Is three down nationwide?

nomdeboardie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123280694#Comment_123280694

Blech! Have you tested whether the 5 they gave you restores ability to make non-Three phone calls?

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123280711#Comment_123280711

I would if I actually had it! They said it would be 3 days before I see that as well! What a farce.

nomdeboardie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123280742#Comment_123280742

😂 😭

JP Liz V1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123277610#Comment_123277610

I've got nothing back yet

What is Three email address?

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123282357#Comment_123282357

customer.care@three.ie

I got an email back from them a couple of hours ago. It was the exact same auto generated thing I got over their messaging service earlier. No addressing my personal questions or anything. They couldn't even be bothered changing the bit that says "today". This is the full email:

"Thank you for contacting Three. Hope you are well!

Some Three prepay customers experienced issues with Call, SMS & Data services earlier today. The issue is now fully resolved & we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you are still not able to use services as normal, please restart your device and service should then resume. We can confirm that no customer will have any loss of credit as a result of this issue. Three is working to ensure that any impacted customers are credited appropriately in the coming days.

Regards
Three Customer Care"

Breaston Plants

Anyone here manage to get their credit restored?

nomdeboardie

No! And... I posted the following on the Three Community thread I mentioned previously:

OK, now this is now interfering with my life - car being serviced, and if I miss call from mechanics I won't be able to call them back! And he we go into another weekend... I need to be able to use my phone...as a phone, make outgoing calls! How can I escalate this to get that restored? Surely Three could at least provide us with enough credit to make a few calls before restoring previous balances? Do I have to contact consumer protection agencies? News media?

I then immdiately got a DM/PM from them, and when I opened that I see
Congratulations! You have a new rank in 3Community
Congratulations, [my Three username]!
As the result of your contributions to the community, you have earned a new rank. Your new rank is Investigator.
We appreciate your efforts and hope you will continue to be an active member of the community.
Thanks!
The 3Community Team

...and my comment is not on the thread - although it looked like it went through initially!

So I try agan to post it, and get error "Correct the highlighted errors and try again. Maximum flood limit reached." ...but there are no highlighted items. The same happens when I try to post it as a PM to Three staff from the link on the thread page, or under the PM I recieved.

Breaston Plants

Shocking service indeed. As I said in a few posts back, looking ever more likely that it's a case of tough $hit. Very surprised this isn't even making news.

nomdeboardie

Trying 'Chat' now…

nomdeboardie

Now communcating with an agent with a human name making human statements…but could still be bot …they're working hard on it…

ETA - my rant to them is currently at "It's been a week, and we are constantly given ever-farther future dates - I find it hard to believe Three cannot give us some outgoing call allowance in the meantime. I suspect this is an experiment to get remaining Prepay legacy users to just give up and move to another prvider"

(It's now "3 to 5 working days"…so they're preparing us for at least another week!)

nomdeboardie

Latest from Chat, after I requested escalation to supervisor: "I have discussed this with my supervisor. They will only again be confirming what I have explained in the chat. If there’s anything you need more clarity on I’ll be happy to go through it."

nomdeboardie

Oh God - will someone take one for the team and ring Joe Duffy? 🤣

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284244#Comment_123284244

It was 3-5 working days when I messaged them yesterday. I assume they will continue to push it forward.

I do suspect they are hoping some of us will leave. But apparently many non legacy plan customers are affected as well. I'd love to know if any of them are being left to wait as well.

Breaston Plants

Yeah. Legacy customer here, was thinking the very same.

waterfaerie

Has anyone on the legacy plan topped up since last weekend and did you keep the new credit as normal?

My scheduled top up is due tomorrow. They managed to get my credit once but I hassled them and got it back because it was their fault the scheduled top up didn't work. Since then I have 3 different alarms to remind me to check that it actually goes out every time because of the amount of times they've tried to mess it up.

