101A/17 ST STEPHEN STREET - WATER INGRESS - RETTIE

Sadly, it's time to report another disappointing customer experience.

For the past two years, we've been living at 101A/17 ST STEPHEN STREET in Edinburgh. It's a lovely double upper flat where the Newtown meets Stockbridge. Perfect location for us, near Stockbridge primary and the library, easy access to the bus routes and Princes Street.

Unfortunately, we've had a poor experience with the letting agency, Rettie & Co., representing the owner/landlord, Ms. Ann Hall.

Our lease began 28-Jan 2011. For reasons unknown to us, the flat had been empty for a while. The rent had been reduced to £1200/month, lower than the average of about £1450 for a 4 bedroom flat in this area (it's now being reoffered at £1400/month). We were, of course, very happy to get the flat for a good price, and very excited to move in. The flat is modern (the building dates to less than 15 years ago), and while it is nothing like the grand Georgian townhouses of the Newtown, it has lovely double-glazed windows and lots of closet space. Should we have been more suspicious? Who knows-- at the time we were just happy to get it.

Within 3 days of moving into the flat, however, we discovered a damp area above the casement of one of the bedroom windows. We immediately notified Annabel Davies, our Rettie property manager, who suggested that it was probably nothing to worry about. At the end of the week (lots of rain in Edinburgh), it was clear that there was an active leak, as the damp was spreading.

There are many reasons that fixing water ingress can be difficult. This flat is 5 floors above street level, so access can be a problem. There is a factor (building manager) responsible for public areas (ie, the roof), so assigning responsibility for fixing a leak can be non-obvious. Edinburgh weather can be uncooperative.

All of these might have slowed the repair process. In this case, however, it's not clear these were the only drivers, considering how long it actually took to resolve. How long? Almost 500 days.

Yes, that's 18 months.

The original lease was 12 months. The water ingress was identified in the first week of the lease, and not resolved during the term of the original lease.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll blog the rest of the story.

Resolution of webcube problem

After a week of arguing with Three tech support people by phone, they finally agreed to having the replacement Cube sent back to them. They were very unhappy about it, arguing repeatedly that replacement (refurbished) Cubes go through "80 quality checks" before they leave the facility, so there was pretty much no way that it could be malfunctioning. Meanwhile, the damn thing hadn't worked since I'd removed it from its (damaged) packaging.

Anyway, the final person in the chain agreed to let me return the replacement cube. He asked me for the IMEI number that provides the unique code for the mobile broadband device. I gave it to him, and he punched it into his system. Then there was a long silence. Then he apologized and said there was some kind of glitch in the system and he couldn't confirm the number, and he was going to have to call Three's internal tech support team to find out what the problem was, could he call me back?

I said sure.

The phone rang about 5 minutes later. Same support person, but a totally new story to tell.

Apparently, Three had sent me the wrong replacement Cube. He couldn't explain the details, but apparently the Cube I'd been sent had previously been "lost in the post" at some point in time, and had been "blacklisted." When I asked him what that meant, he explained that once it was reported lost, Three would have sent out a blocking code to every mobile provider in the UK so that the device would not work on any network, no matter what SIM was put in it.

I said, "So you're telling me that you sent me a device that couldn't be used."

He replied, "It's been blacklisted, it won't work on a mobile network."

Me: "So this past week, while your staff have been trying to convince me that it's my technical stupidity preventing the device from working, when in fact you sent me a device that THREE had purposely blocked from being used, no matter what I did."

3 Support: "Yes, I'm very sorry about that."

He then stated that they would rather unblacklist the device than have me return it to them. Without going into the details of how pissed off I was, I agreed to this. I had to remain on the phone for more than 45 minutes while this was getting sorted out. At the end, he said the device would be unblacklisted within 24 hours, and I should try it again the following day.

The short story is that after one more call the following day to tech support (the Cube wasn't working initially), it suddenly started working. To Three's credit, the device has worked very consistently since then.

My compensation for 10 calls to tech support, being sent a device that Three had purposefully blocked from use, and a month of bad service?

A one-month rebate and a £5 credit.

I suppose it goes to show you get what you pay for.

On the whole, the Cube is a viable device, and the price for service is reasonable. But I have come to seriously doubt the capabilities of Three's customer and technical support service. If any one of their team had asked for the IMEI number of the replacement device, we would have gotten to the real problem. Instead, they kept insisting I was just doing something wrong and "resetting" the Cube would eventually work. I was pretty much told off by one of the customer reps, who kept interrupting me to explain that if I would just do what he said, everything would work fine. I can only hope Three fires that person, as he is the primary reason I won't sign another contract with Three, no matter what.

More fun with Three

Below is the current fail log through today. We didn't use the Cube much the last couple days, partly because it's not working well and partly because I was so insulted by the last tech support person who basically got very angry when I said I'd been told to put the Cube SIM into my phone. He made it very clear that no-one should have told me that and I needed to take the SIM out of my phone immediately (I'd used it to call Three to demonstrate that the SIM was working).

Today the support person asked me to try the same thing, which made me laugh.

Today, I was informed that the reason the replacement Cube wasn't working was because it hadn't been "charged up." This was news to me-- a bit hard to believe, really, but as I said, I'm happy to try whatever they think will work. So we're charging it up (it's been plugged in for about a week, really, but we'll do it OFFICIALLY for three hours as requested by the tech support people). I told the person that if it worked, we'd be happy, but if it failed, I was taking both cubes back to the Three store on Princes Street because I refused to pay to ship them back.

