3 (Three) “Broadband” sucks.
October 16th, 2007 by Frank
I’ve already posted a LOT about 3 Mobile Broadband over at Aonach.com, but while I may have taken the piece of crap back and gotten a refund, many others still struggle on with 3 trying to get them to provide the service they were promised.
Mr. T asked bloggers to unite and get this shambles some extra coverage… and so I am posting again about the horribleness that is the 3 Mobile Broadband modem service.
Do read through my posts on Aonach if you want the details of my experience and what led to me throwing it back in their face, or go to Boards.ie and read posts from the countless people who are still not getting the service they were promised.
Whatever you do - DON’T GET A 3 MOBILE BROADBAND MODEM!!!
Entries (RSS)
October 17th, 2007 at 7:27 am
You should just take the word broadband out of the title. 3 as a whole, suck. Their customer service for the mobile network ranks up there with Dixons as the worst around, and their actual mobile service is bad enough to leave you trying to call their customer service a lot.
December 16th, 2007 at 2:56 am
Chris says damn straight
December 16th, 2007 at 3:06 am
three broadband has to be the worst internet sight on the planet took up an account and paid big time 500 first bill,Second bill after my best effort to monitor my usage 400 now gone thank god but paying for it now,there usage cycle was 2 days according to a hindi brother on the other side of the world. Try to make a payment plan wait until your overdue and sort it out with an overdue payment,good plan ha ha!!!. Good bye credit.
January 12th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Three are a waste of space ! Their customer service take a delight in being rude and patronising and their systems and website options only make sense to the idiot who set them up. Follow instructions to the letter and you end up with dead ends and frustration. Nothing about their product or system is simple or intuitive and they are too lazy to set up specific stage by stage pages on their website for new broadand modem customers. I have so far met personally three people in my own town who have had the same experience which is interesting, as the Three staff I spoke to insisted that my problems were unique. I used to be open minded about Indian call centres but I’m afraid that this kind of service in a UK call centre would be stamped on by Trading Standards in a matter of days. No aspects of the Sale of Goods Act, Distance Selling Regs. or general Fitness For Purpose seem to apply to Three - A TOTAL DISGRACE.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Yes, they are a disgrace. I’ve been a 3 “broadband” user since last summer. At first it worked fine but after they took on a huge number of users, the speeds in the evening nosedived and never recovered. At this stage, I’m sick of sub dial-up speeds EVERY evening, their awful customer service staff telling me lies and trying to get me to do stuff like unplug my modem and reinstall software and seeings their ads which promise the sun moon and stars. I am counting the days til I can finally cancel my 12 month contract.
I made complaints to Comreg, the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland and the National Consumer Agency but they were worse than useless. It’s clear that big businesses like 3 can do what they want and the small people can go sing for their supper.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
worst broadband and customer service ever.speed during the day doesnt go higher than 5kB/s and at most of times its arround 1-2kB/s.customer service isnt any better all theyre telling u is to unplug ur modem and plug it in again or try to connect later.im cursing myself every day for purchuasing this 18month piece of crap
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Dell Laptops To Offer Qualcomm Gobi Mobile Broadband
Dell (NSDQ:Dell) and Qualcomm paired up Tuesday to offer next-generation laptops that enable users to access multiple 3G cellular networks globally, the two companies announced Tuesday.
According to Dell, the company’s next-generation laptops will be imbedded with Qualcomm’s new Gobi mobile broadband technology, which lets notebook manufacturers ship Gobi-equipped notebooks in all global distribution channels to deliver roaming and connectivity capabilities across worldwide networks.
More info at http://broadbandmobile.blogspot.com/
April 25th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Hi from an ex-frustrated O2 user. From Oct 2007 to the New Year my broadband worked well, since then it has got worse and worse. After waiting three weeks for tech support to respond I went and fiddled. I think 3 use the same Huawei E220.
Try setting connection type to 3G only and band selection to GSM900/1800/WCDMA2100. Also worth checking windows network connection is set to maximum. It has worked for me (4x faster on downloads though uploads are slower)
Good luck
May 20th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
i have the three mobile internet modem and will never call it broadband! my current speeds range from 50-500bps at peak times to 1.5mbps at off peak times but lately i have noticed that off peak speeds in the carlow area have taken a nosedive and i regularly cant get above 500kbps! also msn wont stay connected and the modem regularly disconnects its self!
it appears the service is wholley unstable and seems to be intermittent in this area and is provided with a minimum level of poor quality customer care!
