The nice lady at 3UK says NO WAY

I’ve been doing a mobile phone audit these past few days.

I discovered I was still on a 75 pounds per month T-Mobile price plan. So I phoned them up and switched that down to a 15/month price plan. No need to pay them more than necessary, right? Especially as they have the gall to try and charge me $0.18 per minute roaming fees on the Starbucks WiFi for my US account.

I also swapped my other T-Mobile account — the one that keeps on screwing up with their billing system — down to nothing.

Then, on to Three. Or 3UK. I always refer to them as 3UK because once or twice I’ve written a story about them only to have some people using 3Italy or 3Denmark email with enquiries.

I’m on a 30 quid a month price plan. Plus X-Series Gold — which I put on as a gesture of support for them. But you see I’m using Vodafone more and more. So I thought I’d move the Three handset down to a 15 quid per month deal and swap to X-Series Silver.

Turns out you can’t.

“What about the 15 pounds/month price plan?” I ask the nice Indian lady.

She explains that this is (effectively) for ‘brand new customers only’.

Right, but my contract us up in August. I’m more than half way through it. Let’s do a deal. I want to reduce my total cost down, I say.

You, er, can’t. Is what I was told.

I asked the lady to repeat the reasoning. Turns out I *CAN* change my price plan to something lower if I want, but there’s a charge.

Of course.

I’ve written about that before.

At least 50 quid if I want to reduce my price plan. That’s the deal.

Deary me.

Ok.

I thanked the lady and hung up.

We’re definitely going to have a reckoning come August.