All was fine. I had a phone with video messaging and a camera I threw the old one in the bin and carried on as before but with a hideously expensive mobile video habit. Anyway after about six months the reception went down the toilet. I went from having 5 bars and excellent coverage for everything including video to having an erratic 2 bars. I also lost my job at the same time so I had sent out about 20 CV's and was talking to a recruitment agency on a daily basis.
About this time I stopped getting any phone calls. Well to be specific I stopped getting messages. I assumed it was because no-one was calling back and got depressed about the state of my CV. I went to the cinema to soothe my pain with some cheesy action films. While in the queue for popcorn I get my messages, all of them, from the last month. Including 3 call backs for job interviews and a message from a friend to say his dad had died and was I doing anything...
Suffice to say I didn't watch the film, I went home to call 3 and vent my apoplectic rage with them, but obviously no reception. I called them on a landline, jumped through the automated telephone hoops and got passed to a nice man in India who I couldn't understand. Don't get me wrong I don't hate Indian call centres some of them are very good this man however was a little hard to understand a problem he clearly shared with me as neither of us seemed to get anything on the first attempt. Anyway I eventually convey the problem and he says that he'll get the engineers to check on it and call me back.
I heard nothing for a week until I caught a bus to the jobcentre and got my messages. Why it even went to message when the phone was on and apparently had signal is beyond me but there it was. Hello Mr blah blah blah the phone line is fine.
Call 2. Start from the beginning another lady in india lovely speaking voice, much shorter call. Again passed me on to the engineers. Got a call from them a few days later. They informed me that there was no problem. I disagreed. They sent me a demo text and answer phone message both of which came through fine. 'See no problem'.
Call 3. still not working. Yes it is. Not it isn't. Look I'm tired it doesn't work either send me a new phone or fix your line so that it does. Calls 4, 5 and six yielded the same result leading to...
Call 7. Cancellations department. Hello I'd like to cancel my contract. It'll cost you 2 months line rental in fines. 'Which account would you like to cancel?' Um I only have one account...
Apparently not. Apparently they had sent me form x, which I never received, because I had allegedly requested form x to transfer my old number to my new phone and as I never replied to it they had kept the line running.
I checked my bank statement (I don't do it that often really) and it was true. The one payment was coming out on the 1st day of the month. The other on the last day of the month. If you look at a month at a time it looks like the payment at the end of the month was just the one from the next month. Not much of an excuse but still I was always crap with my own money.
I fished out the photocopy. No reference anywhere to form x. Called back. Sorry I didn't request form x. Our system says you did. Well get the copy out and check it then. Sir we don't keep copies it's read by a machine and then destroyed as part of data protection. Well get the machine copy then. It doesn't work like that it only saves the answers. I have a copy, would you like to see it? Sir we don't accept customer copies as valid it could have been tampered with.
So let me get this straight. you don't check the computer scan, you don't keep a copy and you don't accept the evidence of any copies in existence. Yes sir that is correct. Bored, exasperated hang up.
Call 8. Hello I'd like to speak to a manager... No dice. Ok well can you help me? No dice. I cancelled my 2nd contract anyway making damn sure to add a cover letter expressing that in no way shape or form were they to attempt to send me form x, I didn't want to keep the number and I wanted the contract cancelled right away.
Calls 9, 10 and 11. No dice. Call 12 get put through to an office in England. Finally. Am assigned a contact. Contact is not in the office will call back.
Contact calls back. I explain the situation. He sounds skeptical. Check the phone records then tell me the last time the old phone was used. He'll call back.
He's checked and the last time the old phone was used was the day I received the new one. Funny that. I mail him a copy of the copy of the cancellation order. He tells me that it's not binding but that he'll see what he can do. He offers me a 50% refund, I want 100%. We have an impasse. We eventually agree that he'll refund everything less the cost of the forwarding facility which was active on the old phone. About 95 % as it was never actually used. I got annoyed because no-one had even tried to call the old phone even though it had saved me money. Go figure.
Total run time at least 16 hours on the phone. 2 letters and half a dozen emails. It's a good thing I was unemployed and had the time to really get stuck in otherwise I wouldn't have got anywhere. Still at least they'd talk to me. The computer scanned my cousins birthdate down wrong so she could never even get past the security questions to actually talk to a 3 mobile customer service person....
You can thank scarletladyY for the fact that this is now under a cut and for pointing out my google deficiencies :)