3 Mobile Huawei Dongle

Tech works well, sometimes signal is a little low, but I think that's true of all providers. However, DO NOT use 3. They are very untrustworthy, unhelpful, and frankly will take as much money off you as they can.

This was a nightmare and 3G did nothing about it. The connect never worked more than a few minutes then nothing at all. They sent another dongle, same thing. I had so much trouble trying to cancel my contract as I did not want to pay for something that didnt work. They still want me to pay 268 pounds for something I could never use. It turned out that where I lived was a bad area for 3G at the time and of course the phone shop knew this. The debt is now with a debt company after me for payment. I am seeking advice from Citizens advice. A big joke! Just because on the shops system it showed a good reception that was not true at all!

I recently spent a week in London as a tourist from NYC. Before leaving the US I called Vodafone in London and told them I wanted a sim card for my iPhone so that I could use it to tether my laptop (I wanted to use my phone as a hotspot for my laptop). They told me that their "international freebie" card would be perfect for this purpose. When I got to Heathrow I bought the sim card, they installed it, and all was supposedly great. As I was leaving the terminal the salesperson caught up with me and apologized, saying that they had just realized the tethering plan wouldn't work. I followed him back to the shop, and they told me that I'd also need to buy a dongle. They didn't have them in stock, so the next day I bought one in the city. I initially had 500Mb of data, which the Vodafone salesperson assured me would be enough for a week of websurfing, email, and Facebook (no movies or music streaming). I attached the dongle that evening and it worked fine. That first night I spent perhaps two hours online. The next evening, after another sightseeing day, I returned to my hotel and went online again, and after about an hour the dongle disconnected, telling me I had exhausted the data plan! I was in shock--this 500MB of data had run out in around 3 hours. Vodafone customer service isn't available after 8, so I had to wait until the next day to contact them. They were very unhelpful, saying they had no way to know what I was doing online, etc. Insult to injury, while a foreign credit card was perfectly fine to purchase their sim card and dongle, it wasn't acceptable as a way to top up online or over the phone! So I went to a tobacco shop and bought a $50BP voucher, and, unbelievably, this lasted for about three more hours!! What an incredible rip-off! Once connected, the counter would show data download when there was nothing at all running on the computer--the browser closed, no updates, no email programs running. I called to complain about this and while waiting for someone to answer the counter showed I had used 20Mb of data!!

I would say avoid Vodafone dongles or data plans like the plague.

We bought 3-mobile internet dongles (Huawei), each on a £15.99 one month rolling contract with 5GB download limit.

We went for the one month contract as we only wanted the mobile internet to cover us until BT could be bothered to come around and connect our new house up.

One of the dongles never seemed to work right, it gave terrible download speeds (couldn't even check email or browse sites like the BBC) and the connection would drop regularly.

The other dongle was better as the connection didn't drop, however the download speed was still poor, sites with videos like youtube or lots of pictures like eBay were not usable.

Also, the online account management didn't work properly, the page was always unavailable - so you couldn't really check your data useage.

The contract has a 30-day cancel notice, meaning you must give them 30days warning, which is fair enough I guess.

However, the call centre is terrible and would not take no for an answer, keeping us on the phone (premium rate of course) for ages and basically trying to bully us into not cancelling.

I have also had a phone with 3-mobile for nearly 18 months now and never had a problem, but after this experience I will be switching phone provider too.

3-mobile are cheap but they are cheap for a reason... think twice.

ps:

I posted a similar view in another section of this site about3-mobile broadband and I thought I would post it here as well, just so people get the message.

3 mobile pay as you go.

I have had this thing a week and only been connected online for about a couple of hours all together, It keeps cutting out and then coming back online for a couple of seconds and then dies again.

it is the biggest load of crud I have ever had to try and work with.

due to the fact that it rarely worked in my area(tewkesbury glos)i cancelled the contract at the end of the 18 month periodt Their indian call centre does not like this and will put every obstacle in your way to prevent it,and latterly will resort to lies and inimidation to keep you with them.Why a company like this is allowed to operate in such a way in this country is beyond me.I know that i am not the only person in this position.

