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Cant use it during walking or driving!!!


Angry 3 mobile users are dropping out
Simon Hayes and Michael Sainsbury
DECEMBER 02, 2003

A DROPPED-OUT 000 emergency call was the last straw for Patrick Moore. After months of battling poor reception, disconnections and dropouts on Hutchison Telecommunications' 3 mobile phone network, he'd finally had enough.

"You're going to have a situation soon where a kid is going to die because the 3 network doesn't work," the kickboxing instructor from the inner Sydney suburb of Potts Point said.

Mr Moore's bills from Hutchison bear out his claims, showing hundreds of calls dropped, redialled and then dropped again within minutes, on countless occasions.

Hutchison has offered a variety of explanations: Mr Moore lives in a poor reception area; his eight-floor apartment is too high up; he should not use the phone while driving; and he should expect calls to drop out as the phone crosses from the 3 network to 2G.

"I estimate that more than 60 per cent of calls end in dropouts or are not successfully completed," he said. "When I call another 3 phone the dropouts rise to about 80 per cent.


"We don't even blink any more when it happens, we just call back."

Mr Moore said his phone — which he used for business before giving up in frustration and buying a GSM model — was poor at the best of times, and "appalling" when driving.

After 30 complaints by phone and 12 letters to Hutchison, which also blamed his handset for problems, Mr Moore is on to his fourth handset.

He is also angry that staff at Hutchison's call centre — located in Mumbai, India — have little knowledge of local conditions.

"They're lovely people, but they don't have the information," he said.

The complaints come at a critical time for Hutchison, which is investing big in advertising and marketing.

Hutchison stakeholder relations chief Steve Wright said: "We have acknowledged that we had challenges to implement the most sophisticated network ever built.

"We have worked through them more quickly than any previous network."

Mr Moore is not alone in his problems with the 3 network.

Sydney telecommunications engineer Dennis Lundin has had similar problems with his 3 service, which dropped 80 per cent of calls he made, he said.

"When I signed up in the shop, the sales people didn't tell me anything," he said. "Compared with GSM this is really bad."

Mr Lundin, who lives in the western Sydney suburb of Concord, tells a story of dropped calls that get worse while driving, or roaming on to another network.

He, like others, is a heavy user attracted by the $99 call cap, and not interested in 3G services such as video.

Like Mr Moore, he was offered another handset. Like Mr Moore, he was told that he should not use the phone while driving, or even while walking.

"I just laughed," he said.

He is angry about the number of times he has to redial numbers.

"If they had a flagfall, they wouldn't have a single customer," he said.

Swedish-born Mr Lundin said experience in his own country was similar. "It's just as bad in Sweden and Denmark. It is being rolled out too fast, and they are not telling us how bad it is."

Sydney barrister Nancy Mikhaiel is infuriated by her 3 phone, fed up with its "ridiculously high" dropout rate, and the difficulty she has even getting a call connected in the first place.

"Often, when you make a call you get a tri-tone, and often you have to call three or four times before you get through," she said. "Often you just get silence at the other end of the line."

Ms Mikhaiel said she complained to Hutchison about once a fortnight, but had problems far more often. She was most concerned about losing work. "If I lose a brief because of this phone it's not worth it," she said.

"I should do something, but at the moment I'm enjoying the $99 cap.

"I was getting $600 phone bills, now I can talk and not worry about the bills."

If the cap was abolished, "I'd throw it in the bin".

Pharmacist Mathew Green originally bought 3 as a business phone, but was quickly turned off when a customer complained calls to his number were met with a recorded message saying the service was disconnected.

"That's just great, it makes you look like you've gone out of business," he said. "They promote it as the latest and greatest, which is just bollocks.

"There was a whole week where I couldn't access voicemail."

Mr Green said the service was equally bad, whether he was calling from his pharmacy in the inner-city Sydney suburb of King's Cross, or from his home in Elizabeth Bay in the inner-eastern suburbs.

Calls were plagued by dropouts. Mr Green said video calls were particularly difficult, with "one in 100" successful.

After multiple complaints to the company's Mumbai call centre and its Queensland "retention centre", Mr Green eventually received a refund for his handsets, as did a friend with the same problem.

Another was refused a refund, but later sold the handsets on eBay.

"That's certainly what I suggest people do," he said. "I felt we were guinea pigs — it's like we were in a trial.

"It would have been better if they'd said the service was unreliable, and asked if we would be willing to participate in a trial."

Person Anonimized, from St Ives on Sydney's North Shore, complained he had to try an average of two to three times to make a voice call on his 3 handset.

"Until a month ago I couldn't use video at all," he said. "I could see the person at the other end, but I couldn't hear them."

Mr Anonimized said his phone regularly displayed error messages, and often dropped out before a call was completed.

"I've been on the phone to their call centre for up to 90 minutes," he said. "They tried to transfer me to a technician who wasn't there."

Hutchison admits to some of the problems, but says it warns customers before they sign up.

Mr Wright maintains customers are made aware of network coverage in the area they will mostly use the phone.

"Most customers experience very good performance, and we don't see any customers reporting problems of the size you have described," he said.

Mr Wright said Hutchison showed customers its coverage maps when they signed up for the service — for where they lived and where they most used their mobile. "No-one has ever done this as extensively as we have," he said.

Mr Wright said the number of complaints in the past three months had "dropped off dramatically."

"We have had a steadily rising rate of being able to resolve customer complaints at the first or second call," he said. The 3 network was "superior to the 2G network in many ways", but other factors, such as handsets and background noise, could affect call quality, he said.

"We do not have problems of the type you have described," he said.

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Posted: 2003-12-01 23:01:56
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Posted: 2003-12-02 04:34:51
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