Three UK slammed for 'ripping off' loyal mobile customers by £32.4m per year UK consumer charity Citizens Advice has accused telco giant Hutchison's UK network Three of "ripping off loyal customers" to the tune of £32.4m per year, by refusing to apply automatic discounts once contracts end. In July, all other mobile operators signed a commitment with Ofcom to put in place a discount for out-of-contract …
EE used to do similar by offering large discounts to a SIM only contract and then removing them once the contract expired. I previously had to threaten to go to OFCOM on the basis that mobile price increases must be notified in advance to get my increased fees refunded and the discount reinstated.
I am pleased to see that they have now ceased this and my 5 x SIMs @ 25GB data unlimited voice and texts for £12 each have now switched to monthly once the year has expired.
Can't say I'm totally shocked. After all, this is the same network that pulled the plug on a service I was using, then tried to bill me - despite the fact that upon finding out about said service-pull I had cancelled my contract!
... if I recall correctly, there was something about them using dodgy debt collectors as well
Pretty much why I left them. Every time they discontinued the tarriff I was on they moved me to one 4 times the price telling me that it "better fit my usage patterns" but the tarriff I already had was still there, just with a new name and a small price increase.
On iD mobile now, have everything I had with 3 plus more data and data rollover for less money.
They once tried to charge me for a contract phone that never arrived, they expected *me* to chase it with the Royal Mail parcel delivery (believe it or not, I'm not their customer so they won't speak to me anyway!), and they took three monthly payments by DD while I "waited" for it to arrive.
When I cancelled the DD with my bank, they refunded the whole thing in minutes and then 10 seconds later I had a call from Three demanding to know what happened and where their money had gone. They then phoned me a ton of times within the space of an hour to demand money and threaten me with all sorts, to the point that it was just flat-out harassment. Then they threatened to sue me.
"For what?"
"Breach of contract!"
"What contract?"
"The one we sent you!"
"The one in the box with the phone, you mean?"
"Yes!"
"The box that never arrived?"
"Yes!"
"The box that you have no tracking on because you sent it second-class cheapy mail and can't be bothered to chase it?"
"Yes!"
"The box that I phoned you up a month ago to tell you it hadn't arrived?"
"Yes!"
"With the phone that I asked you to block the IMEI of because I have certainly never received it and therefore it's missing or stolen and I diligently reported that to you in the naive hope that you would actually block it or send me another phone?"
"Yes!"
"Therefore, it would be a phone that even I couldn't use, even if I had it, and therefore wouldn't be able to make use of the contracted service anyway?"
"Yes!"
"Well, strangely, if I had that contract, then I wouldn't be complaining... and that I don't have it means that I haven't signed it, and for damn sure you haven't got my signature on a copy of the contract... which means that you have ABSOLUTELY NO STANDING."
"But... but... we'll take you to court!"
"I'll save you the bother... if you ever call me again, I'll initiate the action for you."
Never heard from them again.
so... Michael O'Leary's deal... As part of the deal, his current pay will be halved to €1m and he will be given share options at a fixed price (that he would have to buy for €111m - they are not a gift).
Conditions (one of):
- double the current share price to €21 (currently €10 with a previous high of €18.60 in 2017)
- RyanAir to make €2bn+ profit in a year (€1.45bn in 2018)
The €99m figure comes from the potential resale value of those share options if he takes them up AND he raises the share price as per the conditions. It's not guaranteed but it seems like a good deal for the investors who haven't been paid a dividend in a few years.
Of course, in order to meet the necessary conditions, they'll need the 737-Max to be re-approved or they'll need to find additional saving in flesh-bags or chargeable add-ons like... seat belts, use of the toilet etc.
Pretty sure that he could easily make the €2bn profit by running the company into the ground. Wait until after the summer holiday season, cancel all advertising, flog off a load of planes (OK, that's not quite so easy) and sack a load of people. Only need to find €500m or so, and much less than that if the oil price were to happen to drop for any reason.
Sure the company may not survive, sure the share price will dive, but the profit target would probably be reached.
You have to wonder about an incentive deal which would actually pay out if the CEO were to destroy the company and destroy shareholder value.
Ultimately 3 is owned by CK Hutchison.
CK Hutchison is owned by 91-yr-old Sir Li Ka-shing" worth $29 billion USA plus
Obviously he gives his job title as Philanthropist. Don't they all ?
Meanwhile, O2 said it will reduce the monthly price of its out-of-contract customers to the equivalent 30-day SIM-only deal. This will apply to its direct customers only, but O2 will discuss options for customers who take out O2 contracts with third-party retailers.
i.e. If you bought the phone through someone like Carphone Warehouse, phone up O2 when your contract ends to ensure you don't get overcharged.
