I met a character in a Three store on Saturday, as helpful as any of the staff.

http://i.imgur.com/1FTyxLU.jpg

I actually worked for Currys/PC World for 1 month before I quit. My God, I'll never spend money there again. You are trained to rip off customers as much as possible, sell them whatever makes the most margin regardless of their needs whilst making it sound like it's their best choice. You screw over your customers with a smile, then they leave feeling like they got a good deal.

The amount of lies and completely wrong information I heard colleagues give to customers was insane, it was a daily thing, completely normal. Colleagues didn't know the first thing about the products they were selling. The amount of copies of McAfee that got sold with iPads was incredible (you don't need antivirus for an iPad, especially paid antivirus), along with £90 HDMI cables because the picture quality would be better (absolute lie). The staff actually believe the HDMI cables give you better picture quality and I argued with a manager about this but they don't care.

People sold surround sound kits daily and told customers that they must take an optical cable because it wouldn't work otherwise, also they told customers optical sounds better than HDMI. First of all no, they didn't need optical because most surround kits do HDMI & passthrough, and secondly, optical can't even do uncompressed audio over 5.1 channels, only 2, HDMI is much better for audio. Oh, and if the kits didn't do HDMI passthrough, they came with optical cables in the box, and still colleagues would upsell the "better quality" cable, not mentioning that you get one in the box.

The moral of the story is, do your own research. Working at Currys was hell, you will be lied to, you will be misinformed and they will want to punch you when you don't take the care plan. They get away with it because joe public has no idea they are being lied to.

Oh and the care plan, they really love signing you up to that. First month free and then they hope you forget to cancel it. A manager gave me some statistic about how a majority of people don't cancel the care plan after being given the first month free. Also if the customer gave them a hard time, they would sign them up to the care plan on a card mandate rather than direct debit so it was harder to cancel.

Sorry for the off-topic rant, but it just goes to show that this kind of thing is everywhere. It's not Three, it's big tech businesses in general.

Quality rant mupet0000 !

Always know more about the product you want to buy than the person trying to sell you the product.

Alternatively just buy stuff without talking to the store staff...

Which is increasingly going to happen, leading to even poorer trained staff (and lower pay) that will speed up the process.

A place like Currys PC World would shut down and go online only if that were to happen.

A sale of just the item(s) the customer came in for, without any additional accessories or services sold, is called a dead sale. While I worked for Currys, I went in to buy a tablet with my staff discount, they literally wouldn't sell it to me because I wasn't buying accessories or the care plan. Seriously, that happened. Was speaking to a manager, he told me we didn't have that tablet in stock. I didn't believe him because I was sure I'd seen it, I checked the system myself and it was in stock, questioned him about it and he flat out refused to sell it to me because he knew it would be a dead sale and it was a slow day.

I'd say the large majority of consumers are uninformed and rely on advice from staff to make their purchase decisions, this is what keeps them alive as they are able to flog high margin items and insurance plans.

If you are an informed consumer, shop online, or go to John Lewis.

Me too.

I keep hearing that Three are planning to move everyone off it - but when? I'm by no means a prolific data user and/or tetherer - I just like having the security of not worrying about how much I'm downloading, and the ability to tether on the occasions I feel the need. If push came to shove in sure I could cope with say a 600mns / AYCE data plan, but as long as Three are happy to keep me going on the one plan I'm happy to stay. I may even consider switching to EE or Vodafone if wifi calling or VoLTE takes too long.

Except for Visual Voicemail. I was very disappointed having got used to VVM on Orange when I lived in France to find on my return to the UK that only O2 as the first network to sell the iPhone provided VVM. I believe that it's also now available on EE now but it still really annoying that a key feature of the iPhone & one that was heavily promoted by Apple when launched is not available on my chosen network.

Reason for that is quite simple when the exclusive network deals were done for iPhones it required all features to be fully supported at launch so visual voicemail etc. When they went non-exclusive Apple thought networks would actually support Visual Voicemail as it really is good but most could never be bothered sort out the backend.

Voicemail is boring.

Each year fewer and fewer people actually make phone calls, let alone leave voicemails.

