My troubles with 3

[Richard111]

Hi everyone,

been off line for a few weeks. My ISP broadband service from 3 has lost the signal to my house. I am typing this sitting is my car parked near the harbour mouth in Milford Haven.

I attempted to express my disillusionment with the service provided by 3Support on their BLOG HERE but it seems they have declined to publish my post.

Will post the whole sorry saga here shortly. Mean while anyone thinking of signing up with 3, DON'T! You'll be sorry.

[Derek]

Richard111, you have been badly missed, several recent posts are right up your street.
AND, due in a large part to your continuing contributions.

Please get BT, it ain't the cheapest, but it is reliable.
AND quickly your missing much that is happening / developing right now.

[Richard111]

(03-28-2010 12:08 PM)Derek Wrote:  Richard111, you have been badly missed, several recent posts are right up your street.
AND, due in a large part to your continuing contributions.

Please get BT, it ain't the cheapest, but it is reliable.
AND quickly your missing much that is happening / developing right now.

Hi, Derek, thanks for the vote of confidence.

I will not allow BT in my house. I don't even have a phone line.
It's pouring with rain right now and I am warm and comfortable in my lounge again curtesy of Vodafone pay as you go. Working a treat.
Lots to catch up with but my continuing story first.

---

Right. Here is the sorry saga of being a customer of Hutchison 3G UK Ltd.

Up until 9:00am, Thursday, 11 March, my mobile phone and mobile broadband worked fine. When I attempted my lunch time session on the web the 3Connect dashboard reported "No Service". Just temporary I assumed and tried again in the evening. Still "No Service". I call the help number and navigate through an ear bending menu system until I get to talk to a nice chap in India. I assume he was in India as his accent was so strong I could barely understand him and he spoke at lightning speed. A sign of efficiency I suppose. (Not)

The outcome from all the tests and discussion was that my SIM card was faulty and he could arrange a replacement in five working days. "No ways" I said. I will collect a card from my nearest 3 Store. This store is in Carmarthen, an eighty mile round trip in the car.

10:30am Friday morning I have my replacement SIM and head home. The nice young lady in the store advised me it would be 2 to 48 hours before the new SIM card would be recognised on the network. Ah, well, better than five days.

Many frustrating attempts to connect all weekend. Monday morning, 15 March, still "No Service". I call support again. Oh, one of the things about the 3Support menu on the telephone is you have to type in the number of the gadget you are calling about. The system claims the number for my modem is unrecognised!! This doubles the time navigating the menu until you can talk to someone. The number is on all my monthly bills so I know its not me.

Anyway, the support chappie, very Indian, very efficient, talks me through unloading and reloading all the 3Connect software. Still "No Service". I point out I can see Orange, Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile networks (I'm getting very good with the system on my computer now!) but no 3 network. The modem must be seeing the outside world. It does say "No Service" not "No Network".

No, says support, my modem must be faulty and they will send me a replacement modem. Well, the replacement modem arrived special delivery lunch time Tuesday. Wow! That is service for you!!

I'm going to have to skip a lot, this is taking too long. Well, would you believe it! The replacement modem also says "No Service". Much more phoning and reloading of software and waiting 48 hours for something that never happens. I eventually take the laptop to a friend's house many miles away and "Voila!", I can see a 3 Home 3G network but it won't allow me to connect. I notice my mobile phone is not behaving. Several times I see "No network access" and "Emergency calls only". The phone is usually showing 5 bars of signal so I am a bit baffled. Eventually I begin to cotton on, if I take the phone several streets away it indicates it has a 3G signal and the PLANET 3 services work fine. I mention all this to support and they keep telling me I am only 300 hundred yards from a base station, I should have a good 3G signal. Phooey!!

Eventually I get bumped up to second line support and we discuss all the above again but this chappie checks out my phone IMEI number and says I am connected through Orange!! Am I really where I say I am?? Sheesh!!

Now I realise I can use my phone as a mobile signal strength meter and start walking the town and build up a list of Post Codes where I can get a good signal. Also I drive to Carmarthen again with the laptop and get the 3 Store to try out my modem. It shows "No Service" on their display machine so they try one of their modems in my laptop and it works fine. Network comes up no problem. Check SIM card and that is okay too. So, just the REPLACEMENT modem is faulty.

Back home and pass all this info to the service centre (after all the usual menu crap) and at last I get an admission that there maybe something wrong with their equipment and they will investigate. Well, gee, thanks.

Thursday, 25 March, after 14 days of frustration, I am told my modem, the one THEY sent me, is BLACKLISTED!!!! I get lots of apologies and promises that I will not be charged for those two weeks. That evening I get a callback saying that my BLACKLISTED modem has been cleared on the network.

I load my laptop into the car and head for one of the sites where I know there is good signal and BINGO! I'm up and running on the net.

Trying to surf the net while sitting in your car is not to be recommended.

To summarise, 3Support was unable to indentify the loss of signal via information available on my computer. They blamed my equipment and then SEND ME A FAULTY UNIT which they cannot identify as BLACKLISTED for over 7 days of attempting to connect to the network.

To date, 29 March, 19:00 hours I still cannot connect to the 3 network via my broadband modem while at home. If I move to a site just 100 yards away I get 5 bars of signal. Doing this sucks!! My 3 mobile phone will not give full service on PLANET 3 unless I move to the above location.

I have had no written confirmation of what is wrong and what they are going to do about it, just telephone messages saying I won't be charged while this problem lasts and it could be until the second week in May before its fixed.

I haven't had my March bills yet, I am a monthly account customer on eighteen month contracts. If they haven't adjusted my charges accordingly I will be seeking legal advice.