June 1st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Here here! I’ve had to suffer the ‘broadband’ service from 3 since last October and average download speeds are less than dial-up in Galway. Just waiting for my contract to end so I can throw the damn thing in the bin. Why isn’t there more publicity on this excuse for a broadband service and why are they still getting away with it?
August 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Anyone considering buying 3/Three mobile broadband, this is a warning to you.
Based on my experience and the experience of a group of friends that at about the same time signed up for three broadband in the UK.
While Three broadband does work at an acceptable level in some parts of the country, in London where most business users are it appears over subscribed.
As a result even when you do eventually get connected with a good signal ( and that can take several hours) the transfer rate is appalling (usually around 5 k bytes per second, which is the same as a dial up modem, and about 10% of basic broadband speed, and only 2% of what its advertised to be capable of).
If you have not realised this in your first 7 days then three operates a policy of NO CONTRACT TERMINATION. Without the full period of the contract being payable.
There call centre in India is very polite, however they don’t actually do anything other than solve windows PC configuration problems.
If you have the problem I have above, they will simply give you the run around, wasting hours of your time until you get fed up.
They will not investigate the problem themselves, they state that it is impossible to do this.
You will get very angry with them, and end up joining me in letting the country know how bad there product and service is.
I cant vouch for the alternatives at this moment in time, they could be as bad, or better, but people in my office with Vodafone have a better experience, and I have sat next to people on the train home who have a signal on T mobile all the way home when I have a signal for only 20% of the journey.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:57 am
i finally got out of contract with three and even got a full refund for the modem even though i had the crap for 8 months.
ComReg were great in dealing with three as when they got involved three stopped ringing me several times a day and waited until they had something to tell me instead.
basically as three have never been able to provide any kind of broadband service they sold me dial-up but called it broadband which was the main reason i got a refund and termination!
also it is very important to follow some basic steps in dealing with three-
1/ WRITE TO THREE outlining the main issues you are having. you must use the heading “FORMAL COMPLAINT” for this letter as otherwise three will just regard it as “feedback”
2/ give three ten days to reply and improve the service. they may speed things up for a few days but if the improvement is not permenant your next step is write to ComReg outlining all your issues and all steps taken to get this resolved with three!
3/ wait another ten days for three to respond to ComReg and you can decide then what the best course of action would be for you. three may offer a termination without any penalty but this probably wont happen imediately.
4/ send copies of all your speedtest results to any email you have for three. this makes them arare of how bad your service is.
tell three you have never had good service and you intend going to court to recoup all monies paid to date as you have never got the service they sold you.
best of luck to everyone dealing with three india and try to get everything in writing, tell them that failing to reply to you by email or in writing is considered by you as a failure of three to communicate with you and this will void your contract!
August 25th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
It is with joy that I found this blog and realise I’m not alone! Apart from a disgracefully slow broadband connection (when i actually get a connection) I’ve also received threatening letters from finance companies demanding over €500 (even though I’m on a €19.99 a month direct debit) and they’ve never missed a payment. Any complaints or concerns expressed to their “customer service” were ignored or I received patronising phone calls scolding me for not reading terms and conditions (no apology for perhaps getting their account details wrong). Upon writing letters of complaint, I get those I’m complaining about phoning me. I’m one letter away from a rant on Joe Duffy. Can’t believe they get away with this.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I must be getting all the bandwidth and good service then?
Which is only fair I suppose.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Was about to sign up for 3 mobile broadband but just stumbled upon this blog. You all sound pretty frustrated so would you mind letting me know what company you have changed to as need to get it sorted myself. Thanks
September 20th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I cant get signal or connected at all this is my 2nd modem i think i will return it i have 14days. Very bad service they said it was my old laptop so treated myself to a new one and still cant connect. What is the best mobile broadband in ireland any recommendations i dont know what to do
September 26th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I agree with everyone who finds fault with 3’s “broadband” , I’m living in an area of dublin where there is at least 3 masts within a 2 mile radius and still have a completly useless service, I complained to three today via their joke of a website, my connection was so bad that it took at least 2-3 minutes just to load the page. As for their call centre, I’ve had to hang up at times simply because I couldnt understand the heavily accented person on the other end. No fault of the staff I understand but 3 seriously need to get their “broadband” and customer service up to scratch.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Living in Dublin city centre. I signed up with 3 about 6 months ago. Average bandwidth at first - on a good day it maxed at 1.4 Mb (supposed to be 3.6 Mb) Last 3 months a nightmare though - typically hard to reach even 100Kb. Thought it was my laptop’s fault but as I entered the shop I bought it in (Henry St, couple of doors from O’Connell St, to complain/enquire I spotted a display computer hooked up to web with same system. EMBARRASSING ! (for them) - uploaded a fave youtube vid (search “German Coastguard” - it’s brilliant) IT TOOK ABOUT 10 MINS - IN THE 3 SHOP IN THE CENTRE OF DUBLIN!
