iD Mobile

I have been a customer with Three UK since 2008. That's nine years. While generally satisfied there have been several instances where I have been less than pleased with their services. I'll begin by saying that their online web portal and mobile app has always been completely terrible. When living in Bangor, the mobile network was experiencing severe problems for about four months. Calls would drop or come through as unintelligible squeaking sounds. The 3G did not work at all. After three months of this, which I consider more than patient, I decided to leave for giffgaff, since it was cheap and they offered short term contracts. I switched back shortly after.

I spent one hour on the phone with a customer service representative trying to request a transfer code. I was foolish to play into their game of free upgrades, until I eventually got angry and they sent me a code. They offered no compensation for the unusable three months, and sent me a £20 bill, which I complained about and had retracted. If no service isn't a good enough excuse to leave, I don't know what is.

Last year, I had reached the end of a 24 month contract at £14/month. I was given the offer of keeping the same package for £30/month or downgrading to a much worse package for £12/month. I reluctantly agreed to the cheaper package and was told that it was great and that I would be saving money. The customer service representative asked why I didn't sound very impressed by the offer, but I signed up anyway.

This month, that 12 month contract ended, and I saw an advert for iD mobile. After only a few minutes of investigation, I found a package which is basically perfect for me. £5/month. That's basically all I care about. It includes 1.5GB of data, something like 4000 texts and 250 minutes. I don't use my phone very much at all, so this is going to be fine. Requesting the transfer code this time round went a bit more like this:

Three: May I ask why you are leaving Three?
Aaron: No.
Three: Which mobile network will you be transferring to?
Aaron: I do not wish to say.
Three: Do you have an iPhone or a Samsung?
Aaron: Neither.
Three: Is there anything we can do to get you to stay?
Aaron: No, please give me a transfer code.
Three: Since you have been with Three for such a long time, it
       seems such a shame to leave now. Are you completely
       sure you wish to leave?
Aaron: Yes.

It makes me seem very rude, and I am not very happy about that, but after my 1 hour call last time I tried to leave I didn't want to give them an inch. The call lasted about 15 minutes. I still think that this is an unreasonable amount of time to make a customer wait. As a side note, I would quite like Ofcom to become quite a bit more strict about service transfer. No begging should be allowed. Ideally a simple button should be available on a website. This is what Xilo and AAISP do, and it earns my respect.

One thing I might miss is the "Feel at Home" thing that Three offer, but I think I will be okay. This was mostly a rant. I'm not sure how long I will last with iD. Fortunately this is a 1/month rolling contract, so we will see.

Tags: misc