had problems in FRANCE and Spain with our Superdrug sim we bought finding out you only get 12gb per month when in EU. Found a really good phone shop in Spain who recommended the LOBSTER Spanish SIM card, so three levels we took the largest one 74gb per month, €12 per month for first three months, works on the Movistar network I think. Goes up to €24 per month after that. The best but is that if you look it up everything is in English. It is advertised as a Spanish sim all in English. Has worked perfectly while we have been over here for the past four weeks.Will ship to UK and all your data can be used either in EU or the UK. We bought to use for three months in EU and will then pause until we come back next year. Helpline if you have to call it has all English staff and very helpful. I think this is a good solution for both EU and UK.Who am I talking about? Three!!!!Someone on another thread has asked about issues he's having with his Smarty sim, which uses Three, so I thought I'd post this thread.
Over the last few weeks we've had horrendous problems with the Three mobile phone network (hubby is on Three and I'm on ID (who use Three), this has been getting worse and has now culminated in not being able to get a usable signal for the vast majority of the time and even if we can it is very, very slow and drops out. As I have a dual sim phone I used my PAYG RWG sim (on O2) to get on the internet, albeit quite carefully and only for stuff I really needed to do as once I'd used my free 250mb allowance I started to eat into my £ credit at a fair old rate so I was far from happy so about 2 weeks ago I had an on-line chat with ID and after I complained about it being slow and not really usable - having to wait for 2 minutes for a web page to load, if it did at all, was far from ideal - they credited my account with £20 to make up for the bad service which I was told should improve. Unfortunately it went seriously down the pan within 2 days and became virtually unusable - I couldn't get on the forum a lot of the time!
As a consequence I’d well and truly had enough, never mind how peed off hubby was, so after a lot of messing about managed to use my ID sim to have another chat with ID (it dropped out at least 4 times whilst I was doing so) and told them how unhappy I was and was asked to provide info to the chat agent and do some stuff to see if it improved the signal, one of which was to remove the sim, give it a wipe, and put it back in the phone … the same phone I was using to chat on!Despite telling her I couldn't I was told I 'had' to cooperate so she could try to resolve it totally missing the point that I could NOT retrieve the sim whilst I was using the flipping phone! It took a while but she finally realised she was on to a hiding to nothing by insisting especially since I'd told her that I'd swapped it from my old phone to new one a few days earlier and made sure it was 'clean' and that both me and hubby with his Three sim were having the same issues so I knew it was not the sim anyway. Eventually I asked what my options were about getting out the contract so I could go elsewhere which was duly logged and I was told that I would get a call from the complaints team within 48 hours … yeah … of course I will! She wasn't the best chat person I've dealt with and cut me off very quickly once she'd logged the complaint so I wasn't best pleased either.
Well, believe it or not I did get a call within 2 days (Thursday) by a UK based chap who listened to all the problems, what we'd tried to improve it, and how pretty much unusable it was now - I even relayed the issues we'd had a few years ago with Three who cut us off for 3 days (no calls, texts, or date … nowt!) but that we'd decided to give them (Three) another go as we thought they'd have improved by now. He was apologetic and understood totally how unsatisfactory it was but in order to pass the info to Three they had to follow a set procedure which meant the first thing to try was a replacement sim, even though he realised that this is unlikely to sort the issue out due to hubby also having the same problem. In addition he told me that there is some planned maintenance/repair work being undertaken on masts near us which could be what's causing the problems, work to improve the service and install 5G! I told him I was quite happy to stay with ID if they could give me a usable service but that I knew it wasn't them who were causing the problems and appreciated it was down to Three not providing the service so was out of ID's hands. Unfortunately there was nothing that could be done until the sim had been replaced and tried as that is what starts the ball rolling … he therefore requested a new sim be sent to me and it arrived this afternoon so I'm now waiting for it to be 'activated' by ID/Three then I can do some testing, the results of which are needed so the complaint can be triggered with Three.
