3 UK to change their charges

Grazie (not provided with a button for this!).

We have a 3 dongle, which we will have to ditch for use in  Italy.  The only reason we bought it was because of the '3 like home' deal.   Thanks to the kind people in the 3 shop in Aulla, we have already tested our UK dongle it and it doesn't work on the 3 Italia network even if you have an Italian SIM card.    We are also changing our 3 PAYG mobile back to Vodafone before the end of June for the same reason.We are on PAYG not contracts, but if we can support you - let us know.

I am in the same boat. I live in Italy and have had 3 for about18 months and it was working out fine with all my inclusive minutes, to call back home to family and friends. Then they asked me to renew about a month ago and offered me a better deal, saying that the inclusive minutes deal abroad was continuing. When I found out about this I called their customer Service (in Mumbia or somewhere) and said as I had been mis-sold my contract, I wished to cancel as it was of no use. Well to cut a very long and tedious story short, after much complaining and speaking to various supervisors they relented and have cancelled my contract.But to anybody thinking of using 3 DON'T... the reception is patchy, customer service a joke and in my opinion they deliberately misled me.

After trying to email / write to 3 for a few days, yesterday someone called me back (Mumbai calling). I was on the phone nearly an hour. Luckily it was on my office landline and I had my headset on. We have three contracts - mine, my wife's and the internet dongle. She could only deal with one at a time!! Anyway to cut a long story short, by the end of the conversation, I have reduced the phone rentals from £15 per month to £5 per month (loyalty discount) but made no progress with the internet dongle account as I only pay £5 per month for that anyway. I have worked out that with the £10 per month we save on the phone rentals (£120 per year each phone) we can make about 720 minutes of calls a year to the UK at the new 34p per minute rate. That of coursse is still less than the 300 free minutes per month we had before. I was assured that the contracts would be exactly the same (one has 14 months to run and the other we can trade in at any time). With regard to the internet, we will have to use the other account we set up before we had the 3 dongle. It was with a local 'wi-fi' company in Aulla and we have an ariel for it. We are on PAYG with that at €2 per hour. I will then cancel that account with 3. The proof of the pudding of course is when all of this happens. We have nothing in writing (they do not do that sort of thing) so we shall see when the bill comes in July!! If you are with 3 and find it difficult to move easily, try this tack and see if you can get a better deal.

Hi allFor those still battling with 3 contracts, this is a simple one to resolve.Just to put this record straight, I was disappointed too at the closure of 3 Like home, (like we all were) after all, it was a brilliant scheme whilst it lasted. Some people i know here abused it, is it any wonder the operator terminated it?? Let's face it, if you had the 3 dongle, mobile broadband for £10 per month... in Italy?? That is very, very cheap.Here's what you do. I kindly wrote to 3, told them I would be "severely affected" (magic words!)  by this change, and I could prove it by the bills. They called me within 3 days, and offered a rebate, which I turned down flatly.I asked to speak to the "terminations" team, and they agreed to terminate my contract early,(for the reasons outlined in the letter) with no penalty, and convert me free to PAYG, keeping my business number too. This was all done painlessly and without fuss. I actually paid less on the final bill (special dog's discount obviously LOL!).  So, stick to your guns, explain WHY it has affected you, and of course, if you spend a lot of time in Italy, you'll have no problems proving you will be affected, and ask them to change you over. The Mumbai team are polite, (and helpful) if you are!!!  Be warned anyone thinking of the Vodafone Summer deal - it is a promotion only. They are not likely to want to lose money like 3. ED's comments on campaigning to bring it back, well in Ireland the "3 Like home" has been retained, albeit a little different than the original. Like all the other networks, 3 have been capped by EU legislation on roaming rates. And, they will continue to fall too. The deals over folks!ED