Zeitgeist
Posts: 1
From: Surrey
8 Sep 2007 10:53 AM
I signed up on this website, purely to channel my frustration with 3 somewhere! Reading the previous posts, I'm reassured that I'm not the only one!
I bought my first contract phone (Sony Ericsson K750i) from 3 mobile's website. A hefty 18 month contract no less. 'Sorted' I think to myself
and it started out fairly smoothly, but being naive to the 'contract phone' world, I soon found my bill spiralling upwards - £200 on one occasion 
Six months in though, I turn the phone on one day and am presented with the infamous 'white screen of death' (as it's formally known). I ring 3's customer service, who can only give me scripted responses to questions ('human' responses to these questions would mean 3 paying them a 'human' wage, god forbid), but agree to send a courier to pick my handset up to be collected. And yes, no delivery driver anywhere to be seen on the allotted day
so I take the phone into my nearest 3 Store to be greeted by some obnoxious, air-headed member of staff who can't quite seem to be able to channel all his attention on my handset problem and is clearly thinking about his next paycheck and flogging another lengthy contract to some poor soul. I'm told the problem is a software fault and that they can only replace the handset after three of these technical problems; I'm not able to have a temporary handset as they don't have any left, nor halt the bill until the phone is fixed again. I ask for the phone to be forwarded on to my home address once fixed. When phone arrives back fixed, they ring me and say it's arrived, but they can't forward it on, meaning another expedition to collect it again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Repeat this process another three times, the same problem occuring once every month ('three' is becoming the recurring theme here).......
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, had enough and bought another mobile phone (good, old relaible Nokia this time
- avoid Sony Ericsson's like the plague; far too fiddly and high-tech for their own good resulting in errors and faulty handsets).
Four months now remaining on my 3 contract and it can't come soon enough; it feels like a life sentence
Moral of this story: Take a 3 contract at your peril!