True. I think the point is a 30-day SIM only contract will be less per month than the just ending 12/18/24 month contract with handset. They then have the option of a 12/24 SIM only for the even lower cost, or get a new contract with handset, or stay put and pay a small premium for the 30 day flexibility. If people were being auto-switched to a 24-month SIM only plan that'd cause more problems than it solved.
The slightly weird thing is 3 offer existing customers slightly better deals than they offer new customers! Which takes a lot of the aggravation haggling with them away with the backstop of cancelling and replacing, must less painful in the time of number porting by SMS.
So their claims about end of contract are even more bullshit than they seem.
By the phone from Carphone Warehouse, or another retailer, and get a SIM only contract directly from the network. That generally works out cheaper.
The benefit of getting the phone from Carphone Warehouse is that it will be unlocked and you can use it on any network. Prices - sometimes you will get it cheaper elsewhere, but generally they are not too bad.
I have never, ever come across a worse 'customer service' experience than Three UK now. 5 years ago they were superb - good service, good network, good prices but it's been nothing but downhill from there. Fast forward to today - 2 hour wait to speak to anyone, ANOTHER hour to actually get them to do anything and just when you think you're past the worst you get told you can't upgrade because the contract you've been paying for the last five years has a contraction of your name on it.... yes, that really happened!
How long to fix the 'problem' - 10 -14 days & a posted copy of my passport! Needless to say I declined this polite 'offer', one PAC code later (thanks for getting at least one thing right) and 5 minutes in the Vodafone shop I have a new phone and a lower bill.
Won't be going back.
My experience so far suggests otherwise (as it did for the twenty-odd years I was with them before going to Three because they were cheaper). I've had to contact them once since returning and the phone was answered promptly by a knowledgeable person who solved the problem quickly.
Time will tell (I did see the ranking for customer service before I moved) but so far, so good.
I will say that the only reason I *am* with Vodafone is because of their tech support (at least it *is* available 24/7, as opposed to pretty much every other network). I still lament the day Orange was gobbled up by France Telecom, because Orange was hands-down the best until FT went and ruined them.
Nice to see O2 in there. I use their subsidiary company Giff Gaff and cannot fault them. £10 PCM for £6 GB data unlimited minutes and text messages.
Coverage and speed for me in the south West is similar to my work phone on EE that is costing around £40 a month :/
Back before EE I was on Orange with my BlackBerry and they had crap customer service. It was never easy to get things fixed and often took several calls to get anywhere. Then I found that T-Mobile were cheaper for BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service). So I called Orange customer service and explained that I have an unlocked Berry but need it deregistering from Orange so I can swap networks. The nice bloke in the foreign call centre tells me if it's unlocked I don't need to call them. I said it's different if it's a BlackBerry but he just hung up. I tried again and got through to a woman this time who told me the same thing. I asked to be put through to the dedicated BlackBerry team (who were UK based) and she hung up. Eventually I made it to my local Orange shop and asked if they could do anything to help - sadly not only customer service can do that.
So I sat down on a chair and called them again expecting that somebody from the shop staff would step in if I started ranting. This time I got somebody who understood the issue and transferred me to the BlackBerry team immediately. T-Mobile had UK call centre staff and when I had an issue it was much less of a hassle to get things fixed. Then they both merged to become EE and that was the end of the UK customer service team. That sucked although I was allowed to keep my old (i.e. grandfathered) rate when prices went up.
5 years ago, they were called 3 because they dealt with 3G. Now they just look lame and behind the times with 5G being rolled out. How their marketing dept. are busy kicking themselves(*) for going for such a lame name.
(*) Probably too stupid to understand what technology is anyway. Aren't you my dears.
ha ha ha ha ha ha...
You think Vodafone is an upgrade in customer service!
Hilarious.
I have to say, I moved from Vodafone to Three (mainly for the free roaming I travel a lot) and I've never really had a problem. I've been with them 4 years now.
My one experience with customer service was relatively pain free too.
None of the networks provide decent coverage where we live - they all claim to, but you can only use any of them with the phone in the right spot if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Forget 5G, just give us working 3G! First one to do so will get my business!
Last time I looked, Three were the only network that make calls and SMS work over WiFi calling (would be interested to know if others now support this), so the only "provider" I can use if I want SMS to work (which is used by a lot of online services for 2FA).
It is however dependant on your phone to allow WiFi calling (most middle tier and up, modern smartphones do).
Thats another of the lies that O2 will tell you - "Your phone doesn't support Wifi calling" - translation "That phone supports wifi calling, but we don't support it on that phone, even though other operators do. Buy it anyway, and maybe we'll support it in 12 months time, but its REALLY HARD" - for them, maybe.
Example - thats 17 months after they started selling the phone.
Others have partly picked this up, but...
O2 used to have an app called TuGo which supported SMS over WiFi but obviously wasn't native. That app was canned a few years back. O2 & Voda's WiFi calling now is native but is calling only and doesn't support text.
