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On friday I went into Phones 4 U and stupidly let a guy talk me into signing up for that 3 mobile broadband on a 24 month contract at £25 per month.
After setting it up ive realised it rubbish and i dont get anywear near the 2.8mbps connection speeds - so I just want to cancel it - send it back - and get broadband down the phone line. But after looking through the smallpring it says all returns must be made within 3 DAYS! YES, 3 DAYS!!! is that not ridiculous? is there not something in the law which says it must be 14 days???
Im going to Phones 4 U tomorrow to try and get my contract cancelled but i know they're going to tell me where to go. My only other option is to just not pay the direct debits - but then i know they'll just pass me to a debt collection agency.
What can I do, ive had this thing only 5 days and I dont want it for another 2 years!!
You can try, but I don't lt hold up much hope. For a striaght change-of-mind. I use their services (as PAYG Broadband) - the only difference was I paid £69 for the modem, you probably got yours free? However I DO get the HDSPA miost of the time.
You will be able to drop your usage bundle from your current package to a lower one - but your argument should be you are not in the HDSPA coverage area, so speeds are 'normal' 3G, and that isn't suitable. This might just do the trick.
I joined 3 Mobile Broadband in November 2007. At first I noticed that despite it being 'mobile' I got very poor connection reception when out and about. At home I would find that the connection would work in some places around the house but not in others. Even in a particular room there are many areas where there is no connection.
I have found that the connection reception over the last few months has gotten progressively worse. I can illustrate by explaining that whilst I am typing this review I have so far had to reconnect 7 times and even now the light on the 'dongle' modem has gone off (blue) again. Often I have to hold the modem 'dongle' in the air with one hand like an old aerial inorder to get a signal to connect. I PROMISE IT IS THAT BAD. My hand helps boost the reception but it hurts my hand... THINK IT COULD BE THE RADIATION, GOD KNOWS THE MODEM GETS HOT!
The speed itself when working is not bad... when it is working.
If you exceed your usage allownace you get charged a lot. I pay £15 a month for 3GB. I went over by about 200MB and got charged an additional £50. Worse, they called me a liar when I told them I had not received a warning email as normal when nearing the allowance limit.
I will not be renewing my contract and count the days till I can leave. Only 8 more months!!
MY ADVICE IS "AVOID 3 MOBILE BROADBAND"
I have had all these problems. Especially between 3:00pm and 7:00pm. I have cancelled my payments to them with 6 months remaining on my contract. They have threatened to take it to court and I am willing to go there and defend myself. They are a bunch of bullies who threaten legal action. I have told them that I cancelled the payments and infromed them of this, which they deny. I also informed them that since they were not providing the service that they purport to, ie 'Broadband', then they are in breach of contract. I am also interested to know how they can prove that I agreed an 18 month contract with them, as I never signed anything or agreed to anything over the phone verbally. I will keep you informed of the court proceedings, should they arise.
Finally I have let them know that I am going to make it my mission to put people off falling into the same trap as I did. I am going to make a point of advising against people from signing up to 3.
You won't be taken to court - however your credit file will be trashed with a big, fat default defacing it for the next six years. You entered into a contract, so they are not bullying you to complete your agreement.
You don't like what they've given you, and you've stopped paying. This is where the trouble will REALLY start. The trick is to sort out the issues, and find a resolution before things get nasty.
You are also mistaken that they are in breach of contract for not 'providing broadband'. Have you actually READ your contract? There are no service guarantees on consumer service contracts, so if - after your initial trial period of 14 days the service doesn't meet your requirements, then you can cancel and walk away. Incidentally, you don't need to sign anything - your use of the service and payment is all they need to prove a contract existed, but as I noted earlier, this won't go to court so won't be tested anyway.
As for you advising people not to use 3 - what makes you think what applies to you is identical to everyone else? This is a mobile service, and all the usual factors of your distance from the BTS (mast) building materials that may shield or block your reception are valid. Change your location and try again.