If the company think that any part of what i say is untrue i invite them to give me my day in court,which is what they have been threatening me with for months

I have had major problems with this network and their terrible and quite frankly dubious customer relations.

1) For the first month after buying this product the internet did not work after 12:00 noon and we had to wait until the following morning to get our service.

2) After we had used up our allowance I went to their 3 store in Lewisham and after explaining my situation I paid for a 10 pound voucher. The service at Lewisham was appalling with the agent acting as if he had no time for my business and I could not even plug in my computer to show him what was the problem. When I came home I tried for hours in the evening and morning to get it to work without success. It then turned out that the agent should NOT have sold me the vouched as I was on monthly billing and the voucher does not work with that setup.

3) Messages were coming to say extra charges had accrued on my account almost double what I had contracted to pay. i.e. From 15 pounds to 30 pounds. Immediately after I had run out of allowance I had only used the dongle to try to put the 10 pound voucher on otherwise I had actually plugged it out from the computer.

4) I had initially called your customer service and they had informed me that I was to go to a 3 store to get a voucher. This turned out to be inccorect and they should have known better as they had taken down my 3 number so should have seen it was on a monthly contract and the vouchers would not work.

5) I then spoke to a second customer service agent who was the only one who was in any way up to standard as a company representative. She explained that they should NOT have sold me a voucher but that I should go back to the store to buy a Pay As You Go SIM and when that ran out I could then use the 10 pound voucher until the monthly contract kicked in again.(I did as she recommended and got the Payas you go SIM). She also credited my account with 5 pounds to make up for the extra sim i had to buy.

6) She assured mye that NO extra charges has accured and that I would be paying my regular bill of around 15 pounds when the bill came.

7) They tried to charge me 16 pounds extra through my debit account for the service for the previous month when I had no operational service on my monthly sim from the time notification came that my allowance had run out.

I was getting fed up of paying stupid money for wifi in hotels and am also security concious so decided to get a 3G Dongle.

I chose the Three Huawei E353 due to the potential speeds, cost and it being semi future compatible. I bought my E353 from ebay with 1GB pre loaded and have been very happy with its performance.

As with all 3G dongles, its a great accessory to have whilst on the move or away on business. The additional microSD slot also helps you pack light, supporting upto 32GB's

Three's 3G coverage has not as yet let me down and the top ups are more than reasonably priced.

Due to moving house and my boradband provider not being able to install for a few weeks, I decided to buy a mobile broadband dongle to do me through. Bought this 3 Mobile Dongle for £18 which included 1GB data allowance. I have to say I was impressed! Connects relateively quickly, although I have had a few occasions when I have had to disconnect from the HSPA type and reconnect to 3G as it was very slow. But overall I'd say a great buy. I use the internet for browsing/homeshopping/ebay/facebook and the occasional email, probably on average 2 hours a day, and so far I have used less than 2GB of data (1GB was already included, so I had to top up another 1GB for £10). I have been using it for about 3 weeks now. Yes, of course this is far more expensive than having fixed broadband by a regular provider, but as a temporary measure I am happy with it. Would be ideal for anyone who commutes alot and would like to use their laptop on the train/bus I suppose. And the My3 website is good, it tells you exactly how much data you have left, and it is easy to top up on the website.

Signed up to a 24 month contract to replace my T Mobile dongle which had been quite reliable. However, after having several problems installing the modem it eventually started working. That all changed however, after about 3 months it started losing connection completely for no apparent reason, this would happen every 2-5 minutes which was very annoying indeed. Rang customer support and was told that a firmware upgrade might solve the problem, but however, when I asked how to do one as there wasnt a link on the three homepage, the adviser said that it wasnt necessary?!... I have since learned that a firmware upgrade doesnt exist on the UK three network (it does on others) and I am stuck with the problem....