EE & 3 WiFi is native and supports text. In other words, "it just works", and on EE at least also has seamless handover to & from 4G coverage.
EE are good for Wifi calling, haven't even had to request anything, just turn it on in the options (Android), and worked straight off the bat when my lady friend switched to EE on an old Huawei P9. O2 are the worst for Wifi calling, they don't even support it on many of the phones that they sell themselves.
Be extra careful when talking to O2 sales droids, because they will happily lie to you and say things like "Yes, we've enabled Wifi calling on your account", when they mean that the option is enabled on your O2 contract, but not that it will work with the phone they are trying to sell you. They've only just got it working on two Huawei model - P20 and P20 Pro - but not P20 Lite, Mate 20/Pro, P30 Lite/Pro...
I think all of the operators support it on the fruity phones.
"Last time I looked, Three were the only network that make calls and SMS work over WiFi calling (would be interested to know if others now support this)"
Others have been supporting it for about as long as Three. The problem is, it's a bit of a mix in how it's implemented. Three's version is actually rather poor from an interface standpoint - everything done over wifi is treated completely separately, so you can't keep conversations going if you switch over to wifi and then back again later. But the upside of doing it that way is it pretty much always works without fuss, no matter what phone you have and what you're connected to. Others (EE I've actually used, I think others work similarly) have a much friendly interface that merges everything together regardless of whether you were on a phone network or wifi at the time, but suffer severely from simply not working at all if you have the wrong phone.
So yeah, wifi calling/texts are available on more than just Three, but how well any of them will actually work in a given situation is a bit of a crapshoot.
So I do all my Internet over 4G, I don't have a landline. I also don't have a TV.
When I moved into a flat, I bought a 4G router and a Three Pay Monthly SIM. I only want Pay Monthly because when these things go wrong, or they aren't giving me a good deal any more, I want to get out of there quick and will pay a little extra to be able to do that.
At the time, I was struggling to find anyone with a large data package that you could tether on (I'm a good boy, I don't want to tether unless it says I can!).
Vodafone had something like 50Gb for £30 a month. For an extra £5, they didn't count Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, etc. traffic either. They were too stupid to send me a SIM and I've now got three logins for their website all of which won't do anything as the SIM never arrived, and they won't let you order another on the same account. I gave up trying after that, to be honest, but at least it didn't cost me anything.
Three had 40Gb for £25 a month, and free TVPlayer / Netflix traffic (not the subscription, however, but I got those cheap elsewhere). Worked well for about 8 months. They were the best options at the time that explicitly stated you could tether on a Pay Monthly.
Then I discovered Smarty. Who are a Three reseller. Who offered me unlimited data (defined in their documentation as 1000Gb), explicitly allow tethering, have a referral scheme, a better website, and all for £25 a month. For much of the year, that's actually been £18.75 a month, on a deal for new customers. On top of that, I referred two people - they both got a free month, a £10 Amazon voucher, I got an Amazon voucher, and two free months. So they have been even cheaper for the first year.
And... it just works. Same as Three. No problem. I just stream everything over it. I've even got a permanent VPN tunnel to my dedicated server running over it, they don't seem to care. No phone calls, no thousands of promotional emails, no SIM card cockups, selling Three's service to me better than Three could themselves.
I called Three to cancel. They couldn't offer me anything better. I wasn't interested anyway, but they couldn't. Then they gave me the hard sell and said I could keep it as a 10Gb SIM for "only £14 a month". Even that was worse than Smarty could offer. I "No"'d my way through that and cancelled it.
Soon after, Three offered unlimited data on their packages. I didn't even bother to look up whether they allow tethering or have some unspoken limit. Who cares? They didn't want to keep my custom, so they don't get to.
But I would likely have stayed with them forever, if they'd just bothered to send me an email/text/call about, say, a 100Gb package at the same price I was paying, or tried to compete with their own reseller on pricing before it came to my attention that there was a better deal.
The whole "you need to switch to get a better deal" thing is god-damn ridiculous. All it does is make me not want to use you again. Sure, Three are still getting some of my money, but I don't care who the other company uses, so long as the deal is better. They must be seeing much less of my money, for coping with much more of my traffic, and they lost all the goodwill, so I can't see how it's a win for them.
If *I* have to chase the best deal, and you can't offer me what I want even when I explicitly ask for it, then I just won't use you, even if you are the cheapest.
This is what winds me up about the "official government" USwitch advice - switch your provider to get the best deal! No. Stop making me having to switch to get the best deal while you're offering new customers a better deal than I'm on (or know that next week you'll be offering something better anyway). That helps nobody but the middle-man that people are expected to use to switch.
If you want my custom, do what DOZENS of companies have done for me in the past: contact me and say "Actually, now, we have a better deal... and as a loyal customer..."