If you are unable to have a satisfactory connection during peak hours (and lets face it, ALL ISPs are in the same boat here), go to a supplier that offers better contention rates so you don't have to share bandwidth with other users. Cable (Virgin Media) is currently the best at a ratio on 10:1, with ADSL at 20:1. Mobile broadband is affected by additional factors, with the backhaul of traffic to certain cellsites adding to the problem. I've had widely variable transfer rates from vodafone, 3UK and orange, but these should never be used if a physical BB connection can be achieved.
Thanks for replying dude. I'm surprised that it won't go to court. How can you be so sure of this? At the risk of sounding reckless, they can trash my credit rating for all I care - that was already done when I stung my bank and credit card company by claiming back charges incurred. I can't even get a debit card bank account now so I doubt that a mortgage would be offered to me.
Even if they are not in breach of contract, surely they are guilty of false advertising? 'Mobile Broadband'. Also, would they not be in breach of contract given that, for over a month I could hardly get on the internet at all, between the hours of 3:00 and 7:00? Are they not obliged to at least provide access to the internet as that is what I was paying for?
I would advise people not to use 3 as I have lived in 3 different locations since using their mobile BB. All three have had a shocking reception and are in an area that they highlighted as being the best of reception areas on their maps. I also have heard plenty about 3 mobile having poor network coverage since my predicament. If only I knew this before hand. So yes, I definitely advise against 3 mobile (Perhaps there are some sour grapes there too!)
Finally I signed up for mobile internet, as I could not get on with BT at a house I was living in. BT did the old 'please wait in from 8 in the morning 'til 7 at night please sir and we won't bother to turn up' routine, twice. This was after numerous half hour plus phone calls and being passed from dept to dept. Advice on using a phone line based internet connection seconded!
Thanks for listening to me whinge, I needed to blow some steam on this one.
If you can live with their blight on your file, then be reckless - but if you weren't getting what you expected, deals can be done and soothing oil poured on troubled waters - although speaking to India for any length of time is known to make you pull your hair out.
I'm not aware of any network pursuing someone directly through the courts. They will prefer to blight the credit file, then sell on the debt to a third party outfit to collect. Even so, the chances of them actually doing so are slim. The networks will happily accept (say) 30p per £ owed and move on. The DCA outfit them makes its money by loading charges and visit fees and the rest - all quite infairly - to bump up the money owed in the hope you'll eventually crumble and settle. Courts are a no-no, as they would have to show to a judge you had agreed to their fees and that they were fair and reasonable, which of course they aren't!
False advertising? Not really, it works for me and many others so there's nothing inherently wrong with the network or service, but just as you cannot guarantee the weather, the networks cannot guarantee bandwidth either. Some would say that since they charge per Mb, bandwidth restrictions are not unfairly penalising users, as they only pay for what they can successfully transfer. If it was a per minute charge, I'd certainly agree with you.
In your situation, certainly Mobile Broadband was only an option to keep you on-line until a more permanent connection could be used (so an 18 month contract would have been pointless. In fact, 3 offer the BEST PAYG deal for BB as the cost is the same as contract, providing you buy your modem up front.
It's good to have a whinge, but when you realise that unlike many others, YOU can take your broadband with you wherever you go and STILL get connected, it's still a very useful facility!
Hee hee. Well I paid £40 for my modem AND was on contract. Seems like I get a raw deal wherever I go. I say WAS because it has already gone to the DCA. They are threatening court action etc... blah
I initially posted here to see where I stood and now I know, thank you.
As for mobile internet. Yes I can see it being very useful and if I had possessed a laptop then I would have really appreciated it. I mean I could have gone for a pint in my local and surfed. Or perhaps played sneaky online games in my office at work, whilst everyone thought I was hard at it!
Cool
The best thing to do about 3 Mobile broadband is to report the matter in detail to the Office of Fair Trading (with dates of particular incidents if possible). There are not words in the English language to describe how poor 3 Mobile broadband is or the indifference and contempt with which they treat their customers. Their service is quite simply not fit for purpose. It is not 24/7, not fast enough to watch youtube and emails can take several hours to be delivered. The service is too slow to be called Broadband. The "suppport" staff always deny there is anything wrong with their system and tell you there is something wrong with your machine.
We use Three mobile broadband as our permanent internet connection.
