Following is the content of a complaint I have just emailed to Three. I may follow it up with a letter to their head office:
I cancelled my account with you on August 15th. I gave you several months notice that I wished to do this after your staff lied to me and tried to blame me for my voicemail being broken for several weeks. I was told at that time to contact yourselves before the 15th of August to cancel my account and get my PAC which I duly did.
When I asked for the PAC I was lied to again and told that it would take 30 days to generate and that I should have given that amount of notice. This is a) wrong and b) illegal practice under British law. A PAC must be given on request either verbally or by text message within 2 hours.
I was contacted (after getting my PAC) by another agent who clarified that my account was fully closed and that I owed nothing. I queried him about the 30 days and that I was not going to pay for a service I was not using and therefore that I would not be expecting any further bills from you. I distinctly recall this conversation and being told that I would “certainly not” be charged in September for anything.
I received one further message from you telling me that I was 71p in credit. I decided not to chase this as, frankly, I didn’t want to deal with your awful call centre staff again. 71p was worth it to get away from Three and onto a decent network.
However, this morning in the post I find a bill from you for £23.77 (minus the 71p) for “Early Termination”. This despite cancelling my account precisely 24 months after signing up for the contract; following the guidelines being issued by your staff; and being told plainly that I would not receive any further charges.
In other words, one of two things has happened:
a) You’re made yet another mistake in handling my account.
b) Your staff lied to me. Again.
As things stand, you can whistle in the wind for the money. I am not paying it. I gave several months notice that I wished to cancel my account, contacted you when I was told to do so by your own staff, and was told (after querying repeatedly just to be certain) that I would not be charged for any time during which I was not using your service, specifically the time after I cancelled my contract.
Kindly send me an adjusted bill confirming that my account is closed and that the balance is zero, as I was told previously.
To clarify, when I started using Three I quite liked them. Good prices, nice web site for checking your statement, signal almost everywhere and so on. Once I started having to deal with their moody, pushy and – is it became apparent – dishonest staff in the call centres, however, it all went to crap.
I would not ever consider recommending them as a network again. And I apologise to the friends who are on them as a result of my earlier recommendations.
