Why I Hate 3

Posted on 06. Aug, 2007 by Cameron Reilly in Bitch Session

Here’s the latest chapter of my saga with 3.

As regular readers may recall, about 8 weeks ago I dropped my 5 month-old DOPOD 838Pro into a 3 store because it had stopped working. They told me they had to send it away to get it repaired and it would be back in three or four weeks.

When I called them four weeks later, they told me it would be ANOTHER 3 weeks.

When I called them three weeks later, they told me it hadn’t even been looked at yet and they couldn’t tell me how long it would be before I had my phone back.

So I asked them to give me a new phone but they couldn’t do that because they didn’t have any DOPOD 838 Pros in stock.

So I asked them to just terminate my account and let me go get a phone from somewhere else. They told me that would cost me a $900 fee.

So i fumed and waited.

Today they called me to tell me my phone was fixed and ready to be picked up at the store. After 8 weeks.

When I went to pick it up from the store, the guy told me it was all fixed. But when I tried to check it, the battery was COMPLETELY dead and I couldn’t even get it to turn on more than 5 seconds.

So I brought it home, charged it up – guess what? They hadn’t fixed a GODDAMN THING. The same problem I had 8 weeks ago – namely that the thing is a brick, won’t make calls – is still the there.

So I called the store back and they told me they now had their own repair center in St Kilda Road and I should take it there. I rocked up at St Kilda Road, only to be told by the girl there that they don’t actually open until September and don’t repair DOPODs anyway.

I told this girl I was furious and explained the story. I then sat there for an hour while she called everyone from the manufacturer to the repair center to “priority support” trying to get me a solution.

After an hour, I had no explanation why they returned me a phone without fixing a damn thing, and they gave me two options:

1) Take the phone MYSELF down to their REAL repair center in Nunawading, lose it for 5 days, and take my chances.

or

2) They had a refurb unit, another DOPOD, not the same model as mine but similar, which they will send me. It will take three days. It doesn’t have a battery. So I need to go online, order a battery, pay for it, then after the battery and phone arrives, I can call 3 “customer support” and they will refund the amount of the battery.

Because I wanted a working phone as soon as possible, I took the last option.

I cannot WAIT to get out of the contract with 3 and I would highly recommend you avoid 3 if you can.

Yes, Hugo, you called it mate.

UPDATE: Looks like I’m not the only person with a gripe against 3. Check out this thread on NotGoodEnough.org.

UPDATE 2: Looks like the NGE people didn’t like my post for some reason, they took it down and deleted my account I think!