We'll see :)  Here's hoping that the Cube works... that would be the simplest solution to the situation.

10-Jan-13	9:20	Fail	after being on for only 15 minutes
10-Jan-13	15:51	Fail
10-Jan-13	15:58	Fail
10-Jan-13	16:10	Fail
10-Jan-13	16:14	Fail
10-Jan-13	16:20	no data
10-Jan-13	16:21	Fail
10-Jan-13	16:31	Fail
10-Jan-13	16:34	Fail
10-Jan-13	18:26	Fail
11-Jan-13	12:38	Fail	using iphone tether now
12-Jan-13	14:31	Fail	Using phone tether now
12-Jan-13	18:41	Fail
13-Jan-13	12:15	Fail

WebCube from Three

Although lots has been going on, we've just not been keeping up on blogging at all. But this requires a blog if only to make the information available.

In September, we signed a contract with Three for mobile broadband. We'd had terrible luck with both Virgin and BT (British Telecom) for home internet services. Since arriving in the UK we'd generally been very happy with our mobile phone services from Three, so we thought it made sense to go with a provider we knew and liked.

We received our WebCube from the local store, brought it home, plugged it in, and, as Three says, "Ta-Da" we had internet and wifi. Brilliant.

Until November. In mid-November the Cube was a bit temperamental. It would lose the signal once every other day or so. That was annoying but not really a big deal.

Until December. The failures became more common. By mid-December they were happening once or twice each day. By late December it was multiple times an hour.

I called Three on 29 December and described the problem to a representative who was clearly skeptical. He checked the local masts to make sure there wasn't a service issue (I pointed out that we when the Cube wasn't working we were tethering our 3 iPhone, which seemed to suggest that service wasn't the issue). He then assured me that 99% of these kinds of problems were "the user not the device." He had me hard reset the cube, which I'd done a couple times already (in addition to reslotting the SIM card). As expected, after the reset the device started up properly, but ironically failed while I was still talking to him. He assured me that wouldn't happen so much, but he would have tech support call me anyway.

The next few days (30-31 Dec and 1-2 Jan) were hectic and we didn't use the Cube much, but when we did it worked consistently. But on 3-Jan it began running into problems again, and I began tracking the fails.

I called Three again, and after some haggling, they agreed to send us a new Cube. To their credit, they sent it next-day delivery. Oddly, they told us it would take 3 business days to arrive, so we weren't around to receive it when it was delivered. I then picked it up on the 8th from the local mail depot.

When the postal worker handed it to me, I got nervous. It was rattling in the box inside the delivery bag. Something clearly wasn't right. When I got it home and opened it up, I discovered that the Cube hadn't been packed with any care at all-- pretty much just thrown in the box, and without the right packing materials. The plastic SIM card holder was also in the box, though without the SIM card (which we are supposed to switch from the current Cube). I'll be posting a photo this afternoon of how it was packed.

Suspicious, I videotaped turning it on for the first time. It failed.

I turned it off and on and tried again

I tried reslotting the SIM card

I did a hard reset of the Cube and then restarted it. It failed.

I then re-tested the original WebCube, which fails regularly but usually restarts. It re-started properly

Below (soon) is the log of the original Cube fails over the past week.  I'll post again after I talk to Three this afternoon.

29-Dec-12	13:15	Call to Three
29-Dec-12	13:18	Fail
29-Dec-12	13:23	Hard reset
29-Dec-12	13:45	Fail
1-Jan-13	11:19	Fail
1-Jan-13	11:44	Fail
3-Jan-13	11:23	Fail
3-Jan-13	20:15	Connected but unable to receive data
3-Jan-13	20:18	no data
3-Jan-13	20:21	Fail
3-Jan-13	20:40	Fail
3-Jan-13	21:15	Fail
3-Jan-13	21:18	Fail on cube restart
3-Jan-13	21:19	Hard reset
3-Jan-13	21:28	Fail
3-Jan-13	22:12	Fail
3-Jan-13	22:30	Fail
4-Jan-13	13:04	Fail
4-Jan-13	13:14	Fail
4-Jan-13	13:30	Fail
4-Jan-13	13:33	Fail on cube restart
4-Jan-13	13:42	Fail
4-Jan-13	13:43	Fail on cube restart
4-Jan-13	13:44	Fail on cube restart
4-Jan-13	13:45	Fail on cube restart
4-Jan-13	13:57	Fail
4-Jan-13	14:13	Fail
4-Jan-13	18:35	Fail
5-Jan-13	16:11	Fail
5-Jan-13	16:45	Fail
5-Jan-13	16:53	Fail
5-Jan-13	16:54	Hard reset
5-Jan-13	16:55	Fail on cube restart
5-Jan-13	16:56	Signal but no wifi, unable to turn it off, had to unplug mains
5-Jan-13	17:40	Fail
5-Jan-13	19:32	Fail
5-Jan-13	19:47	Fail
6-Jan-13	9:53	Fail
6-Jan-13	10:04	Fail
6-Jan-13	10:28	Fail
6-Jan-13	11:01	Fail
6-Jan-13	12:30	Internet only accessible after logging in to webcube manager
6-Jan-13	13:08	Fail
8-Jan-13	8:42	Fail
8-Jan-13	8:53	Fail
8-Jan-13	9:57	Fail
8-Jan-13	20:07	Fail
9-Jan-13	10:56	Fail
9-Jan-13	11:30	Fail
10-Jan-13	9:20	Fail