (not my own). the problem is their increasingly stupid policies. i've found myself over and over saying to myself "do they not want customers" for a variety of reasons

constitutionus

well i switched to 3 back in september. mainly to get me hands on the nokia 6280 which all the other outlets decided they werent going to support. i have had a few problems with the hand set what with the volume/zoom button breaking. heres a hint, 3 make you post your phone in to be repaired. the shop you bought it from wont take it back. they'll tell you that what you have to do is ring their service number (083 with seven 3's after it) .this gets you through to india where they take your details (ya have to have your imei number) and then send out the envelope to you to post off the phone which you should get back in 3 working days.

in fairness they were very fast for a postal system and the phone came back with a guarantee 90 day from the company they subcontract to fix it. so if it goes tits up on the last month of your nokia guarantee you still get coverd for another two months from them.

besides that though my experience with 3 has been brilliant. i mainly text and got in on the 5c text deal they did over the winter period and its a godsend. i can text , picture text and video text for the same price to any of my mates on any network for the same price. i got 10 euro free credit for buying the phone and when i ported over my number from vodafone i got another 10euro free credit. the deal after that was every time i put on 10 they'd give me 10 up untill march which ive been using to abuse the hell out of the 99c a track deal they did on the 3music store site. i frequently use the movie and news sites to catch up on movie previews, news and weather forcasts which are all free. dont like the dunphy one mainly cause i prefer him as a political and media analysts than as a sport pundit. but if thats your gig its not a bad show (and hey, its free )

all in all its been one of the best things ive done what which the sheer amount of money im saving on texts. the down side is theres no free webtexts but ive never sent so many MMS in my life so its working out even for me. they keep this up i'll probaly stick with em for the forseeable future.:)

quintron

http://www.consumerassociation.ie/rights_retailers.html

if you bought it in the shop, shop is legally obliged to replace it if its faulty. Shouldn't have to return it via post.
If you bought online thats a different story..

1huge1

Been with 3 since November 2005 a bumpy ride that now seems to have straightened itself out

dont look forward to having to talk to the indians (due to their accent, nothing else of course) that was one of the perks of being on bill pay talking to the scottish

their 3G coverage is best by a long shot, im on the €25 (now €22.50 for me) with 100mins and 100 texts, very handy
Not happy with the internet, not being able to access gmail is very annoying

had a few problems but mostly good
was very pleased to recieve a phone call a few weeks back from 3 asking me to renew my contract for 12 months and in return got a free phone (choice of 3 and i went with the nokia 6280) they reduced my monthly bill by 10% and also sent me a free 3pay sim card with €10 free credit handy backup

plonk

1huge1 wrote:

had a few problems but mostly good
was very pleased to recieve a phone call a few weeks back from 3 asking me to renew my contract for 12 months and in return got a free phone (choice of 3 and i went with the nokia 6280) they reduced my monthly bill by 10% and also sent me a free 3pay sim card with €10 free credit handy backup

How???

Sam Vimes

1huge1 wrote:

was very pleased to recieve a phone call a few weeks back from 3 asking me to renew my contract for 12 months and in return got a free phone (choice of 3 and i went with the nokia 6280) they reduced my monthly bill by 10% and also sent me a free 3pay sim card with €10 free credit handy backup

nice of them. they rewarded me for being one of their first customers (august 2005) by making me pay 170 euro for my upgrade. if only i'd known....

1huge1 wrote:

sent me a free 3pay sim card with €10 free credit handy backup

that credit expires and the sim card becomes useless after about two months non use

frosty_007 wrote:

They DO have external web access and I currently use the email section inside my message folder to retrieve emails sent to my eircom account for free!!! it only costs to send email.

its not free anymore and its not really web access. they have a limited number of pre-selected sites, a lot of which don't actually work if you try them. their claim is "they only provide sites that will display properly on the phone" which is of course a lie. if they provided proper web access, pretty much no one would use their portal. as we saw a few months ago when the walled garden was accidentally dropped for a few hours, the technology is in place to provide full access and they deliberately disable it


as some of you will know, i was one of their greatest advocates and their greatest defenders until about three weeks after i upgraded. that's when the nightmare started

The_Hustler

quintron wrote:

http://www.consumerassociation.ie/rights_retailers.html

if you bought it in the shop, shop is legally obliged to replace it if its faulty. Shouldn't have to return it via post.
If you bought online thats a different story..

And even if you bought it online with a bit of pressure they will still send it off for you. And they made it perfectly clear to me that had it been bought in the shop there would have been no problem.

rogue-entity

Commander Vimes wrote:

so 3 are cheaper for calling england but not ireland. anyone who regularly calls another country would be rather silly to use a mobile since there are far cheaper ways such as skype as you suggested. and you'd have to be calling england an awful lot to offset the 10c/15c extra a minute you pay for every irish minute.