THEY’RE OVERSUBSCRIBED AND THEY KEEP SUBSCRIBING AND THE BANDWIDTH IS GETTING WORSE!
October 7th, 2008 at 1:29 am
SORRY CORRECTION - I downloaded, not uploaded (see above)
October 11th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Same experience. What ComReg should do is to force the Three to give ALL the money back to all of the customers they have on the “Brodband” - refund is the only way it can be solved, that will make them think twice. And full refund for the little white thing that should have 14.4 clearly imprinted:-)
November 10th, 2008 at 12:43 am
hey,
just bought 3 broadband.the biggest mistake i’ve ever made.download speeds of 3.6mb??try an average of 5kbs. Was originally with vodafone, which wasnt much better. How can they get away with advertising the download speeds which i doubt have ever been reached.Might as well be using dialup. Monday morning i shall be waving bye bye to the biggest heap of crap ive ever purchased!!!!!
November 19th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Me again i would like to advice you all to check your bank statements 3 were taking the 19.99 twice from my account i doubt i will ever get a refund of the 60 euro they owe me now. I wish to cancel my direct debit with them its a terrible service. Can never connect it was good for a few days after i complained but back to the same thing again its so annoying.
Their customer service are dreadful also if it wasn’t so much hassle i would wave bye bye to it like previous poster but i haven’t time to fight with them at the moment
November 28th, 2008 at 2:08 am
I live in a rural area of Northern Ireland and took on the PAYG 3 Broadband because the house of was renting at the time didn’t have a landline phone in it, and so no chance of getting a normal wired broadband service. So initially I thought this was broadband heaven - go and sit in a cow field or up the top of a mountain and watch stuff on YouTube. No, no. Sorry. Wrong! You might as well forget it at peak times as I got LESS THAN dial up 56K speeds.
On the positive side though I would say that:
1) it IS better than having to go and book an hour on a computer at the local library;
2) if you’re a night time person like me you can get good enough speeds at 1am (that’s the time I’m writing this now!);
3) if you do manage to get a good signal you can get out and use it without having to be stuck at home.
I think that like all new ideas it will improve as the technology improves and more competition in the Mobile Broadband market forces companies to improve their service or lose customers rapidly.
Thanks for listening.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:27 am
I just have to say that it’s ridiculous that there has not been more publicity in relation to this so called “company”.They’re a complete joke and unfortunately it’s not a funny one there playing on the majority of there customers if thats what were defined as because to be honest.I feel that we’re all been played for complete Idiots.I’ve been lied to on the phone by a so called technician who thinks every person on the phone hasn’t an notion whats going on or how to use a computer…I rang only last week and I was told that there was maintenence being carried out on the server and even tho. my so called modem-dongle thing was showing a blue colour full signal and I couldn’t connect. I was in the same situation as the rest of threes customers” that It would bre fixed in a few hours…I put it to him that my Girlfriend in a different county was actually playing poker as we spoke for the last two hours and was still playing poker and would probably be playing poker when we were finished speaking,he said that the problem was all over the country and basically I wasn’t telling the truth…so I put it to him then that this work wasn’t being done and not to patronise me with his companys response to it’s arrogant neglect of it’s responsablity to it’s customers and told him that the real reason behind me not being able to connect to the server was that it was saturated and couldn’t bear the excessive amount of users trying to use it…and that the service was oversold…and guess what??He agreed and thanked me for my understanding of the problem and it further…as if I needed it explained!!It’s a disgrace that this is being allowed happen.I spent 130 euro on my set up and now it’s being sold at a fration of the price and selling like hot cakes but nothing is being done to allow for the big up take of the service-As if they haven’t fore-seen this happening……THE SHOWER OF FILTY,ROBBING B*STARDS…They know exactly what there doing as they’ve done it before in the U.K and now THE SHOWER OF FILTY,ROBBING B*STARDS are doing it to us and continue to…Where is the regulation!!!Oh and finally I rang again 3 days ago and complained and I got so angry on the phone.I had to applogise for not being able to string a sentence together and they have now credited my account with 20 euro!!another 110 and I’ll be dropping my case in the small claims court I’m opening after x-mas if I don’t get the cost of the modem back bcause THEY CAN HAVE IT!!
