3 UK Really Wants To Stick It To Prepay Customers
from the customer-unfriendliness dept
Hutchison Whampoa's 3 carrier has been pretty aggressive in Italy when it comes to people unlocking its handsets. It's had people arrested for unlocking phones, and has sued Vodafone for unlocking handsets, complaining all the while that its rivals take steps to make switching to it difficult. It looks like 3 UK is taking a page out of the Italian unit's book, announcing it will glue in place the SIM cards that come in its prepaid handsets in an attempt to prevent them from being resold outside the country. This isn't only extreme, it's stupid. It's hard to imagine that the tactic will actually deter anybody that's doing this in an serious attempt to profit, but what's worse is that it makes impossible all the useful things that the ability to swap SIMs lets people do, like transfer contacts or update their phone. Such a short-sighted move that gives the desire to stop these resellers a higher priority than satisfying customers doesn't reflect well on the company.
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Has anyone patented the glueing of SIM to mobiles?
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3 Hutchison Australia
One month they charged me for downloading 8 gigabytes of data even though the log for my card showed around 500 megabytes.
I printed and posted all the data regarding my bill to head office in Sydney asking for a refund presuming commonsense would prevail. After 3 months they rang me to say they had looked into it and the charges still stand.
I am now persuing other avenues to get a refund
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This is the U.K. we're talking about here...
It's that whole, "stiff upper lip" crap of never complaining, no matter how badly you're getting screwed.
The problem is that companies and corporations allowed themselves to think that attitude still exists, when it most certainly does NOT, and so they lash out when people do complain or demand better service. Those companies that adapt to the new mindset of genuine customer service will do well, while those like 3UK will suffer.
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