After a couple of months with Three PAYG, I've moved to Orange PAYG.
Three was fine, with a good, cheap service. However, I wasn't totally satisfied with their data rate. Coverage was good, but data still seemed sluggish. While it was marginally better than O2, and substantially cheaper, I still feel it's not as good as it could be. There's also something substantial missing from Three's PAYG offering: free WiFi. The lack of The Cloud or BT Openwhatever on Three is particularly noticeable. While I barely used it while on O2, there are several occasions where Three's coverage let me down and one of BT's nodes mocked me mercilessly sitting there with a strong signal in my iPhone's WiFi list.
It's been almost two years since I wrote the last installment of this epic journey. I've practically ceased blogging in favour of tweeting, but I do think it's worth an update now. After two years with the iPhone 3G on O2, I'm almost certainly going to switch... but I'm not sure who to go to yet, though.
Back in December 2006, I wrote a post about cancelling my decade-old Orange UK phone contract, in favour of Three. Now I'm off again. I finally gave into the lure of iPhone. As a Mac (power?) user for eight years, and owner (and destroyer) of many of their products, the absence of iPhone in my life is fairly conspicuous. I always swore that I wouldn't buy the iPhone 2G, though.
As noted in my previous posts on the subject, I changed mobile phone providers at the end of last week. On Saturday, a day after I ordered it, I received my new phone from Three. It's a refurbished Nokia 6280, and the tariff ain't too shabby.
Continuing on from my previous post about leaving Orange... I got a call from Orange Customer Relations (07973100194) this morning about the PAC code I ordered on Saturday. The woman calling was very nice and polite, was calling to get me back as I am a "high valued customer". Once I explained why I was leaving, she got the point that I had made up my mind, and instead asked if I could elucidate so she could pass on my comments as constructive criticism. We had a long and pleasant chat.
I just called Orange customer relations to request my PAC code after finally deciding to move to "3" or Three as I'll call them from now. I've been a contract customer with Orange for just over ten years, and I'm just no longer feeling the love.