Due to the worsening issues over the last week we've got a couple of 40gb 30 day 'no contract' Talkmobile sims (half price for 3 months @ £4.95) that use Vodafone's network in order to get online, these came yesterday afternoon and we've been trying to catch up on all the internet etc stuff we hadn't been able to do beforehand so have been a bit busy! What's interesting is that I've since discovered using Talkmobile's site that the 2 masts closest to us are having maintenance done and wonder if these are the same ones that Three uses … if so it could explain the issue with Three. What is daft though is the sheer madness to do work on them at the same time as it's surely obvious it could cause a limited service from them and if they are not usable at times we will then be having to 'link' to masts further away which will already be used by others and thus reduce the usable signal for everyone. The work on one of these masts is due to be done by the end of the month by Vodafone and the other a week later but at least we are able to use our Talkmobile sims which is more than I can say for ID/Three.
If ID/Three can't sort it, or give me a guarantee that the problems will be resolved soon, then I'll be looking to cancel my contract without any repercussions and stick with Talkmobile (EU roaming is permitted) for the time being whilst I decide whether to stick with them or look elsewhere. (The daft thing is that we were with Vodafone before and only changed to Three/ID because of their new roaming policy (ie £2 a day), but this isn't the case with Talkmobile who still allow roaming!)
Patience is a virtue, they say!!!
Actually that's to true of all of them. Take Giffgaff (o2) or Voxi (Vodafone) they are cheaper because they do not have call centres and are just web based. However, you get exactly the same in terms of connection speed and availability. But cheaper and more flexible.
We had the same for many years but it was silly to have phones with data included and a separate mifi too so we just have phones now and tether to them.
You don't necessarily need a data sim as many phone sims are now allowed to be used in MIFIs etc and usually offer a lot more for less cost, once you've set them up in a phone you just put them in your MIFI etc.
I was with 1p for a while but their data offerings for the cost isn't the best, 50gb for £15 pcm works out more than £9.95 pcm for 40gb which is sufficient for my needs (and of course half price for 3 months).
See above.
That may be part of the issue to, we've had some new housing estates built over the last few years and even more are being done now, although these are not close to us if we are now having to share a mast with them due to the closer ones being out of action obviously we'll suffer even more.
Me too!
I've never had a mobile signal at home with 3 , not ten years ago and not now , their coverage map must show when it's a useless one bar to be that widespread across the UKWe had a very similar situation with 3, we had been with them for years, when our phones and mifi just wouldn't work at home. It was a mast upgrade issue which lasted 9 months
We got a few refunds but eventually left.
We had similar issues with three, I had a phone SIM and we also had a data SIM in a router for home use. I changed my phone SIM to sky for the rollover of data who use 02 and my signal immediately improved and no dropping out. So after 3 months monitoring I changed our home data SIM to02 and had immediate improvement. We recently had 2 days of problems the difference is that 02 warned me that maintenance could affect the signal a week before it happened and let me know when it was finished. Customer service ! A bonus is that we have been away in Germany and France for 3 weeks and my 02 SIM has worked the whole time.Who am I talking about? Three!!!!
Over the last few weeks we've had horrendous problems with the Three mobile phone network (hubby is on Three and I'm on ID (who use Three), this has been getting worse and has now culminated in not being able to get a usable signal for the vast majority of the time and even if we can it is very, very slow and drops out. As I have a dual sim phone I used my PAYG RWG sim (on O2) to get on the internet, albeit quite carefully and only for stuff I really needed to do as once I'd used my free 250mb allowance I started to eat into my £ credit at a fair old rate so I was far from happy so about 2 weeks ago I had an on-line chat with ID and after I complained about it being slow and not really usable - having to wait for 2 minutes for a web page to load, if it did at all, was far from ideal - they credited my account with £20 to make up for the bad service which I was told should improve. Unfortunately it went seriously down the pan within 2 days and became virtually unusable - I couldn't get on the forum a lot of the time!
As a consequence I’d well and truly had enough, never mind how peed off hubby was, so after a lot of messing about managed to use my ID sim to have another chat with ID (it dropped out at least 4 times whilst I was doing so) and told them how unhappy I was and was asked to provide info to the chat agent and do some stuff to see if it improved the signal, one of which was to remove the sim, give it a wipe, and put it back in the phone … the same phone I was using to chat on!