Well it would seem that way, but for me, 3 were cheaper, though when I switched, that wasnt the reason, it just turned out to be a convenient fact.

Commander Vimes wrote:

i know only one person on o2. everyone else is on meteor. and even without that they're still the cheapest

All your friends are on Meteor, all mine are O2/Vodafone. Under different circumstances, I may have switched to Meteor, but at present, it is not an option.

Commander Vimes wrote:

callcosts.ie doesn't take account of meteor's excellent offers so you can try that out and try to knock meteor off the top spot. on prepay, the only way i've found is if you make all your calls mon-fri daytime, speakeasy early bird is slightly cheaper. 3 were never near the top. bill pay is a different story because you really need to be calling meteor numbers to make it massively cheaper.

The reason they dont take these offers into account is simplicity and poor design. They should have added something like, what network are most of your contacts with, then if they select Meteor, it could take the offers into account, making Meteor an excellent choice for them, as it is for you. But as you said, for bill pay it is a different story, and I am a bill customer and 3 worked out cheaper for me.

Commander Vimes wrote:

its not standard practice in any way. all the other networks give bill pay customers unlock codes with no hassle because they know they're in contract and will have to give them the money anyway

Well it is with O2, I had been with them for 4 years, and they would never give me my unlock code until I had topped up to more then 130Eur. They said that the procedure was similar for their contract customers and that until the customer had either reached the end of the contract or bought it out, they would not give out the Code.

Commander Vimes wrote:

as i pointed out, on prepay meteor are still the cheapest even without these offers. bill pay is a slightly different story. if you don't call any meteor numbers 3 is usually cheaper. until you run out of minutes of course, where they go to 30c and meteor goes to 20c

And as you just pointed out, for me, being a contract customer on 3, 3 are cheaper. It does surprise me that 3 are charging 30c for their calls. Comparing O2's ActiveLife €20/mo offer, you get your calls for 35c, Vodafone's ActiveFit 30, is the same, 35c outside your minutes. O2 and Voda give you 40 and 30 minutes per month, 3 give you 200 (or 100minutes/100texts). Meteor Talk gets you 60 inclusive minutes, and Meteor Minutes gives you 75minutes/75texts. They are still cheaper for their excluded calls though, I will give you that. But 3 will be providing other things to offset this in the form of X-Series which I think will make or break them. If X-Series, which will officially support the use of Skype on your handset, works as planned, then it will make them even more attractive over Meteor IMHO.

Commander Vimes wrote:

i've only called them once and when i asked to be transferred to the bill pay section because she couldn't help me, she refused to because she said they were closed. i tried to explain that they're 24 hour but she wouldn't listen.

That is pretty bad alright, but so far *touches wood* I havent had a bad experience with them yet, I have had far worse experiences with Dell.

Commander Vimes wrote:

the main problem with 3 is not their prices. they can be the cheapest under certain circumstances (not my own). the problem is their increasingly stupid policies. i've found myself over and over saying to myself "do they not want customers" for a variety of reasons

Now, on this I will agree with you, but, I am the early-adopter type and I know that this brings with it the risk that you will have a bumpy ride. I am willing to put up with minor (and in some cases major) issues for the sake of being able to use the latest-and-greatest. Meteor dont have a 3G network and they certainly wont be letting anyone use Skype anytime soon, so 3 are more appealing to me in this respect. Vodafone I wont touch with a 50ft pole because IMHO they are just a ripoff, and O2 were pretty good, but expensive if you are a prepay user, and their data charges are just brutal, though I will take them over 3s non-internet service any day, which is why I put my O2 SIM in my old 6680 after I unlocked it and reflashed it to v5.

Solair

Be *extremely* careful about the stand by and talk time ratings of your chosen handset. Phones use a lot more juice on a 3G network than they do on a normal GSM 2.5/2.75G network.

I have a Sony Ericsson handset on 3 and the talk time is pathetic.
(Batterys not faulty, it's in the specs!)

Sam Vimes

rogue-entity wrote:

Well it is with O2, I had been with them for 4 years, and they would never give me my unlock code until I had topped up to more then 130Eur.

i was talking about contract customers. all the networks require that you top up by 130 euro on pre pay.

rogue-entity wrote:

They said that the procedure was similar for their contract customers and that until the customer had either reached the end of the contract or bought it out, they would not give out the Code.

its not. they just give people the codes. i've seen it happen dozens of times.

plonk

Im very happy with 3, I had a few issues at the start but now I find them fine. Ive been with them since august 2005 on the 25euro a month package. The only thing that annoys me though is there lack of packages
(which I think is a problem with most networks)


If you are on talk 200 u get 200 minutes for 25 euro then if you go to 45 euro 200 minutes and 200 texts its 2euro dearer than if you just got the 25euro package and sent 200 texts.