I don't trust them one bit and now it's even worse. Wondering what will happen tomorrow.

nomdeboardie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284299#Comment_123284299

I was wondering if newer Prepay plans were affected, but then thought they don't have a monetary credit balance, i.e. assumed those plans have a different system for allocating non-Three call access? I should go look at plan decriptions

nomdeboardie

I was thinking of the statement in this aricle https://goosed.ie/news/three-prepay-customers-lose-credit-calls-and-data-down-too/#google_vignette

top up every month and the credit on my account is immediately “taken” and put towards my plan

And looking at the current prepay options suggests the same?

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284350#Comment_123284350

I think I read somewhere that some of them had credit on top of their plans as well. There seem to be more different plans than just the legacy plan and the new plan, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Then there are all the people on various plans who topped up again when they shouldn't have needed to. What will happen to them?

I feel sorry for anyone who's really stuck and was forced to do that. I'm lucky I can hold out until my next top up because I don't make many calls and I was 21 days into the month when it happened.

thesandeman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284316#Comment_123284316

That's my main worry as well. I'm due to top-up next week.

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284385#Comment_123284385

That's interesting. It seems to be making out only older plans were affected. I was sure I've read of newer ones being owed credit too but then who knows.

In any case, even if some of the newer customers are owed credit, at least they can make calls in the meantime while they wait since that's part of their bundle.

The legacy customers are stuck without an essential service that they have prepaid for! Like I tried telling the agent (bot) the other day, I've prepaid for the €160+ credit I had and yet I can't make calls. It's insane!

They were quick enough to go through on Sunday and remove the entries that showed where the credit was taken. Why not an automatic return of the charges when that cleanup was done? Otherwise, why remove that information? It's very suspicious.

nomdeboardie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284478#Comment_123284478

Damage control for reputation trumps efforts to solve the technical issue or setup an interim concession to allow limited calls 😩 (As I mentioned above, they also seemed to delete or disallow my last attempted comment there. I'm nw starting on the-cesspool-that-is-X-Twitter…)

KildareP

To be honest I'd be logging an official complaint with them at this stage.

They have 10 working days to resolve after which you can refer the matter to ComReg.

I'd imagine it's only when complaints start coming in volume to ComReg that the real pressure for them to resolve it will start.

They can't just end a plan without issuing a formal contract change notification (and they most certainly can't start charging you for usage that should be in plan) and ComReg have successfully taken multiple operators to court in the past for failure to properly do this.

Edit to add: I do think it's most likely technical error and/or incompetence.

There are still effectively two networks operating within Three - the original Three network (for all new personal prepay or billpay customers since the merger OR anyone personal or business/corporate who is still on a Three pre-merger plan) and the former-O2 network (for all new business/corporate customers since the merger OR anyone who is still on a former O2 personal prepay or billpay plan pre-merger).

Billing is always a mindmelt when trying to port numbers in and out of corporate plans so I can only imagine what the billing backend looks like and why the prepay issue probably isn't a straightforward fix.

thesandeman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284510#Comment_123284510

I just got the usual response on Twitter. They replied immediately so it's obviously a pre typed response they just paste.

kneemos

Three have always been tricky customers. Pushing plans you don't want and trying every method to get you onto them.

Pissed me off once too often one day and defected to Gomo.

nomdeboardie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123284529#Comment_123284529

Yes, I should do that. (I also think it's unlikely that it's not a tech issue, but wonder if they're dragging their feet deliberately in rectifying it, or at least givng us an interim call allowance. It's possible that it is genuinely too dfficult to do either in the space of weeks…but I would be surprised if that's the case)

ETA: Which category do you think would apply here?

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123285017#Comment_123285017

I don't know. Maybe billing?

nomdeboardie

For the record, my heated last comment has appeared on the Three Community site now, with another reply saying they'r working hard etc, so I withdraw implications of censorship in my case

waterfaerie

Did you enter your complaint?

nomdeboardie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123285401#Comment_123285401

Not yet, I'm getting outrage fatigue 😂

waterfaerie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123285420#Comment_123285420

😆 I know what you mean!

Maybe take a break from thinking about it. Nothing will get done over the weekend anyway.

My plan is to see what happens tomorrow with my top up and then put in a formal complaint if nothing is resolved by early next week.