Well, believe it or not I did get a call within 2 days (Thursday) by a UK based chap who listened to all the problems, what we'd tried to improve it, and how pretty much unusable it was now - I even relayed the issues we'd had a few years ago with Three who cut us off for 3 days (no calls, texts, or date … nowt!) but that we'd decided to give them (Three) another go as we thought they'd have improved by now. He was apologetic and understood totally how unsatisfactory it was but in order to pass the info to Three they had to follow a set procedure which meant the first thing to try was a replacement sim, even though he realised that this is unlikely to sort the issue out due to hubby also having the same problem. In addition he told me that there is some planned maintenance/repair work being undertaken on masts near us which could be what's causing the problems, work to improve the service and install 5G! I told him I was quite happy to stay with ID if they could give me a usable service but that I knew it wasn't them who were causing the problems and appreciated it was down to Three not providing the service so was out of ID's hands. Unfortunately there was nothing that could be done until the sim had been replaced and tried as that is what starts the ball rolling … he therefore requested a new sim be sent to me and it arrived this afternoon so I'm now waiting for it to be 'activated' by ID/Three then I can do some testing, the results of which are needed so the complaint can be triggered with Three.
Due to the worsening issues over the last week we've got a couple of 40gb 30 day 'no contract' Talkmobile sims (half price for 3 months @ £4.95) that use Vodafone's network in order to get online, these came yesterday afternoon and we've been trying to catch up on all the internet etc stuff we hadn't been able to do beforehand so have been a bit busy! What's interesting is that I've since discovered using Talkmobile's site that the 2 masts closest to us are having maintenance done and wonder if these are the same ones that Three uses … if so it could explain the issue with Three. What is daft though is the sheer madness to do work on them at the same time as it's surely obvious it could cause a limited service from them and if they are not usable at times we will then be having to 'link' to masts further away which will already be used by others and thus reduce the usable signal for everyone. The work on one of these masts is due to be done by the end of the month by Vodafone and the other a week later but at least we are able to use our Talkmobile sims which is more than I can say for ID/Three.
If ID/Three can't sort it, or give me a guarantee that the problems will be resolved soon, then I'll be looking to cancel my contract without any repercussions and stick with Talkmobile (EU roaming is permitted) for the time being whilst I decide whether to stick with them or look elsewhere. (The daft thing is that we were with Vodafone before and only changed to Three/ID because of their new roaming policy (ie £2 a day), but this isn't the case with Talkmobile who still allow roaming!)
I use three Iphones ( or as my wife calls them my burner phones) and I keep my main one well in credit data wise. . Smarty allow you to check data usage on all three phones from the app.
Also with 300GB Tiekom. Can't fault them yet!Took advice of the below thread and signed up with Spanish company Tiekom - 300gb monthly for €39.90
Absolutely excellent service with Data Sim sent to U.K. home address and activated when I arrived in France With sim inserted into TP Link mifi M7350. Now into fifth week of faultless operation of signal and speed throughout France and Spain having used 115gb.
The thread is very much worth a read as an option for a data only sim, with means to ’park’ any fees when not needed. Other suppliers are available etc
I have a solution for good Mobile Data (300G) whilst in Spain (then any zone 1 country)
So, as with many, I’m the type of person who just ‘needs’ ubiquitous high bandwidth WiFi always available. The challenge for many this year has been with Brexit, the type of unlimited data roaming enjoyed before, is no longer available. There have been numerous topics on this for the last few...www.motorhomefun.co.uk
Smarty unlike Three don’t charge the daily £2 roaming fee that’s why I’m going to change from Three to Smarty, already done my phone next will be the router sim.
It is in preparation for the ESN (emergency services network) taking over from the Airwave service which lost the contract to EE. This is to provide 5G to all the emergency services in the UK. Even when it’s implemented there will still be dead zones where user/control cannot communicate with each other as is the case now. They use POC (Push to talk Over Cellular) which uses the data side of the cellular phone signal 2/3/4/5G.
I was with Vodafone for 29years (yes I had an original brick phone) then the fun started. They cut me off for non payment despite having a ddb, then claimed I'd sent a million+ texts and used 200,000 minutes in a week!!! Sorted that out and 30minutes later they cut me off again for non-payment. Made a payment by credit card, acknowledged as received, 20 minutes later cut-off. Sim card removed and a Three one picked up from local shop.I’ve been with Vodafone for many many years and would never dream of changing networks, why do people want to do this alL the time just to save 37p a month .just saying like.
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