December 12th, 2008 at 2:32 am
Just to add I had to try post this msg 4 times…….Broadband??!!
December 12th, 2008 at 2:38 am
Opperation timed out twice again with so called 3.6 meg connection…a relatively new laptop..2 Gig RAM,Intel dual core processor all cookies,temps files etc. freshly deleted??At half 1 on a thursday morning??With only this page open??Can people please spread the msg….3 Sucks!!!
December 12th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
all of you people complaining must not hav a clue how 2 work a computer some of u say that you cant get over 5kps the lowest my 3 broadband goes to is at 20 kps and thats when im downloading 3 movies at the same time mayb its coz i use my 3 phone as the modem it seems to work better ..
December 12th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
The 3 mobile broadband provider is terrible.
I gave up on them after 4 months of useless service even though they still charged me each month as I was contracted for 12 months.
When the 12 months were up I rang them to disconnect me from their service and they refused and said that I had to give them 1 months notice. I refused to pay the 20 euro for the 13th month and they hired debt collectors to harass me by mail and telephone constantly for a full month, I eventually gave in and paid the extra 20 euro just to get them off my back.
Please do me a favour Google (3 broadband Ireland) on the right side of the search the 3 broadband network will have an advertisment, click on this advertisment several times as they will be charged a per click fee by Google every time it is clicked. Revenge is sweet. (Please let me know here whenever you do this Thanks)
December 16th, 2008 at 4:10 am
James with all due respect I’ve a computer neworking degree and you obviously haven’t a clue!!It’s advertised at3.6 meg I’ve now changed to Digiweb and I’m a happy camper at 8 meg and it actually does what it says…It’s a true high speed service well for Ireland that is and it only costs twice as much…P.s “20kbps” is not actually anything to be happy about even when downloading 3 files,I think you should read a book or two!?
December 16th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Oh and James I’m happy you can work a computer but your in the majority mate….kids as young as five can “work” a computer thanks to windows but only the more competent person can use one…p.s if you have a comment thats someway related to a topic,think about what your saying first and then maybe think a third and forth time and if your not sure,ask a grown up.
December 16th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
James you are obviously the only person in your “sector” using the service and you are close to the mast with line of sight so you are getting perfect uncontended signal, or you have some connection to three and are trying to call us all whingers for not putting up with your companies rubbbish service and non-functioning customer service.
when i had three for broadband at peak times the highest speeds i was getting was below 5kbps as there were too many people using their refurbished crappy modems in the carlow area, i was not imagining these speeds and at the time i advised three of my speeds by sending them all of my speedtest results,
if i was simply whinging over nothing they would not have given me three months free and then after 8 months they would not have allowed me out of the contract and also refund the full €129 for the modem! they did all this as the service had never worked properly from one month in and three had promised to upgrade and fix my speeds but nothing was ever done so if i had not got my refund from then i would have got it from the small claims court!
December 18th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I was an unhappy Three customer for around twelve months, I noted an average of one serious connection outage a day from December 2007 to the end of June 2008 at which point I gave up and cancelled the account
When I tried to cancel the account it took a fifteen minute phone call during which time I was passed between four different “support” staff each of whom tried to convince me to open a technical support call and each of whom I in turn explained to that I was certain I wanted to cancel the account and that having made multiple support calls before and having received several refunds for inadequate service I was certain that Three could not provide a reliable service.
I explained that Three’s problems varied between cell congestion, cell to Internet bandwidth congestion and packet loss problems, dns server outages and, my particular favourite, some crummy transparent http proxy that frequently claimed the website you wanted was unavailable and you should check your browser settings. I had access to another broadband connection via my phone and needless to say the site I wanted was never down.
However my story does not end there.
When I was cancelling the contract and finally got through to the accounts department who grudgingly acknowledged my request and said that I would receive two more bills thanks to their 30 notice requirement, I would received my last bill in August.
In September while checking my bank account I discovered that the fraudsters were still charging me. I went t my local bank and cancelled the direct debit. The bank teller remarked that I was not the first person to have to cancel their Three account and that Three seems to have a long history of defrauding customers.
I have since received about 20 calls from Three, each time they claim I owe them money and each time I explain the contract was cancelled several months ago and that they owe me money. They continue to call and I have opened a case with Comreg - I’ll probably have to go to the small claims court to get my 60+ euro back.
Three are quite the most astonishingly poor company - have no dealings with them and as a precaution make sure to have your bank close the direct debit to them as immediately after your last bill is due.