Problems with 3 & O2 services since merger?

The scripted response to all the recent problems from Three "Customer Care" in Mumbai is to tell the customer that the SIM card is probably faulty and should be changed.

In twenty years of using GSM phones, I have never ever come a across a faulty SIM. I'm not saying they don't happen. Maybe if you leave your SIM lying around in the kitchen it might get greasy - but if the SIM is in the phone, it seems very unlikely that it would go faulty out of the blue. Even more unlikely that 1.5Million customers would all experience faulty SIMs in "Eire" at the same time.

Well it seems that the Mumbai faulty SIM script is starting to backfire on Three. Apparently their stores are starting to run out of SIMs because thousands of customers are being told by Mumbai to go to their local store and get a new SIM!

Bob24 wrote: »

If correct this is just ridiculous :-D

Have a look at the Talk-to-Three forum. The standard response from the official Three reps on there is that your SIM is probably faulty and must first be ruled out before anything else! You will also see many postings referring to having first been told the same by the Mumbai agents on the phone. There is no question about it. There is also no question about the proportion of their customers that are having problems since the merger. This poll confirms that as does almost any Three customer I have spoken to. How widespread the problem of shops running out of SIMs is or whether it is a temporary stock problem - I don't know this, but some friends have hit it, and you also see references to it on Talk-to-Three. I am helping some friends to try to get out of contracts. It is very laborious - but my advice is to follow any advice from Three first however daft it seems, so as to be seen to have followed due process.

machiavellianme wrote: »

Both my wife and I are on o2 prepay and our signal reception has gone from 4 or 5 bars to between 0 and 2 bars. We are in various locations in the Leinster area (most often in Dublin) and are wondering if 3 prepay has the same issues or is it just ex o2? I'm sick of not being able to make or receive calls and data is practically non existent unless on edge.

The problems experienced by former O2 customers and native Three customers are slightly different - but most customers on both networks are experiencing major problems on a daily basis. The problems are time dependent and geo dependent, so it is difficult to generalise. This poll and the daily feedback on the Talk-to-Three forum give a good indication of the extent of the problems.

Most of the problems stem from the fact that Three have very poor native coverage (mostly 3G with no 2G which is important for indoor voice). They were heavily dependent on a roaming agreement with Vodafone which gave the impression that they had good national and indoor coverage. Now that they have bought O2, the Three customers have been switched to roaming on the old O2 network which was already creaking at the seams due to lack of investment and no 4G. Hence O2 customers who had a reasonable 2G/3G service are now experiencing congestion as you have described. Three customers have lost the good Vodafone coverage and are also experiencing dropped calls and congestion. There are lots of other problems too - but these are the main ones.

The customer care staff on Talk-to-Three have stopped recommending SIM swaps (the shops were starting to run out of SIMS!), and although they can't admit the extent of the problems they are now admitting that the network merger is going to take at least 2 years.

The network merger will involve Three building new base-stations hundreds of old O2 locations where O2 had base-stations previously. The existing O2 base-stations will need to be de-commissioned as they are from a different supplier and don't support 4G. Three may choose to consolidate some O2/Three base-stations in the process rather than have two located near each other. This is a huge engineering task - and will likely take 2-3 years. In the meantime, expect the service problems to continue.

If you are pre-pay, you need to get off the Three network to get away from these problems for the next couple of years. It will probably eventually get fixed - as Three have deep pockets and should be able to afford to do this. However, why put up with the pain for next couple of years? There is no point moving to Tesco, 48, Lyca or Blueface as they all use the Three network also. You need to move to eMobile, Meteor or Vodafone as they have separate networks. In general, eMobile have the best bundled deals with Broadband, phone & TV. Meteor have the best pre-pay deals.