3 as a network...

jimmycrackcorm

Skary wrote:

Here is a thought... If you are all so "anti the indians" (which seems to be the main gripe) why dont you all write up a list of your problems and issues and fax it into their Head Office in Dublin so that an IRISH person can look at your complaints. Their Fax number is on their website. I really dont think that all your problems are going to be resolved by ranting to each other - all you are doing is adding fuel to each others fires. Someone made a comment about 77k customers and that they are lucky that they have 1 happy customer - to me, anyone I know that has been on 3 for some time all love it and are really happy with any service received - so it seems that there are a handful of unhappy people who are just ranting here - why dont you DO SOMETHING about it??? By all means if you think that picketing outside their HQ in Dublin is a mature way of solving all your lifes problems, then by all means do that - If I walked past you on the street I would probably laugh and feel sorry for you - but realistically , if you hate them that much and think they are disgusting and wouldnt trust them to "run a junk yard" then why are you all still on 3? Legs - you should be ashamed of yourself - downloading enough to entertain the whole of ireland for weeks on end - only to dispute it every month. Take responsibility for what you are doing. If you want to download 3 weeks worth of viewing in one day then get NTL or Eircom broadband - (oh wait - they are not as reliable/fast are they?)
One of you should get a job with 3 and SHOW them how to "run an efficient Business" GO ON... I dare ya...

I don't think that anyone is specifically anti-Indian only that Three have sub-contracted support to a Call-Centre that happens to be in India but is effectively useless.

Nobody needs to go picketing however as it is after all only a mobile company, however for someone on a contract then they are stuck with 3 until it is finished.

My own gripes are not so bad because I was able to return my billpay phone within the 14 days but I was astonished that I just could not stick that sim into my N95 or any other phone. So I got a Prepay phone which I didn't need but the sim works, but why don't they simply sell or give new customers a low-price sim like other operators?. I don't expect blanket 3G coverage however I find the rural coverage very bad for normal voice use.

I'm only with 3 for the mobile broadband but not only does that break down fairly often but it is severly restricted on the phone when it does work. Every page goes through 3's page formatter. E.g. when I went to look up a bus route on dublin bus, it would not work. My Gmail client or any other application doesn't work either. Their only saving grace is the cheap broadband but given that I can only use it for web browsing I'd be better off on a 25mb tarriff elsewhere.

I too am waiting for O2 to bring out their 3G offering to move to. I just cannot understand why 3 are so anti-customer.

Solair

It's not the nationality of the call centre staff that I object to it's the fact that they're completely unable to provide me with the information that I need or even information about the correct network. I have, on several occasions, been given information about Three UK.

It's not the call centre staff's fault. It's the entire structure of their customer "care" system.

What I feel is that they were all sweetness and light when they were trying to get me tied into a 12 month contract and as soon as I was signed up, they've provided me with absolutely pathetically poor after sales service.

I do think it's important to have some local staff on the ground in Ireland. Even if most of the calls are handled by their call centres in India or the UK or wherever for the majority of mundane issues, they need local trouble shooters for major issues. It's unfair to put staff on the phone who clearly don't have the correct information. It's only going to mean that they get grief and it's unfair to put customers through having to deal with staff who have no information, misinformation and are clearly working off a computer database that's telling them each step of the call as they go.

That's not customer service. It's just putting someone on the end of the phone to fob people off!

Without being "anti-british" Three Ireland smacks of UK-style customer care i.e. the customer's always wrong. I've had very similar experiences from various UK phone companies (landline and mobile) while living in England.
i.e. painfully over the top contracts, lots of legalities and tieing people in legal knots and lousey customer care and support.

Urban Weigl

For the record, I too do not have any issue with the Indian staff. I don't mind talking to them, and can actually understand them well enough. The problem is that they are not in any position to help with anything but the most basic requests, and even there customers seem to be running into problems. That's not the fault of the Indian support staff, it's 3's fault. Like I have said before, if I were an investor or shareholder (in 3), I'd want heads to roll. The company is being mismanaged to the point where they have less than 2% market share after being in the business for quite a while now. And they even seem to have trouble keeping base stations functional, in some areas keeping up with Vodafone's and now even O2's 3G coverage, and the basics such as provisioning services and add ons. In my own case, they were unable to provision the mobile broadband add on for me. It intermittently worked between "no packet data connection available" errors, and when it did work, many pages would not even load. And that was on bill pay, not prepay.

jimmycrackcorm

Urban, what you describe is basically how I experience the mobile broadband. It seems to me, and I work in web application development, that 3's mobile broadband service is seriously deficient. Their front line service is up to scratch, in that they can efectively deliver the video clips and so on that the emphasize is core to their offering. However the mobile broadband solution doesn't seem to scale up or has a huge bottleneck in the servers repaginating internet sites.

