Shocked by poor customer service at Three!

I emailed Three with a query about coverage (or rather absence of coverage)
for mobile internet in an area of Cumbria where I was staying last week.
Excellent Orange 3G signal but no 3 internet (except very limited access to
part of Planet 3). I was under the impression that you got GPRS at least
when not in a Three 3G signal area - not so apparently, which is extremely
poor if you are staying somewhere rural.

Filled in an online query form asking about this and requested a reply by
email (they ask which email address you wish the reply to go to).

Instead they rang me and left a message to call 333. Called 333 and nobody
knew anything about it. Stroppy foreign call centre operative most
unhelpful. Said 3 cannot reply to customers by email (?) - which is funny
when they ask which email address you want the reply to be sent to! Insisted
on security questions procedure even when all I wanted to know was regarding
3's coverage - nothing to do with my personal account details and not even
confidential information. They seem to make everything as difficult as
possible for the customer.

Told him in the end I was appalled by the poor customer service and poor
coverage and asked for a PAC code to leave them. Said he would let me have
this then the phone went dead. Call took approx. 30 minutes including
hanging on listening to (?) music. Could have been dealt with via a simple
email response.

Is it true that they can't reply to customers' queries by email?


--
Paul

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› See More: Shocked by poor customer service at Three!

"Paul" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> Is it true that they can't reply to customers' queries by email?
>

I don't know about 3 but it seems to me that an increasing number of firms
refuse to deal by email! My wife has a Thomas Cook Credit Card which was
fraudulently misused at Christmas. Barclaycard (who run this card)
effectively refused to deal with the matter by email and instead tried to
deal with it by phone (and repeatedly got their responses wrong) or by
surface mail (which they then proceeded to lose and not reply to)!

I suspect that they do not wish to use email because there is a detailed
audit trail available to people using email which they can avoid by using
other methods.

Roger

Roger <[email protected]> wrote:
> I suspect that they do not wish to use email because there is a detailed
> audit trail available to people using email which they can avoid by using
> other methods.

.... while still claiming that email is not a secure medium and that
it can be altered in transit, yada yada yada. (Can anyone say "digital
signatures"?) Sigh.

Chris

On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:44:28 +0100, "Paul" <[email protected]> wrote:


I'm surprised that anyone nowadays is shocked by poor Customer Service
..It's usually the norm unless you go up a level to a Manager or
Supervisor...

"Paul" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I emailed Three with a query about coverage (or rather absence of
> coverage) for mobile internet in an area of Cumbria where I was staying
> last week. Excellent Orange 3G signal but no 3 internet (except very
> limited access to part of Planet 3). I was under the impression that you
> got GPRS at least when not in a Three 3G signal area - not so apparently,
> which is extremely poor if you are staying somewhere rural.
>
> Filled in an online query form asking about this and requested a reply by
> email (they ask which email address you wish the reply to go to).
>
> Instead they rang me and left a message to call 333. Called 333 and nobody
> knew anything about it. Stroppy foreign call centre operative most
> unhelpful. Said 3 cannot reply to customers by email (?) - which is funny
> when they ask which email address you want the reply to be sent to!
> Insisted on security questions procedure even when all I wanted to know
> was regarding 3's coverage - nothing to do with my personal account
> details and not even confidential information. They seem to make
> everything as difficult as possible for the customer.
>
> Told him in the end I was appalled by the poor customer service and poor
> coverage and asked for a PAC code to leave them. Said he would let me have
> this then the phone went dead. Call took approx. 30 minutes including
> hanging on listening to (?) music. Could have been dealt with via a simple
> email response.
>
> Is it true that they can't reply to customers' queries by email?

Probably - but even if not you can bet that the reply you would have got
would also have been crap.

Is it possible that it's a case of one department not talking to another?
It's a nice idea to ask you to call 333 to get a personal response to your
query which would have been logged as a consequence of your email question.

More likely though is the possibility that the request to call 333 was an
invitation to field your enquiry from scratch to a tubbie.

3 doesn't need to worry though. A Nokia N95 8Gb with no phone cost on a £25
a month contract with decent minutes and text allowance is a no brainer.

Gareth.