You've actually put effort in to looking into it all, and securing yourself a good deal. This is where you differ to 80-90% of people.
I've little sympathy for people who claim they're being ripped off but have done nothing to find out their options...
Here's how people work - they want the latest shiny, but don't want to be ripped off. That's really all.
It's possible to have this situation but you - as a customer - have to figure it all out yourself in terms of getting a "good" deal (which is subjective based on your own circumstances). There is a gap in the market, arguably, in that if a provider told people exactly what was the "best" deal for that customers circumstances, they would in fact get everyones custom. But then there's the issue of service quality, and knowing what customers circumstances are. That's why it doesn't exist and the best way forward is essentially what you've done.
I can't see this changing for any service. There's no way we'll get to a point where customers are "automatically" on the best deal for their own circumstances all the time, without them doing anything. The sooner people realised this the better off they'd be. Nobody will wipe your bum for you in 2019.
> Sure, Three are still getting some of my money,
Actually Three is getting all of your money (well all of the bit you spend on the mobile plan). If you read the Ts and Cs you'll see the company is 'Hutchison 3G UK Limited, trading as SMARTY'.
I use SMARTY too - three SIMs for three family members (including me). I was going to use iD mobile but they said I could only have two SIMs and couldn't explain why.
I might have expected a proper regulator to do something like force the company to move the contracts and refund the money they have made so far by not doing so. But, no, it's Ofcom and all they could do was say how very disappointed in them they were in the deluded hope that this might change any behaviour. Completely typical : the hoops you have to jump through to get Ofcom to even consider a complaint (which the mobile companies all know and actively make difficult in order to to hamper the process) make the sham of pretend regulation a complete joke for mobile.
This is why I have had 'sim only' deals for the last 16yrs, I buy my own phone and stick to a cheap deal that gives me plenty of airtime... and as we moved into smart phones... Something that gives me enough data.
I currently pay £10 a month for unlimited calls/txts and 3gb of data and I've never once used up that 3GB because I'm on wifi 99% of the time... the only time I'm using data is when out and about (I won't use public wifi) and that's just for minor stuff to lookup directions, info and so forth.
Currently with giffgaff and they've been trouble free for the last couple of years I've used them.
Had this exact argument with them when I had to leave - moved to a new house that had no 3 signal whatsoever, so had to move networks. I had been outside my original contract for over 12 months, but overpaying by about £30 a month since then! You can argue that was somewhat my fault, but I dont keep track of dates too well, and didnt even think about it until I left.
TLDR, they tried to hit me with a termination fee, only about £40, but I told them they could poke it. Ended up paying a reduced rate of £20, but still was galling, as I'd overpaid by about £200 compared to being on a SIM only deal for the last 12 months, so they still made too much money from me.
Not sure I'd go back, but then not sure where else I'd go. Vodafone (my current network) are a much bigger bag of shite, who overcharged me £120 in my first few months! So meh.
This post has been deleted by its author
Because
1) it's Friday and
2) everybody (?) likes a good moan and
3) moaning is easy, quick, requires no effort and/or action and gives you an instant "hit" and
4) action requires attention (in short deficit these days) plus some effort and
5) I can't be arsed to go on, after all I'm at work, so - let me check my fb and twitter!
Bank: "Would you like a 25 year mortgage but never review the terms during that time?"
Customer: "Yes. You've correctly identified I'm a lazy bastard so that would suit my needs perfectly"
Outcome: customer annoyed they got shafted to the tune of 10's of thousands in totally avoidable costs had they put in some effort on their own part.
Sympathy factor: zero.
Reality check: It's your job to find out the best deal in any situation. Even if a service provider is telling you what it is, why would you take that at face value? Work it out yourself. It's subjective and based on your own circumstances. Nobody is going to molly coddle you. Tough pill to swallow but if you follow this oh so simple advice you can actually start becoming relatively well off.
Been with them for years with no major problems. I have always found the way to a better deal is to tell them to cancel.
My own way of knowing when my contract is about to end, is to use that thing on my 'phone called a calendar. When I start a new contract I spend a minute or so putting the end date into said calendar with a reminder. Sorted.
Then I can do what I do best. Forget about it just like I seem to do with everything else nowadays…
Cheers… Ghost Deejay
I went SIM only years ago partly to avoid this issue (although I'd had some cracking deals out of EE on phones and tariffs over the years).
Now, each year EE email to say the cost is rising by the rate of inflation so I then go onto the website and change tariff to one that is cheaper and/or gives better benefits.
Every mobile operator is out to make as much money as possible, by charging the customer as much as possible, whilst spending as little as possible on infrastructure and staff costs. I don’t really understand why anyone thinks it would be any different.
Replace ‘mobile operator’ with pretty much ANY business and you’ll get the same outcome. Maximum income, minimum expenditure. They are not in it to be your friend.
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