We live in a rural area in a stone-built house. The house is in a slight dip. That combined with the thickness of the walls mean the dongle doesn't get any connection downstairs. (even my vodafone mobile struggles with just making calls and frequently drops off the network). Three does however get a 3 bar connection upstairs and with it mounted in the loft, a 5 bar one.
There is no minimum requirement for an internet connection to be called "broadband". Some people have ADSL connections which run at 256kbps and that's permitted to be called "up to 20Mbps broadband". Our old ADSL via the landline ran at 1.7Mbps. Our Three 3G runs at 2.5Mbps on average. It streams iPlayer and YouTube perfectly well and I'm aware of three brief periods of downtime over the last 18 months two of which were advertised and communicated in advance.
What mystifies me is that given that there's virtually no price differential from, and no advantage in having, a contract, and the modem itself is inexpensive, just why anyone signs up for a year or 18 months, particularly as the nature of "mobile broadband" is that it won't work everywhere. An ADSL connection will only work in your house (obviously) but there's no guarantee that a 3G one will work everywhere that you want it to - hence the albeit brief trial period to check your coverage at home, if that's where you want to use it.
The best thing to do about 3 Mobile broadband is to report the matter in detail to the Office of Fair Trading (with dates of particular incidents if possible). There are not words in the English language to describe how poor 3 Mobile broadband is or the indifference and contempt with which they treat their customers. Their service is quite simply not fit for purpose. It is not 24/7, not fast enough to watch youtube and emails can take several hours to be delivered. The service is too slow to be called Broadband. The "suppport" staff always deny there is anything wrong with their system and tell you there is something wrong with your machine.
(1) The OFT do NOT deal with consumer complaints - so sending dates and 'incidents' is a pointless exercise.
(2) As NO mobile network will provide a service guarantee (for coverage) this would additionally be a waste of resources, better to find a network that has masts in areas that DO provide the coverage you require.
(3) 'Fit for purpose' is not an argument that can be used for any wireless service.
(4) Anything over 256kb/s is correctly described as 'broadband'. Further as there is no finite definition of how broad is 'broad' any misunderstanding is in the eyes of the user. Bandwidth is allocated dynamically, more is available when less use it - in exactly the same way the power being delivered to your house is never 230v, but swings +/- 15% due to load factors on the grid.
(5)For every 100 complaint calls to an IT department nearly 90% of them are issues caused or created by the user, the network itself is fine. For the odd occasion that it is not, it is a pain but you can understand why the basic problems need to be discounted first.
Hope some-one can shed some insight into my current problem with 3 mobile. I've been with them for 5 months and have recently moved house where the reception is terrible. 3 have said there is nothing they can do about this and £40 a month is taken out of bank each month..fine!! but I havent mentioned to 3 that the contract that I have in my possession states (bottom line) Total cost of contact = £40. This has been put in as a typo as the total cost of contract should be nearer the £1000 mark. Since I have this £40 TOTAL cost clearly stated on my contract is this something I may be able to use to help lever down my monthly cost?
Many thanks in advance
The amounts shiown have no bearing on the contract, it is a service contract based on obligations on both parties. Cost isn't one of them, and charges, VAT, services can be added and removed without invalidating the contract or causing the slightest difficulty.
Your BILL may show that you owe £40pm for inclusive services, but if you believe it should be £1000 (?) then this would be the cost PER mobile, not the full cost on the account (not contract).
Perhaps you need to find out why you are being billed incorrectly, before things really get out of hand, as your credit file will be a major casualty when things go wrong.
Thanks for reply buzby, but surely there must be some sort of record on the contract somewhere describing how much I'm expected to pay each month? If amounts on contacts are irrelevent couldnt this lead to consumers arguing that they only agreed to pay half of what they are paying? and also opens up an opportunity for consumers to claim that the salesman said the service provided was not as expensive as they are being billed for?? Aso the record of £40 is on my sales agreement not my monthly bill..I've never had one of those !!
Not really - your contract is your commitment. Pricing issues are seltem (if ever?) part of this, as in the mobile world it will be based on a specific tariff, which you will need to stay with for a minimum period of 12/18/24 months. Since the COST of the tariff can change (and has done reacently with the additional VAT reimposed on 1/1/10, all this takes place without any problems - even for those folk who saw their bills go down in 2008 and back up again 4 weeks ago.
