Since midday today I've kept trying to check my remaining balance on my Three PAYG mobile broadband account via their account website: and all day it's been telling me the service is unavailable. I knew I was about to hit my limit and wasn't surprised when after a few hours of web browsing I lost connectivity to email and web sites (except for my3.three.co.uk, although this still provided no functionality). ![]() I purchased a £15 (3gb) top up from the shop and tried to apply it. I could enter my mobile number and voucher number but was greeted with the 'service is unavailable' error every time I tried to progress the top up. I ended up having to trawl through their help system and find a landline number for top up support. Eventually, on my third (!) attempt at ringing them they managed to successfully apply the credit over the phone and I'm now up and running again. Because I don't have a three mobile phone, calls to their support number were chargeable - At the end of the 3 phone calls I discovered I had been charged approximately £10! This is in addition to wasting an hour of my time. Had their system been operating correctly, I would not now be out of pocket by £10 in phone credit or have wasted an hour being on hold and trawling through their help system. Do you think I stand a chance for claiming recompense? Hello DoktorEddie, Having just read ur reply, I felt I should also reply back. You can redeem a data top-up if you're a Telstra fixed home broadband customer on ADSL, Cable, Velocity and nbn™ broadband; You can redeem up to 3 top-ups a year; If your service has slowed because you've gone over your allowance, and you choose to activate one of your data top ups, your internet will return to. Activating Voucher Top-Up + Buying Broadband Add-Ons So you have a voucher purchased from a Three store or convenience store, and now you need to activate. I am now aware that Three have simplified the TopUp process for MBB. Whilst I appreciate this is little benefit to the problem you had at the time, I hope that any subsequent attempts to TopUp in the future will be much easier and faster. I have heard the improvements inc: less pages/steps to TopUp, no need to register a debit/credit card prior to TopUp, and being sent to the TopUp screen should you run out of data rather than a blank 'page cannot be displayed' screen. I'd be interested what feedback or response you get from 3's HQ. I did get a reply from the 3 executive office. My account has been credited with £10 to make up for the costs incurred trying to sort out the top up, which I'm satisfied with. They say that there were no known issues with the web service but it could have been that their IT systems were being updated whilst I was trying to top up. I can understand a few minutes (or maybe even an hour) of downtime - but the fact is I couldn't use the facility for half a day. My feedback has been passed along to the website management team so maybe they'll uncover something, or have incorporated fixes into the new design. The easiest way to top-up your account is to do it online by using a debit/credit card or via your online bank. It is very important to activate your calling card before topping it up the first time. To activate your card, call any. €3 and €8 top-up bonuses are so plentiful that sometimes it feels like they never run out. On Mobiletopup.co.uk you can easily buy a Three top up voucher and top up 3 within 30 seconds. Just select a Three top up amount above, fill in your email address, choose one of our secure payment methods and proceed to the check out! After your payment has been validated, you will receive your 3 top up voucher. I'm still a little concerned that the TopUp web server is overloaded or has issues, because it's always loaded at dial-up speeds and still does now, even after the revamp. But we'll see how well it works in the future. ![]() I did see the option to combine a credit/debit card payment with my £10 account credit to purchase a 3GB (£15) top up, but I was hesitant to use this facility as I knew that previously it took a matter of days to register a card - I had assumed this still applied on the new system and so I missed out on getting more allowance. I definitely would have spent the extra £5 to gain 2GB more allowance had I known. The other feedback I got was regarding the customer support telephone number. They suggested that if I had a 3 handset I should call 333 or 500 free of charge, but with a PAYG Mobile Broadband SIM card I cannot do this. I do not have a 3G compatible mobile phone to even try it. So I was forced into calling their 0843 number from a mobile phone on Orange and on O2. They should consider the fact that a lot of people with mobile broadband will be using it because they have no landline phone! Customers in this position face potentially HUGE phone bills! But I suspect 3 are not the only company making bundles of money from calls to customer service or technical support. I was advised about the lack of a customer support email address and was told about their web page based email form. They didn't acknowledge my complaint that I had already tried to submit an email via this system, only to be presented with an error! So that's about it really. Happy to have been credited £10, but I found the explanations a bit sketchy to be honest. I'll carry on using the service and see how the TopUp system fares next time. DoktorEddie, Thanks for the update. I have to say I agree regarding telephone support accross a wide number of organisations is for want of a better word 'lacking' and expensive. Too often companies use 0843 or simmilar numbers as their only visible contact number, and 3 is no stranger to this. The My3 top up system has as far as