£25 ‘admin charge’ to change your price plan on Three UK?
I had a series of mails in today from an apoplectic Three UK user. He’s a good friend and I regularly go-on about Three to him whilst he’s patiently gritted his teeth. He’s a reluctant fan of Three at the best of times. He phoned up Three this afternoon to change his price plan. He wasn’t using all his minutes and he decided to see if he could swap to another tariff. Read on to see what took place…
I was on an expensive price plan with three. I wasn’t using anything like the inclusive minutes and texts so I called them today to change price plan. Did you know that their policy is to charge customers a £25 ‘administration charge’ for each tariff change? A touch excessive, but I understand where they’re coming from - they’re losing money when customers move so it makes a certain amount of commercial sense.
What really fucked me off is that they restrict which tariff you can move to. They only let you move down in value by one step. So I can’t actually change my plan to the one that would suit me best.
Or rather, I could - but it’d cost me another £25.
I’ve written to their customer services people, but this is a really fucking sharp practice.
Roll on July and the end of my contract! I’m thinking it’s back to the arms of vodafone in July.
Oh dear. Deary me. Just when I was going off on one about how good their new £15/month ‘500 minutes’ price plan was (not just me, reader Darren reckoned it was a genius move), you find out that they’ve implemented some dumb marketing policy.
This chap has been a rather annoyed Three UK user for a good 20 odd months. He’s the type of person that looks at me strangely when I make positive comments about Three. His experience has been universally mediocre — and the ‘that’ll be £25 please’ policy has knocked it on the head for him. I’m sat there extolling the virtues of the X-Series to him and, frankly, looking a total arse as a result.
What company charges their customers to CHANGE price plan? And then LIMITS the price plans they can choose? Is this normal practice? Surely not?
To which my response would be “Sir, you can either waive that administration fee or send me my PAC code”.
I’m sure they would rather have him as a customer and lose the admin fee than lose him altogether.
Posted by Dan Lane on February 9th, 2007 at 10:14 pm.I’d have to agree with Dan. Three come up with some great stuff, but they also do some stupid things (such as my battle over a Slingbox).
Posted by Mark on February 10th, 2007 at 10:45 am.I too found out about this policy a couple of days ago when I phoned them up to see if I could change to a lower price plan. I think it’s partly due to the number of discounts they offer if you sign up to an expensive plan.
Posted by John Campbell on February 10th, 2007 at 9:07 pm.When I initially signed up with three I got the first 9 months line rental half price. Then, when I signed up with them for a second year they offered me a more expensive contract (so I could get an N73 for free), and then put a credit equivalent to 5 months line rental on my account.
Anyway, their sales tactic seems to be sign people up to expensive contracts, whilst giving them a discount and hoping that forget they’re paying out to so much. Given this, it makes sense for them to raise the barriers to discourage you from switching to a lower contract. It’d be interesting to know what percentage of Three subscribers are on some kind of a discount deal - I suspect it’s much higher than most of the other networks.
Interestingly they changed the rules a few months ago, so that you can’t change your contract down at all in the first 12 months (it used to be 6). Checking a copy of their “Price Guide” document from last month there’s no mention of a charge for changing price plan. Nice of them to tell everyone about the change….
AFAIK they’ve always only allowed you to change down by one price plan per month, whilst allowing you to change up at any time.
Yep I’m yet anouther totaly P.Oed customer, their Indian customer support was totaly unhelpfull in any aspect, it would appear that it’s my fault they have to charge £25 for me to downgrade as I accepted their offer.
Have any of you noticed the nice little extra that they have added to their contract PDF for Feb?
Posted by stuart burridge on February 12th, 2007 at 12:12 pm.Apprantly now if you view the site for a second time you have automaticaly accepted any changes to the terms and conditions of your contract without argument. Who are these people? in 9 months time they will never be in my life again no matter how good a deal they offer. 3 Mobile no chance and I will certainly advise all friends and family against using them every chance I get.
hey all having the same problem with 3 and compleatly hacked off with theier 25 quid admin fee i actually downgraded b4 they brought in the fee but the eediatss actually moved me up to a more expensive monthly plan without tellin me i then rang them to moan and they said i had to pay 25 quid to go back to the orginal price plan i have to pay for their mistake can u believe i cancelled my direct debits AND HAVE HAD SO MUCH HEADACHE WITH THE INDIA CS that i just want to termintae contract but still have till nov till contract ends and now will have to pay a higher monthly price plan im so pXXXXX off how can end this flippin contract the cs are crap there constantly makin mistakes and nearly caused a divorce due to 100s of texts being sent to some unknown number that i never even seen b4 lol my husband questioned me for hours what can i do to terminate this effin contract please help me
Posted by mariam on February 26th, 2007 at 7:36 pm.So what can we do now? Im also pissed off with that, AND with a fact that I couldn’t change my price plan after 6 months (on 18 month contract) as I was promised by Phones4U employee. I know (now) that it should be 9 month wait but that was nit what he said.
Is there anything we can do about it? Like… nuke them?
Posted by Karol on February 27th, 2007 at 4:13 am.I am yet another p.oooed off customer. just realised that they charge for downgrading and they can only downgrade 1 tariff down. i told them this is grossly unfair and will be complaining to OFT and OFFCOM and also the charge is disproportinate to the amount of effort required. They hve an option on website to upgrade , let there be option to downgrade and it can be done in few clicks by the customer themselves. The CS guy phoned me to inform me that that is their policy and is there anything else they can help with. isaid that they cant help me and i also said i will be glad to get out of 3!
