Just to update a little bit.
I’ve been trying the Three pay and go sim card out in the places I tend to be the most over the past week or so.
My results have seen Three to be either as good as O2 or in some places a slightly stronger signal was got on Three.
One thing I have noticed was the 3G coverage on Three was considerably better than O2, which in a lot of places kicks between 3G and EDGE. But in fairness, Three are solely a 3G, 4G only network, they don’t have 2G network in a lot of places, so that means no GPRS. There are certain places that have 2G, but this is getting phased out from things I’ve read online.
There is no getting away from it that Three’s prices are extremely good, but does the saying “you get what you pay for” apply.
I’ve read many complaints on Three’s customer support, which are overseas. And thought too be fair I would contact them, to ask them a question about something on my allowances. I will point out that I’d popped into my local Three store and got the answer earlier on, so I already knew the answer.
It took around 12+ minutes to get through. And the gentlemen I spoke to was hard to understand due to his accent. To give him credit he did eventually answer my question and I was given the same answer as I’d been given in the Three store.
In comparison I’ve always found O2’s UK customer support on 202 to be very good and the odd occasion I’ve needed to call them, they’ve dealt with my issue fine.
Now on to the negatives:
In my week or so of testing Three. I’ve had around three occasions where texts I’ve sent (some were iMessages and some were standard SMS) have not been delivered immediately. Some took anywhere from multiple minutes, a few hours to be delivered, one I sent on a Wednesday was not received by the recipient until Saturday. Another issue was I’d sent one person a message but I never got a reply back from them, so I later sent them another asking if they had received my earlier text (which they had not received at that point), at that point both text messages came through together (i.e. the phone beeped twice).
The recipients were both on different networks, so it made me wonder if this was a Three issue. And with me having this issue around three times in a little over a week, and with me sending a lot of text messages, it made me a bit cautious of moving to Three if this kind of thing happens often. To be fair, I’d asked some friends of mine on Facebook who are on Three about this issue with texts not getting delivered straight away, but they said they had not witnessed this kind of thing happening. So perhaps I have been unlucky. But this text delivery delay issue was only something I’d experienced on O2 once in 15 years and that was over either Christmas, New Years Eve a few years back. But I never experienced it again over this period or any other time.
Now not a scientific test, but I was in town and entered this particular building and was having a phone call before I entered it, when I went down the stairs I lost signal.
Now another day I tried the same thing on O2 and was able to stay on a call in the same place. So perhaps Three’s signal/frequency doesn’t have as much penetration into buildings as O2?
The Three app is not very good most of the time. I found it unreliable and often reports that My3 is unavailable, and it then takes repeated clicking on the “My3 Account” icon to get it to show your amounts used, remain allowances. Also, the usage information doesn’t seem to get updated as quickly as O2’s information on the My O2 app, which from what I’ve seen is pretty much realtime updated. Also the My O2 is way better and more reliable in comparison to the Three app.
Today I contacted O2 to see if I could get some better deal out of them, as I said I was thinking of leaving them.
The first person I spoke to was just quoting the same prices off of the website. I mentioned that their prices were way more expensive than a competitor and that if I couldn’t get a good deal that I would be requesting my PAC code. I was then transferred to sales.
I explained the same thing to them, i.e. that I could get a much higher data allowance from elsewhere, he then quoted the Simplicity tariff with 8GB, unlimited minutes and texts which was supposed to be £30. He said he could knock £6 off of that to bring it down to £24 per month.
I said to him that I still find that too expensive for the data allowance you are offering. He then said he could do the 5GB Simplicity tariff with unlimited minutes and texts for £19 per month, instead of £24.
I enquired as to if he could reduce the call allowance to around 300 minutes (as that amount would be enough) but lower the price to £15 per month, but he said their system wouldn’t allow him to do that.
I said I would think about it, has I can still get a better deal elsewhere, so he’s left the notes of what was offered on my account.
So as of yet I’m undecided whether to change to Three or not. When you’ve spent 15 years with a network, it gives you a good idea as to how that network performs, what the coverage is like, how reliable they are. And in the case of O2, they have always proved to be very good on those things. Its just the £4 saving per month with Three and with unlimited data, unlimited texts, 200 minutes, but in fairness the 5GB allowance O2 would be offering would comfortably be enough for my uses.
Don’t fancy changing to EE though, as the deal O2 offered me is a few pounds cheaper than EE 5GB sim only plan (which is £21.99 per month and gives unlimited calls and texts).
