Pay As You Don’t Go
Last November, I talked about the latest Three Pay As You Go tariffs that allow Internet access for only £5 UK pounds per month. Well, I purchased a few SIMs to put in my test phones so that I don’t have to continually switch SIMs.
It turns out that it’s proving very difficult to re-new the Internet bundle every month. Here’s what happened yesterday. I logged onto My3 and tried to use my remaining credit to buy a bundle…
This is what I got…
I ‘tried again later’ and it still didn’t work. In fact, it still doesn’t work today.
I rang the support number yesterday and wrestled with Three’s complex automated answering service to eventually get to an ‘add-ons’ menu. I selected the Internet add-on only to be told it can’t be added via the answering system. I rang in again and eventually navigated my way to a human operator. Well, almost - he wasn’t in my country and couldn’t really help me - he said someone would ring me back - and (obviously) they didn’t.
So the moral of the story is… if it looks too good to be true - it usually is.
Update: 2nd Line support finally got back to me. They hadn’t a clue what my original problem was and I had to re-iterate everything. They couldn’t fix it and submitted a fault report. They then put me through to the Pay as You Go (PAYG) team to get the Internet Add-on added manually. The guy in the PAYG team foolishly took me through the same web pages on the phone rather than the PC (I told him they would be the same web pages as it’s the S60 browser). We got the same error. He then said he couldn’t add the Internet add-on manually as the web based interface is the only way to add an add-on! Unbelievable.
Update 2: Late last week, I spoke to someone in development who initially couldn’t solve the problem. At the time, as a wild guess, I suggested the server software might have a defect where it is looking for an outstanding balance of > £5 rather than >=£5 (I only had £5 remaining) . The person I spoke to added £1 credit and it worked! He has now raised a defect against this. So, if you have the same problem then just add some credit to the account.
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