3 Mobile Rant

I’ve been on hold with 3 Customer Care for 90 minutes now to find out if my phone is locked and if so, to have it unlocked.  20 minutes was in the queue. 10 was the CSR asking me for my IMEI, putting me on hold while he was checking it, the coming back to tell me he’s still checking and he wanted to put me on hold again.

I asked him if I could get a call back instead, and he said no, it won’t take long, just 4-5 minutes.

60 minutes into this second round of being on hold. No returns to tell me he’s still going or to offer a call back. And mostly in silence. The IVR music isn’t working and only plays intermittently for fractions of a second. Sometimes when the music comes back it’s so short that I can’t tell if it’s meant to be a recording or the guy, so I keep calling into the phone “Hello? Are you there?” like some poor sap with abandonment issues.

In my frustration, I have sent three annoyed tweets to @3mobile, and at the 70 minute call mark I sent a complaint email about being left on hold in mostly silence with no progress updates from a CSR.

I got a canned response back from their complaints filter.  It tells me they have sent me “a pdf containing information” (ambiguous) which has been selected based on the content of my complaint.

The PDF wisely suggests that I:

  1. Switch the phone off and on again
  2. Try a different SIM
  3. Attempt to use the phone in another location, like a different room
  4. Keep it up to date
  5. Figure out if the issue is intermittent or temporary

1. Really? Reboot? You’re going to try that one?

2. Funny that, the issue is that other SIMs don’t work. -_-

3. I took the phone to another bloody country. That’s kind of how I figured out there was a problem.

4. iPhone, iTunes, kind of just happens.

5. Yes it is temporary and intermittent. It only seems to stop working when I try to put other SIMs in my phone.

And I’ve been on hold in silence for so long that I forgot I was on hold and when the intermittent music started again, I jumped.

So. Sad. Panda.

Update:

After 110 minutes, I left the other phone on hold and called the sales line on my mobile.  Got through almost straight away. Really nice guy (name forgotten, sorry!) told me straight away the phone is locked, took my IMEI and submitted the unlock request. 5 minutes (11 including IVR and queue time).

He also went to check my account history to find out who was leaving me on hold for so long, but the [expletive] CSR didn’t record my call contact. *stare*