Your point about a consumer arguing that they should only pay 'half' of a notional figure, this wouldn;t fly as in ADDITION to the contract, the selected tariff (and the pricve of it) is known, and if the customer disputes this, then they show the range of tariffs available (or a tick box on the other form). If oyu signed up for RipOff 500 and you thought it was £25pm, and they say it is £50pm, it would be up to you to prove that the cost was £25. For new tariffs these can be checked on line, and for older (defunct) tariffs, the network would arguew that if you've been paying it for X months, it's a bit much complaining so late in the day that you THOUGHT it should be less.
Invariably, it is their ball, game and you play with their rules of suffer at the hands of your credit report if you cross them! This is why agreeing to a contract at all, for something as inconsequential as a mobile - is such a bad idea.
Better just clear up that I am in fact talking about Mobile broadband not a mobile phone.
Now, The salesman in the shop tells me that I will only be paying £40 for my laptop which I will be getting as part on a current deal with 3. If I agree to pay £160 on the day and a further £40 then I will be entiltled to have the laptop for half-price..he backed this up by showing me the £40 Total cost of contract section on my sales agreement. It appears now that the total cost of contact is going to be £960 since £39.15 is being taken out of my account each month. How are they allowed to exploit loopholes like this..if the figure stated on contracts is irelevent they shouldnt need to be put on there.
The offer was being run with PC World, I could get a laptop discounted if I went through 3 mobile, he told me I would pay £40 on top of what I was paying on the day and pointed this out on the sales agreement.
Total cost of contract: £40
Which to me reads as it should, I signed this as I was happy with this Total for the contract however it appears the contract should be reading £960 as they will be taking £40 for 24 months!! Ive signed it thinking this contract meant something but from what Buzby says the amounts are irelevent..this leaves me confused slightly. Remember that I'm reading from my pos agreement with PC World who obviously arrange the paperwork for 3.
Would like to add that Ive had nothing but trouble with this laptop having the first replace after 5 weeks and the replacement away for nearly a month being repaired after the hard drive failed, this I know means nothing about the agreement but I did point this typo out the Lady at the returns desk who tried to make off with it(the agreement), when I refused her this she said that it was 'their' problem before scurrying off!! 'Their' I take as meaning 3, however it cant remain 'their' problem for long just as soon as they ask who filled out the paperwork.
I't really being run in the same way as if you got a 'free' phone, or I should say, a phone with a purchase cost of £40. Your contract has no interest in the 'total' price, as you are being tied to a tariff with a minimum term of 24 months. True, you will be paying £40 for 24 months, but this amount covers your DATA bundle for the period, NOT the laptop, which was the advised £40 - and your incentive to stay with the deal.
So your 'contract' cost isn't £40 - that is your equipment cost. Your ongoing cost will include mobile service at £40pm for 2 years. They don;t have to specify this cost as you are not paying it up, just you service contract charge.
If you break the arrangement for whatever reason, they will chase you for the amount that they say would be owed (at £40 per month for the remaining months left to run). Meanwhile, the laptop you bought at £40 is your property.
When my 3 mobile broadband contract came to an end I thought that was it & I was free to cancel my direct debits but no it is only the ' minimum ' term of the contract & they will continue to take the direct debits & If you cancel the direct debits they will send you a monthly bill with extra fee for sending it to you. You have to write to them at least 30 days before minimum term ends, preferably about 6 weeks because they will phone you once they receive letter & pass you to cancellation department. They will try to persuade you with all sorts of offers to make you stay but eventually after ages of repeating that you are not interested...eventually they will begrudgingly cancel your account, but only from that day, not from the date on your letter...beware !
If however you are happy with the service & want to continue it still pays to write & cancel as they will offer you a better deal. This might all be a bit obvious but I wish someone had put something like this on a forum as it would have saved me a lot of hassle.
3 Mobile Broadband - Cancel Contract Help
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Re: 3 Mobile Broadband - Cancel Contract Help
Re: 3 Mobile Broadband - Cancel Contract Help
Originally Posted by South of Burnley
Re: 3 Mobile Broadband - Cancel Contract Help
