Not happy with network service

[dontknow]

Hello everyone. I recently switched to 3 from  Voxi and i have to say I’m very disappointed with the network here in London. 5G is good but as soon as it switches to 4G (ie most of the time) the data becomes painfully slow.

I would like to ask if anyone else is having similar problems? If you are has it always been like this for you or is it a more recent/temporary issue?

Speed test yesterday showed 0.4Mb/s download speeds (in London!?)…I couldn’t even load up a website. With Vodafone I honestly never had such problems, I never even used to think about data speeds as they were always really reliable. Even more weird is how the tests actually started at about 15Mb/s and then would immediately drop to below 1. Is this some kind of hidden throttling for PAYG?

I had a chat with CS about this. The advisor kept sending unrelated messages (i could tell it was all pre scripted), blaming my phone for the issues even though everything turned out to be set up correctly and it’s a fairly good phone (iPhone 13) and then they  started passing me to other departments. I just ended the chat. They made it quite obvious that it’s the network’s fault but just wouldn’t admit it. 

Im on a PAYG plan and I’ll give it until the rest of the month to see how I eventually find things but my initial experience is not too great. I’ve been with Three in the past and I remember it working fine back then in the same places. What happened??

Also, pay monthly customers are you not annoyed at having to pay £2/5 a day for Go Roam while PAYG have it for free? It seems quite unfair. 

Btw as I don’t want to sound too negative I love the Three+ rewards, free Go Roam and the 5G network (where available) seems fantastic, the prices are reasonable too. It’s just unfortunate that overall the network seems so poor. 

[garetc]

When I lived in London (and worked in Central London) I found that Three’s network was quite congested and I often experienced slower speeds compared to the other networks. It’s unlikely to be an issue with your handset or you would have experienced it on your previous network. I have them as a backup sim but I’m in rural Derbyshire now where my average speed from Three is 80Mbps.

You’ll need to weigh the level of service against the cost and decide if it’s worth it for you.

[JonathanB]

Hey dontknow,

Welcome to the Three Community.

I'm sorry to hear that the data speeds have been letting you down. We don't throttle connections but you may be encountering congestion as was suggested by @garetc. We have a coverage and network status checker available on the website, so it may be worth checking affected postcodes there to see if there's an issue we're aware of and working on.

Hope this helps, and that you see some improvements with these speeds soon.

JonathanB

[dontknow]

Unfortunately it’s only getting worse. When travelling around I often have unusable service. There should be a warning about how bad the 3 network is on your website. 

[Debbielegs]

I've been with 3 for 20 years and had no problems until now. I've been abroad and my roaming has been good but since I upgraded to Samsung galaxy flip3 and 5g I've had problems with connection in alot of places here where I live in UK and recently went abroad and my roaming wudnt work which is in my contract. I find it hard to connect on 5g too its absolutely rubbish. I've never had to complain once but now I'm feel like that's all I do pluses with the loyalty I don't get nothing back from them thinking of going somewhere else after my contract is up I'm disappointed that much. No good deals network not good think 3 is goin going down hill now 

[JonathanB]

Hey Debbielegs,

Welcome to the Three Community, and thanks for being a Three customer all these years.

I'm really sorry to hear that you've been experiencing issues with your network connection recently. I'd suggest checking out any relevant postcodes on our coverage and network status checker first, to make sure of what the expected coverage is, and also to see if any faults or engineering work is going on.

Also as you've been with Three such an exceptionally long time, did you get a new SIM on the recent upgrade, or have you been using the same one for a few years now?

JonathanB

[Debbielegs]

I didn't even get a good deal for my upgrade 😕 only found out after I had the phone for 2 weeks 

[bradlfc]

I moved to 3 from Vodafone a few months back and it’s turned out to be a terrible decision. I’d read a lot of negative reviews but thought surely it can’t be that bad. It is. I struggle to get a signal anywhere. I was amazed during a recent trip to central London how bad the signal was. I’d have thought if 3 sorted their signal out anywhere it would be in the capital of the country where millions of people reside. 

[Dar2169]

Three maybe be merging with Vodafone so things will get a lot better if this happens 

[garetc]

Wouldn’t get too excited, Vodafone’s 4G is better (mostly) than Three but their 5G rollout has slowed to a snails pace and is lacking compared to Three.

Customer service is about the same as Three and by that I mean terrible on all counts.