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.
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