While the service makes a pretty good attempt at reproducing the content into a small screen format, it is not capable of delivering it. They can deliver their front line pages such as a realtime 3pay credit remaining effectively, yet as soon as you wander off to the internet, it takes forever to get a web page back?

The potential is there but the management is scargillish. What they need is a Ryanair approach instead off protectionist one.

Sam Vimes

jimmycrackcorm wrote:

Urban, what you describe is basically how I experience the mobile broadband. It seems to me, and I work in web application development, that 3's mobile broadband service is seriously deficient. Their front line service is up to scratch, in that they can efectively deliver the video clips and so on that the emphasize is core to their offering. However the mobile broadband solution doesn't seem to scale up or has a huge bottleneck in the servers repaginating internet sites.

While the service makes a pretty good attempt at reproducing the content into a small screen format, it is not capable of delivering it. They can deliver their front line pages such as a realtime 3pay credit remaining effectively, yet as soon as you wander off to the internet, it takes forever to get a web page back?

The potential is there but the management is scargillish. What they need is a Ryanair approach instead off protectionist one.

i must say, of all the complaints i have against 3, the mobile bb isn't one of them. it pretty much always works perfectly and quickly.

btw, get opera mini, its a much better browser than any of the built in ones

culabula

Commander Vimes wrote:

i must say, of all the complaints i have against 3, the mobile bb isn't one of them. it pretty much always works perfectly and quickly.

Are you using mobile BB on a handset only? Pre-pay? Can you now use it with a laptop or is there still that proxy carry-on?

Urban Weigl

Commander Vimes wrote:

i must say, of all the complaints i have against 3, the mobile bb isn't one of them. it pretty much always works perfectly and quickly.

btw, get opera mini, its a much better browser than any of the built in ones

Good for you, and I hope it keeps working for you. Alas, not all of us have been as lucky.

Sam Vimes

culabula wrote:

Are you using mobile BB on a handset only? Pre-pay? Can you now use it with a laptop or is there still that proxy carry-on?

usually handset only but i've plugged it into a computer a few times an it worked. its bill pay

culabula

Commander Vimes wrote:

usually handset only but i've plugged it into a computer a few times an it worked. its bill pay

Bill pay? Rats. Trying to help a mate stuck in hospital for the next two months and we bought him a pre-pay LG830 yesterday. Trying to set it up for use with a Mac over the phone (mobile BB added).

legs11

i sent Harish Venugopal
3 Customer Services

a link with all this talk a moment ago replying to a mail he sent me,
they are a total disaster.......

culabula

Can anyone clue me up about 3 ireland's mobile broadband add-ons?

a) Can the prepay flavour still not be used with a laptop? Not even just to get your mail? Is there any way around it?

b) Does the postpay version work? (I don't mean, are you allowed to, I mean does it work regardless?)

I need this for a mate in hospital for whom I am trying to set up BB over the phone: I advised him to get the LG 830 for the HSDPA and pair it with his Mac. So far we have overcome every hurdle (and there have been many). We've just sorted out the age verification drivel -they refused to do it over the phone even though he's 49, can't leave his bed and will be in for at least 6 weeks.

As for the LG -this has been one of the most difficult pairings I have ever encountered but I managed it -took me 15 hours. If i can help anyone else with this pairing -get in touch.

Sam Vimes

culabula wrote:

Can anyone clue me up about 3 ireland's mobile broadband add-ons?

a) Can the prepay flavour still not be used with a laptop? Not even just to get your mail? Is there any way around it?

i'd assume it does but i haven't tried it yet

culabula wrote:

b) Does the postpay version work? (I don't mean, are you allowed to, I mean does it work regardless?)

what type of bluetooth adapter do you have? i have a bluesoleil one and i can connect to the net using its software's "dial up networking service" with no hassle. nokia's pc suite doesn't seem to work

it dials *99***1#

culabula

No bluetooth adaptor involved: the LG has bluetooth, the Powerbook has bluetooth. Other posters have reported here as to the fact that the prepay flavour does not allow use of the handset as a modem -not does not APPROVE but it simply cannot be done as the user is then taken to a proxy server. AFAIK, this problem does not exist when the add-on is applied to a postpay SIM.

This has turned out to be the case. I don't know if it to remain this way or if there's a way round it.

Urban Weigl

I don't think anyone has found a way around it, possibly you could use do some kind of DNS tunnel? I don't know though, even that is probably blocked.

To be honest, I don't think it's worth it.

culabula

Urban Weigl wrote:

I don't think anyone has found a way around it, possibly you could use do some kind of DNS tunnel? I don't know though, even that is probably blocked.

To be honest, I don't think it's worth it.

Rats, I will have to lend him my X-series SIM.