It's not going to sell.

Visual Voicemail was nice when I was on O2, but I didn't miss it when I left O2 and I still don't miss it now that I don't have an iPhone.

Maybe it's just me then but I wouldn't go a network now without visual voicemail it's made my life a lot easier these past few months. I receive multiple voicemails a day still maybe I'm the minority but it's features like Visual Voicemail which to me are a benefit and that is the sort of thing I willing pay extra for.

I don't even use the normal voicemail and I try not to leave messages. No one actually listens to or responds to the ones I have made. If I wanted to send a message that you can reply at your leisure there's email or SMS.

If you don't answer I'll just keep trying later until you do

Or a local retailer (yes, they still exist). There's a local chain around here whose prices are actually reasonable (often cheaper than the big chains or Amazon), and they don't pressure sell extended warranties or guarantees (but they offer them if you want - though a fair bit of what they sell seems to come with 2/3/5 year guarantees for free from the manufacturer anyway).

They also have a local repair operation, no sending your TV 300 miles away and back

I am on the verge of flashing my S6 Edge with non branded firmware again because I am so fed up with the massive battery drain since my Edge was upgraded to the 'Volte' 3 UK firmware. I realise that I will lose 'volte' capability. Even when not connected to the Super 4G service as they call it (ha ha), the battery drains very fast. In the areas where I live and work, Volte is only available where I live and then only for a few seconds at a time even though according to the coverage map, I am well within a very strong area.

Perhaps they should just close down the typical support department then BOOM BOOM!!

Ok....ok...... my coat..... just getting it......

Got my G4 on Three today. Can confirm it supports band selection.

That's very good news. Have you noticed any change in reception? I found my G4 was better then recent Samsung and Sony phones I tried, seemed to find more 1800mhz 4g also.

HulloMail is a sort of OK-ish replacement for Visual Voicemail. It does have the advantage that a copy of the message is also emailed to you. However there seem to be many occasions when calls go straight to voicemail without ringing which may be down to Three or network signal but I suspect HulloMail as the culprit.

It would definitely be a Three or network signal issue - all Hullomail does on your handset is replace your normal voicemail divert number with your Hullomail voicemail number. Hullomail only gets involved once the network decides that your mobile is either unavailable or not being answered and the call is then sent to their number. Hullomail then take the message and deliver it back to your phone via the app (and/or email), or if no message is left they will tell you the number that you missed a call from (which is something else normal VVM doesn't do). I did try out their transcribe service for a while too (which gives you a brief voice to text conversion so you can read what the start of the voicemail says without listening to it) and found it to be pretty good. I don't get enough voicemails for the extra cost to be worth it though so I just use it in vanilla mode these days.

I wasn't saying there wasn't an alternative but at moment I'm with EE they offer native visual voicemail and can't see myself leaving for at least a couple of years unless something drastic changes. Data network has come on leaps and bounds get 4G on most of journey now there is still the pesky 3G mast which has no backhaul but it's only a 20-30 second window before I get 4G from another mast. Hope they do get round to doing it as it is noticeable when streaming Apple Music.

Called Three technical help and they wouldn't budge on the "end of year" date for the iPhone update to enable 800. When I said how important it is for me (it affects many of the areas I care about) then the rep went on to say that they aim to beat that date but nothing definitive. On prioritisation, they stuck with the line that 4G would be prioritised even if in a strong 3G area.

iOS 9.1 Beta 4 has Three's carrier as 22.0. I'm not sure if that allows access to VoLTE, though.

I'm sure I read somewhere that every iOS update changes the carrier version, even if there is no actual carrier update. So it's probably nothing.

I'm still going for the iPhone 6S Plus, I was going to cancel my order and get a Nexus 6P instead but there's just something pulling me towards the iPhone. If I get it and the signal sucks, I'll just return it and get the Nexus 6P.

Just noticed at work (near Gatwick Airport) I now have 4 bars of 4G, I used to get 5 bars of 3G with no sign of 4G whatsoever. This update must have happened at some point in the past 3 days.

I'm on an Apple-bought unlocked iPhone 6Plus with a SIM only plan.