Hello,
Just thought I'd share my experiences with 3 mobile, in case anyone else was thinking of joining them.
I'd had a work mobile with Vodafone for years, but since leaving the job in September I signed up with 3 after comparing all the different tariffs from O2, Meteor and Vodafone.
3 Pay Monthly 400 seemed a good fit for me, as they had no roaming charges in the UK and other countries with a 3 network, and their per text message charge was the lowest around - 9c inc VAT. I also signed up my partner with 3, and we'll get free 3-3 calls to eachother. I wasn't too bothered about all the 3G stuff - video calling etc.
So far so good, we've had two bills from 3, and it seems to be right tariff for us. My partner's bill is quite a bit less than her corresponding Vodafone bill.
Now the downsides:
- network coverage can be iffy, where there's no 3G coverage you should still get text/voice coverage
- even with text/voice coverage maybe 1 in 5 calls just don't connect at all
- cant view your bill online (but you can view it on your phone apparently)
- their customer support is based in India, all very helpful and polite, but they had fun working out my northern accent
But the biggest downside of all is that I can't send SMS texts to some international networks. Apparently 3 do not yet have network agreements in place with all networks. For example, I have friends in France with SFR (Vodafone) - I can't text them! They can text me, but I can't text them.
Here's a list of the networks that 3 has the agreements with:
[broken link removed]
I have to say this was news to me - I naively assumed that in this day and age, you could SMS from any network to any network, but apparently not.
Of course this was detailed in the T&Cs which I didn't bother reading before hand - duh! I guess they'll be adding more and more networks as time goes by, so I'm going to hang on in there.
Anyone else had any problems with 3?
Cheers