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 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 |
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