I have been told been 'improved' based on specific feedback provided by customers. So maybe the feedback you have now given then has made some affect for future 'improvements'. Just touching on the 'dial up speeds' u experience with the My3 page, is this the ONLY page or site you experience this with? *EDIT: Something occured to me regarding contacting 3 Customer Services about Mobile Broadband from a NON 3 Mobile, you could try calling: 07782 333 500 (you'll notice it's a MOBILE number) calls SHOULD be charged at your normal mobile rate or MAYBE included in your monthly minutes. * **Edited to include alternative contact number for 3 MBB**. My Three broadband is great when its working but there web site is a joke, and a very bad one at that. I always top up with £15 voucher (3gb) go through the same proceedure every time and then select from the choice of 'ad ons' which was until recently £10, £15, £20 (1gb,3gb 5gb) On this occasion just before Christmas i bought a £20 voucher (5gb) Only to find that when i tried to activate it £20(5gb) had been replaced by £25 (7gb)So i tried to contact them by phone which is impossible the 'contact us ' on there site just sends you around in circles.why not just put a phone number????? I also contacted them via email as i still had a little credit left over. The next day i purchased a £15 (3gb) voucher, so i could wait to speak with 3 sometime after Christmas about the £20 voucher.After 2 or 3 hours trying to access there site i finally got through to the top up voucher page, which looked very different, like the page had 'crashed' I was constantly sent around in circles i would enter the voucher details has i have done hundreds of times, but then i was dirrected to another page which just said 'confirm amount' £15. Which i did ( i was not given the option of selecting 'ad ons' So when i checked my credit i found that for some reason £10 had gone on my broadband and £5 had gone to credit, so for my £15 i had received 1gb.It gets worse.when i eventually got through to the customer services by phone and explained everything, i was told that the website was being upgraded and perhaps that was the problem.ok fair enough.So she converted my £20 voucher into a £15 (3gb) and added the £5 to the £5 that had gone on to credit thats £10 (1gb) + the 1gb i had received.so for £35 in total i ended up with 5gb. Not to mention 20 min on the phone at my cost also.Had she just added the £5 credit onto my £20 voucher i would have received 7gb + the 1gb (8gb) but then that would have been too easy.when i mentioned this to her she said she could not do that?????? What give there customers what they have paid for.It is not the money but the principle, i will never use this company THREE ever again.I would suggest that others in the same possition do the same. (fountain of knowledge) Thu 07-Jan-10 16:00:29 Re: Three - My3 / Online top up system offline? I don't remember ever seeing a £20/5GB option to be honest, when was the last time you successfully topped up by that amount? There website does seem a little better than before, and I'm no longer seeing any speed issues. The strange thing is, when I've run out of credit I can't use Safari 4 (Mac OS X 10.6) to top up - I have to switch to Opera in order to access the my3 pages. When I'm in credit, Safari works fine. Other than that, everythings working fine for me at the minute. A £20/5GB would be great - I'd definitely use that each month. At the moment I alternate between £15/3GB, which usually isn't quite enough and £25/7GB when I want to be able to download more. I'd imagine the site was upgraded some time over Christmas and a few bugs have been introduced which they're working on. The process used to be 1. Credit your account 2. Convert the credit to a broadband top up I had problems registering a new card ('all cards must be at the same address' error, even though they were - the error was, well, in error). I deleted the cards and added the new one. I had to credit £10 doing that which is what I wanted to do. I then clicked on Top Up, buy £10 data, to be told I need to credit the account to buy it which is incorrect. When I got to pay, the auth amount was nil (the correct calc was done and the site realised I didn't need to pay) and the 'payment' of nil unsurprisingly failed. I called them (the first time I have done that in 18 months or so) and they sorted it out in a minute or so. I guess the bugs will be fixed, while annoying on this one occasion it has always worked flawlessly in the past and I was actually quite impressed with the telephone support service. (member) Sun 10-Jan-10 15:24:53 Re: Three - My3 / Online top up system offline? Hi DoktorEddie and Anon. Appologies for length of reply. I am aware that recently (inc since Thurs) the My3 web pages have been having some issues including being unavailable / offline. I believe this was due to an updrade of some discription, possibly due to capacity. Anon mentions a 'new' topping up process. This was I believe designed to make the process of topping up MUCH easier. Reducing the steps take and completly removing the requirement to have a registered credit/debit card. (though I am sure it still needs to be a UK one). The process SHOULD be: 1 go to 2: select top up my account, 3: select method of top up (credit/debit card or voucher) 4: check details (number of account - on right hand side of page/ data allowance of topup) 5: press confirm. On a side note to my knowledge there has NEVER been a 5gb MBB PAYG top up allowence, only monthly contract and 18 month contract accounts. Also the PAYG modem software should now re direct you to My3 in the event your credit/allowence expires.
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