3 Mobile issues

I’m a pretty mild-mannered kinda guy, but today I’m mad. 3 Mobile, my mobile phone provider seems to be struggling with the concept of customer service. My Dopod smartphone has not been taking phone calls since last Thursday. That’s 5 days where callers to my mobile have dialed my number and heard one ring before the call is hung up by the network. It’s not me being rude, I promise. SMS still works fine, and I can still make calls. But I can’t receive calls.

I logged the fault with 3 customer care on Friday morning when I realised I had a problem. They promised to call me back on Saturday with a status update on why the network was having issues. It’s now Monday and I had to call them myself. They had no idea why I didn’t get a call. And they still had no idea what the problem is. And they had no idea when service will be restored. In fact, the customer service person I spoke to (not sure if he was in Australia…) could not even promise that I would get a call back from their customer service people today. Maybe tomorrow he offered…

Nope, not good enough. I pointed out to the customer service guy that my mobile is my business line. It must be restored today. And if they were smart they’d see in their CRM system that I give them a lot of money each month. You’d think that means I need to be looked after!

My experience with this carrier, until late last week, has been fantastic. But now I’m starting to seriously question what’s going on with this company. It’s not just me. Cameron Reilly has been having a more difficult experience than yours truly – story here. And Shane Williamson, an ex-3 employee, has gone into bat for Cameron.

Stories like these remind me that many companies in Australia still have not engaged with new media.

Update: Well, I’m not sure how it happened. But at 7.30pm last night I got a phone call. We’re back on the air and I’m a happy man again….