Posted by Taj on February 27th, 2007 at 1:19 pm.Called 3 today after so much hassle from them. I was told by Phones4U that I could change my price plan after 6 months….3 said 9 months!! So i rang up and spoke to some VERY VERY VERY unhelpful people. They said I could move to their lowest tariff of £25 per month if I paid a £25 admin fee or I could do it step by step…going from £45 to £40 to £35 to £30 to £25 meaning by August I’d be down to the £25 contract… meaning I’d hav hadto pay £30 in the meantime whilst not using the ridicuous amoumt of mins n texts. How do we let ourselves get drawn in by these things???!! The indian call centre is absoloutely APALLING. I would NOT reccommend 3 to anyone! I can’t wait til my contract is up in January!!!!!!
Posted by Sarah on April 16th, 2007 at 3:34 pm.I couldnt agree more with everything that’s been said. I was also part of the same group that phones4u told that i could change my tarriff after 6 months. Surely this is similar to the admin fee that the banks charge for going over your overdraft limit which customers are now able to claim back. I was on the phone for ages with a condescending call centre employee who began to tell me the ‘perks’ that they give me already and this was a small price to pay for all these free ‘perks’, the only one he could tell me was a detailed written phone bill, which i can remember to cost me 99p on O2, I will be among those cancelling my bill as soon as it finishes in janary.
Posted by Lyndon on April 21st, 2007 at 6:31 pm.Just got of the phone now after trying to downgrade my tariff. I AM LIVID. It seems THREE have the right to do make any alterations they like to your contract once you have signed the blasted blasted.
£25 pounds for an “admin charge”. I have still got a copy of my contract from last september and there is no mention of such fee. Does anyone know the legality of this?
Posted by Jaz on May 9th, 2007 at 3:11 pm.Unfortunately it would appear that 3 can do anything they wish and sod the customer (as it more or less says in their contract) they have changed their process again as of May you can now downgrade in steps with a £5 charge per step, but hey they couldn’t change mine for technical reasons so I had to pay another £45 quid and wait until next month. I’ve given up with these cowboys just counting down the days ‘till I can tell them to shove it. As for Phones 4 You after much complaining and threats of legal action they did give me £60 compensation. For anyone in the same situation they breach the Misrepresentation Act. I was so impressed by their sales manager who told me that it’s to bad if I didn’t like the offer (which they will not put in writing) he couldn’t care less as they are the most successful phone outlet in the UK and my future custom didn’t mater to them at all. Cheers guys with such stunning service I’m sure you will be No 1 for a long time.
Posted by Stuart on May 13th, 2007 at 11:08 am.I for one will never use you or 3 again and I have made sure that all friends and family are fully aware of the problems I’ve had with you.
The discounts you receive for signing up should make no freaking difference to your ability to downgrade the amount you’re paying each month.
When I signed up with Vodafone I received six months half-price line rental - they didn’t charge or restrict me whatsoever when I moved down by a tenner.
I shall be very interested to see how a similar move, having had the same half price offer, goes with Three tomorrow. Suffice to say, I won’t be paying the fee - they change my tariff as I request, or it’s goodbye.
I’d class myself as one of their better customers - my immediate family have contracts with them too… that’s four contracts they stand to lose.
Posted by Lokiz0r on May 14th, 2007 at 12:39 am.Well, I also stand in the same boat that I want to downgrade my contract. For a different however… My current contract has maximum text allowance on it but it’s still not enough, so my thinking was taking out a contract with Orange Unlimited Texts and lower my 3 contract to the lowest available, therefore still paying the same amount but not going over my allowance every single month!
So Taj, did you eventually get in touch with OFCOM because I’d love to know if there was any way out of my contract with 3 right now.
I look forward to a reply - cheers guys, It’s good to know there are other people in the same boat!
Posted by Gundo on June 5th, 2007 at 5:57 pm.Thank god I’m not the only one with this problem I tried to downgrade from £45 to £25 and was told I had to pay a £25 admin fee even though I took my contract out before 14/12/06 which is when they introduced this ludicrous rule. I have spent ages on the phone to 3 and got a supervisor to ring me back but they still insisted that I had to pay this fee. Even after I pointed out that I have 2 contracts ( but only wanted to downgrade one contract) with them and have paid a £1000 in 14 months they would still not budge. I am absolutely appalled with their customer service and will not renew the 2 contracts with them in September as I can’t also wait to get shut of them
Posted by Clare on June 16th, 2007 at 10:19 pm.Please let me know if anyone has had any lluck with ofcom
I was looking into changing my current three price plan (Direct Talker 1000) which I am getting for half price (although on the 7th Month’s Bill they forgot about the half price credit and I had to “remind” them and after a week or so the credited the difference (for the last 12 months) to my account.
From what i’ve read in the three faq’s as a current customer within your contract you cannot change to one of the new mix and match price plans, however when looking through the “available” price plans on the website they only seem to do mix and match, text and mobile broadband, Where have the direct talkers gone?
Any one noticed that too?
Posted by J Lynn on January 6th, 2008 at 8:04 pm.