In other words they should give you more texts for the same amount of minutes.

In the video talk 200 u pay 12.5c a minute which is dirtcheap but if you change to talk and text 200 you pay 16c a minute

In video talk 400 you pay 11.25c a minute but if you change to talk and text 400 you pay 14.5 cent a minute.

They are by far the cheapest if you dont use your phone too much. But they need more packages and offers

hosi

Solair wrote:

I have a Sony Ericsson handset on 3 and the talk time is pathetic.
(Batterys not faulty, it's in the specs!)

I can confirm that! That's one of the reasons why I have recently upgraded software in my K800. Now I can choose between 3G and GSM network (I don't use their portal anyway). Now I don't need to charge my phone every two days anymore...

1huge1

plonk wrote:

How???

wish I knew mate
im hardly their most deserving customer like, im on on the €25 price plan
just got a phone call out of the blue
yet i've heard of no one else getting the same deal as of yet
name out of a hat???

superdudeman007

Their 3G features (mobile video etc) are much cheaper and way better than Vodafone. RTE News, Sky etc charge €1 a clip on Vodafone. On 3, clips from RTE and ITN are free and you can either download or just watch them. It's a much better service.

I hate the customer service though. I'm not sure but I think that 3 is one of those English companies that moved all their call centres to Mumbai. I'm not racist or anything but it's annoying when you have a problem with your phone and the guy that's supposed to be helping you can hardly understand what you're saying and knows nothing about Ireland (locations of stores, where to get credit, coverage etc).

joerules

I've been with them since last August and have been bill-pay since November. Cheap calls/texts, brilliant 3G coverage and a nice portal (no full net access though if that's what you're interested in).

But if you run into problems and have to deal with their call centre in India then Good luck. My mother, when registering her 3 phone, handed the phone over to me mid-call and made me continue the registration process. She couldn't understand a word the woman was saying. That was interesting.

Other than that I've had a great time with them. In France now and roaming is working great. I can't wait to go to Hong Kong next month and try out the 3 at home roaming.

1huge1

superdudeman007 wrote:

Their 3G features (mobile video etc) are much cheaper and way better than Vodafone. RTE News, Sky etc charge €1 a clip on Vodafone. On 3, clips from RTE and ITN are free and you can either download or just watch them. It's a much better service.

I hate the customer service though. I'm not sure but I think that 3 is one of those English companies that moved all their call centres to Mumbai. I'm not racist or anything but it's annoying when you have a problem with your phone and the guy that's supposed to be helping you can hardly understand what you're saying and knows nothing about Ireland (locations of stores, where to get credit, coverage etc).

3 are not english there based in Hong Kong (would you call them chinese then? I dont know), anyways your right though it'll be a shame to see the scottish call centre go

superdudeman007

I've called their Customer Care line a few times because I can't check my balance on 444 (it just asks for the 3 number I want to top up ) and I've never been put through to someone I could understand or that knew much about Ireland. I don't blame the staff but when I spend €350 on a phone I expect them to know something about the people they're dealing with.

lfc1892

superdudeman007 wrote:

I've called their Customer Care line a few times because I can't check my balance on 444 (it just asks for the 3 number I want to top up ) and I've never been put through to someone I could understand or that knew much about Ireland. I don't blame the staff but when I spend €350 on a phone I expect them to know something about the people they're dealing with.

I agree, local knowledge counts for everything! Cultural knowledge is very important.

NatWest in the UK are really going to town on this one in their ads and rightly so

The_Hustler

superdudeman007 wrote:

I've called their Customer Care line a few times because I can't check my balance on 444 (it just asks for the 3 number I want to top up ) and I've never been put through to someone I could understand or that knew much about Ireland. I don't blame the staff but when I spend €350 on a phone I expect them to know something about the people they're dealing with.

I can help you there. I'm guessing you have ID witheld on your calls. 444 can't see your number either so you'll have to reveal your number when calling it.

Sam Vimes

superdudeman007 wrote:

I hate the customer service though. I'm not sure but I think that 3 is one of those English companies that moved all their call centres to Mumbai.

this is true

1huge1 wrote:

3 are not english there based in Hong Kong (would you call them chinese then? I dont know), anyways your right though it'll be a shame to see the scottish call centre go

hutchison is from hong kong but the branch in ireland is basically being run by the english crowd