In my view, Hutchison 3G UK Ltd is a crap organisation and I want out of my contracts as they have not honoured their part of the agreement.

The first 3 months and 12 days of my contracts every thing worked fine. Now look at the mess I'm in and no explanation of why this occurred.

[Richard111]

Update on my troubles with 3. My March bills arrived and I see I am not being charged on my broadband account and reduced payment on the mobile phone account. The phone is a Sony Ericsson T715 all singing all dancing with camera and full network capability plus it runs Skype. The fact that I have to leave the house to network services is not too much of a problem as, like now, I am connecting through Vodafone from home.

I still don't know what went wrong but they have admitted to the problem and they promise I will have good signal by the end of May.

I had a similar problem to this last year when I was on a full Vodafone contract. Contractors dug up a council carpark and converted it for use by Tesco. It seems the network radio masts communicate with each other over BT land lines and that was what was damaged first time. Fixed in three days.

I strongly suspect this is the same problem as the next stage of the Tesco expansion contract started on the day I lost my signal. This Tesco store is only 200 yards from my house as the seagull flies but half a mile by road.

It seems all I can do is wait. Three months to fix a problem!!! Some service eh? This is the same company that runs all the 3G networks in the UK.

[Richard111]

Update. The end of May is nigh and I still don't have any signal from 3.
I emailed a snotty note and got a remarkably quick phone call back.
It took about twenty minutes on the phone to explain all the in and outs and as usuall my helpfull caller was unaware of any problems in my area.
He rang off with a promise to call me back.

Half an hour later he called me back full of apologies (do these guys get special instructions on this -- sheesh) that a proposed tower to cover my area has not been completed and I will not be charged blah blah and I will get a credit for the inconvenience blah blah and the forecast date for completion is now the end of June. Right.

Good thing I updated my vodaphone account in time.

I'm still convinced the problem is connected with the new Tesco extentions just a hundred meters from my house. Tesco claim the new extention will be open on June 14 and I see they have applied for a 24 hour licence. Bang goes our peaceful nights.

[Derek]

I don't mean this in any other way than being helpful, but,
is it time to move Richard111 ?

3 and Tesco "against you" does not sound like good odds.

[Mike Davis]

Having spent 37 years working in the communications industry I understand both your situation and the underlying causes of your problems. Where I live I need Satellite broadband internet service as there is no cable broadband service in the area. Any wireless service such as 3G or cellular are not well established and I need a booster antenna for phone service in my house as I do not have wired local telephone service. The best they could offer for internet connection would be DSL which is about equal to the satellite without the loss during extreme weather. Competition in the communications arena is the cause of your problems and the communications companies actually were against competition until they realized the future gain in profit they could realize through deregulation. Call centers went to the cheapest locations and personal service suffered because of competition. People were more interested in price than quality and the companies were interested in ROI so they followed the competition to lower standards. Work was a pleasure when quality counted to the customers and the company but when quality took a back seat to price then I decided to retire! I am not interested in paying for a land line and a cellular phone so I stayed with a cellular phone only.
The new tower being constructed is probably at or on the Tesco site because they removed the old site during the expansion. The cost of placing a temporary tower was less desirable than dancing with a few disturbed customers and customer service was probably now aware of the issue because it was a local construction thing.

[Richard111]

(05-29-2010 02:05 AM)Derek Wrote:  I don't mean this in any other way than being helpful, but,
is it time to move Richard111 ?

3 and Tesco "against you" does not sound like good odds.

No chance Derek. I am on a small cliff 60 foot higher than the Tesco level. I have good views of the countryside and the harbour and its fun to watch rush hour traffic on the roundabout below the house. Noise is not a problem as everything is double glazed. Although we live "in town", the house is on its own plot approached by small lane.

Tesco is only 100 yards away as the seagull flies but it's a damn long walk, and then there is the hill coming back. All other shops in town are a much shorter walk. The wife and I are in our 70s and given current government stupidities we may not be able to drive much in the future.

As Mike points out the problems with 3 seem to be tied into to the building works. There was a similar problem with Vodafone last year when the Tesco carpark was re-organised and telephone lines were cut. This surprised me to learn the "masts" talked to each other over dedicated telephone links although the service desk says this is not so.

If there is a new mast going up on the Tesco roof I will see it. There is a hell of a lot of new gear on the roof, seems to be stuff to deal with air, conditioners and such plus huge "air pipes".

All interesting stuff. The problems are minor really.

[Mike Davis]

The service desk does not know what they are talking about. The "Cell Sites" have to communicate with switches and each other through some method. Wired or modern fiber optic links are the preferred method but in some instances a micro wave link will handle a certain amount of traffic and would be sufficient in remote locations where it is not cost effective to lay cable. Micro wave is subject to blockage and interference as a flock of birds can interfere with the signal and it is line of sight only. The antennas need to be aligned and high winds do disrupt the signal also. It is common now for wireless companies to co exist on the same towers with their own antennas where in the past each company erected a separate tower. It is possible the mast will not be a mast but only a antenna or series of antennas. The antennas each cover 180 degrees so only two would be required depending on the number of bands they are transmitting on. The higher the frequency the nearer the antenna you need to be. Your frequencies are specific to your country unless the international group is providing better standards these days and they frequencies used have little to do with my trees so I tend to forget about all that stuff. In 2004 I could have quoted bandwidths and companies using them. At that time I was responsible for some private wireless systems that became obsolete due to restrictions and reduced prices for commercial wireless. I also had some on campus microwave systems to look after as well as fiber and copper cable. My primary area was the switching systems.

[Richard111]

Hey, Mike, seems we worked at the opposite ends of the radio bands.

For over twenty years I worked for the Decca Navigator Company. There was low frequency radio for you.