News - Virgin Media joins the 'unlimited 3G data' war with Premiere tariffs

[Brewster0101]

Well that's just not true - they recently introduced throttling on their unlimited packages,

I never knew that. Just been reading about it. Its not a surprise or bad thing they have introduced throttling. There are aalot of people out there that took the piss and clocked up the mobile bandwidth just their own excessive usage. Does seem unclear though at what point three will throttle your speeds.

[3dcandy]

well...my sgs3 is £34 a month with 3 and that was best deal at time and was in stock...so I went with them. Fine so far apart from some dodgy 3g issues, but other networks seem just as bad!

[miniyazz]

I never knew that. Just been reading about it. Its not a surprise or bad thing they have introduced throttling. There are aalot of people out there that took the piss and clocked up the mobile bandwidth just their own excessive usage. Does seem unclear though at what point three will throttle your speeds.

Just another story of an unlimited data package provider realising they can't provide what they offered and changing the contract. It hasn't affected me so far, to be fair, but add that to the rest of their changes (imagine if I decided I wanted to pay less because of deflation!) and it really starts to grate.. and it's the principle really; I signed up to receive x services and pay y amount. Now I'm receiving less x and paying more y.. yet new customers signed up for less x services and are paying less y.

[crossy]

Well that's just not true - they recently introduced throttling on their unlimited packages, and also raised existing customers' bills by 3.6% claiming it was costing them too much and inflation and blah blah but rubbing it in our faces even more by having the same deal that I signed up to at £35 available for £34.

Threaten to leave - at one point during the PAC negotiations (and here was me thinking that this was a simple request) they effectively offered me a One Plan style deal (AYCE data and text/call limits so high that they were effectively unlimited) for the princely sum of £13/month. Damn was I very, very, very tempted! As to throttling - I'm a VM customer so well used to it - although I take the (unfashionable?) position that a fairly applied bandwidth reduction is actually a good thing overall.

And that's aside from other detrimental changes that Ofcom couldn't give a **** about like introducing charges for SMS delivery notifications.

Hmm, didn't know that you could get delivery notifications. But I'm not surprised that it's charged for or that it's something Ofcom don't want to stop. Although like the throttling, as long as the charge isn't excessive (5-10p would seem reasonable to me) then I wouldn't protest.

So in conclusion, go **** yourself with a massive, preferably spiked, mains-powered vibrating object, Three.

LOL

Actually I remembered something else that Three are good for - they do seem to attach themselves to campaigns to get charges reduced. E.g. the European roaming charges and there were others before that.

[miniyazz]

Threaten to leave - at one point during the PAC negotiations (and here was me thinking that this was a simple request) they effectively offered me a One Plan style deal (AYCE data and text/call limits so high that they were effectively unlimited) for the princely sum of £13/month. Damn was I very, very, very tempted! As to throttling - I'm a VM customer so well used to it - although I take the (unfashionable?) position that a fairly applied bandwidth reduction is actually a good thing overall.

I'd love to. Unfortunately I'm tied in for a further 6 months. On the plus side, perhaps better options (like this Virgin tariff) will start to appear (plus more competition perhaps?)

Hmm, didn't know that you could get delivery notifications. But I'm not surprised that it's charged for or that it's something Ofcom don't want to stop. Although like the throttling, as long as the charge isn't excessive (5-10p would seem reasonable to me) then I wouldn't protest.

Here I would agree except that I do not believe extra charges should be added part way through a contract without an option to leave said contract. Hence the frustration.

LOL

Actually I remembered something else that Three are good for - they do seem to attach themselves to campaigns to get charges reduced. E.g. the European roaming charges and there were others before that.

True. If only I ever went to Europe, that might be useful.

[themw]

If only they didn't enforce mandatory image compression... Awful.

[da.Guvna]

Hmm, I've been a Three customer for almost 2 years now and was completely oblivious to most of these issues. I use my phone for tethering a lot when I'm away on business, and often get decent data speeds even when there's (apparently) very limited signal, though I do notice that streaming videos seem to get throttled. Doesn't concern me really; I'm also of the opinion that throttling p*ss-takers is better for the rest of us.
Anecdotes about customer service is concerning though. I take it there was some reason you couldn't get out of your contract if you were unhappy with the changes they made? I thought that was everybody's right?

[crossy]

Anecdotes about customer service is concerning though. I take it there was some reason you couldn't get out of your contract if you were unhappy with the changes they made? I thought that was everybody's right?

Three's customer service has always been a bit hit-or-miss - if you ask something that's "on script" then they're fine. Anything more complex or - heaven forbid - any kind of negotiation and you're in for a world of pain. Heck, as an example of that I spent an hour (spread over two calls) just trying to get my PAC.

There's also no consistency - e.g. when I checked three weeks ago I was told that at the end of my contract term I could just walk away with no penalty, (and I got the service agent to double check this so there was no mistake!). However when I requested my PAC this week I was told (a bit aggressively actually) that I would be expected to pay at least a months bill - since apparently I'm required to give a month's notice of the intention to leave my (expired!) contract.

I've used the PAC yesterday in my local T-Mobile store, and they couldn't have been more helpful. Although it's a bit worrying that the WiFi allocation I'm supposed to have wasn't there last night - hopefully this is just something that's "in progress".

[miniyazz]

I take it there was some reason you couldn't get out of your contract if you were unhappy with the changes they made? I thought that was everybody's right?

There is provision in the contract to be released from it without penalty for 'detrimental changes'. Unfortunately this is, apparently, open to interpretation - and raising the price by less than inflation each year is deemed unlikely to be significantly detrimental to count. If you can provide evidence that you can e.g. no longer afford to buy food because of it, it's likely you could use it to leave the contract.
They somehow claimed that SMS notifications were not a core service so the get-out clauses didn't apply, and I've not tried to leave because of throttling because I haven't got any evidence that it's affected me yet.