Three Home Broadband Reviews

Sadly, I can only agree with many of the comments from others. Streaming crashing when another computer simultaneously in use. Speed both upload and download going to a crawl whilst streaming and pings increasing tenfold. Atrocious lack of technical knowledge by anyone, passing from one sevice agent to another who can only either suggest repositioning the router or resetting the router - both useless suggestions.

After months of phoning, I finally got a no-cost termination of my contract. Changed to Vodafone on their equivalent package and have no problems.

I wrote to the CEO's office to discuss not only the technical issues but the fact that 3 didn't deliver a replacement router on an agreed date (had to take a day off work). 3 wont accept this is a breach of contract. 3 pointed out that normally an early terminaton of contract requires the customer to pay a 40% penalty - what, 3 cant supply a minimum acceptable standard and expects customers to pay for early exit?!!!

Anyway, I have been offered £30 as a 'goodwill' gesture. I refused that and they upped it to £50 in full and final settlement. No thanks, I lost a day's pay and have had months of crap service and crap customer support. I am taking the complaint to the Ombudsmen, not for more money, but to hold these charlatans to account.

If you are trying to get out of a contract, keep on trying. Alos, log an official complaint as this sets the clock ticking for your, if you want, make a claim to the Ombudsman.

I am so frustrated This service does not provide what is promised the broadband speed is rubbish and so loading now tv, itv hub, Netflix etc Is difficult and almost impossible. I have just spent 45 minutes on the phone trying to get some satisfaction and was passed around and kept waiting until the broadband section was closed. This is the third time I have complained.

Since November the speeds went down dramatically. I can see Three mast in front of my window and speed im getting ranges from 0.3m/s to 11m/s its a joke...and sometimes it totally stop.
Ping goes up to 462.....common...21st century and 4G does way better than that. My advice avoid avoid avoid....if i could give i would give negative 10 stars!!!

no stars really went from vermin thinking this would be mobile anywhere what a mistake rubbish 3 i live in a built up area with loads of masts poor strenght dropping out just poor wish i had not botherd

A one star rating is actually too good. The service is appalling in every respect: speed, reliability, connection and customer service. After me reporting them to the ombudsman they even had the gal to deny that they deliver a well below par service. I’ll take them to court for breach of contract.

Utter ****. In zone 2 central London, my closest mast is 100m away, and I cannot even get reliable 3G, let alone 5G, at peak times. Their customer service, the usual call centre drones, just repeat the same script over and over. Without doubt the worst service I have ever received from.any utility ever. DO NOT CHOOSE 3.

WORST INTERNET PROVIDER EVER!.Joined Dec 2019, got Huwaie B535 4G Home Broadband, was amazing for first 2 weeks downs of around 25 to 30 Mbps, then it all went wrong, now Im at 1Mbps and sometimes 4 or 5 mbs, most of the time does NOT work.
Ive complained over the phone so many times, cant pay my bills,impossible to stream any tv, cant even watch youtube,if it does load it buffers all the time,and the bits it does play is totally grainy and blurred.
My 02 mobile phone used as a wifi hot spot (tethering) gives 37mbps and all works fine when my tv links to that, once back on 3 nothing works.
I was their biggest hero in Dec 2019, now the biggest hater of 3, should of done more research, i called them tonight to say im cancelling and wont be paying them another penny,ive taken screenshots of speed (with times and dates on) videos of the speedtest etc, all as evidence, i even had to drive to my bank to physically put money in to pay upcoming direct debits, because i could not get online to transfer from one bank to another, total joke.
My mobile phone is faster then 3 home broadband, but my data is only 2gbs so used that up in no time, so if your reading this thinking of joining people, then don't, what i tell you is the 100% truth of my experience, as of March 3rd 2020, there are still massive outages in the UK, in most towns, Manchester, London, Hull, Bristol to name a few, its been like this for weeks,and for some months, impossible to come home from work and sit down and watch netflix,impossible,3 is absolutely the worst isp ive ever know,was amazing in Dec 2019, now its dire, ive given them chance to resolve this issue,ive reset the router 4 times, gone through all the settings with 3, nothings made it better, they have a massive outage and their network is a total joke, please believe me this is a true honest review, i thought maybe its because they are upgrading their network from 4g to 5g, no its not, they are even having to switch servers on and off just to try and give customers some service, i know this because my speedtest keeps showing different variants of 3s names,its is beyond a joke, if you are with 3 and are experiencing this, then cancel your direct debit, stop paying, send notification to their uk head office,and any evidence you have of the speeds service etc (screenshots/videos etc)they cant charge you for a service they are NOT providing basic english law, if they send you an invoice for the remainder of the contract then sue them for all your losses,and stress and grief caused from them NOT providing a reliable acceptable internet service, that what i am doing,its a joke at the end of the day when my mobile phone is much, much faster then their dedicated 4g system

I can only say the same as others have, 'how I wish I had read more reveiws. The broadband service is diabolical at best, can not connect, slow unusable, then I found if you add a DNS server manually it does change things, it seems the router does not do what it is designed to do, I.E route, so, go online and search for free DNS, pick a couple of DNS ip addresses and go in to the IP address settings in your PC / Laptop/ Phone etc click manual DNS and add some DNS IP addresses, this speeds up the broadband connection on a pc. It worked for me.
The three mobile broadband service is awful though, nothing can fix that.

Avoid Three Broadbad. Located just yards from Blackbur Rovers my top speed is 0.75 MBPS. 3 is the biggest rip off company i the UK

Oh, how I wish I had done more research and found this review page before I committed myself t a 24mth contract for Home 4G Broadband with Three. As with the high percentage of other reviews my experience of Three is abysmal. The broad band speed they advertised of 25 Mbps came in between 3-5 Mbps when I checked by my lap top. It’s like going back ten years with internet speed. The customer service as already mentioned by other reviews is terrible, you get sent to a call centre in the far east and get asked the same ridiculous question, which is very frustrating and you just end up going in circles. I eventually got them to admit that there was a problem and they admitted that there was too much demand in the area and that their system can’t cope. They have to their credit given me two months free of charge to compensate, and they admitted that the 5G upgrades they are doing to their system are causing the problems. It was clear to me that they know that there are problems on their system but just selling it to people anyhow. The other thing is that they don’t send you any record of your complaint and nothing is put on paper. I’ve been told that everything should be ok by the 26th march. I now have no internet in my flat, except one that it is so slow its infuriating and I can’t get another internet contract going because I’m locked into this one, it’s an atrocious service. If there are no improvement by then the only action I can take is to cancel by standing order, which in doing so I might face legal action. So, from my experience if anybody is contemplating to with Three, STAY WELL CLEAR OF THEM!!!

I have written probably just one bad review in my life and only because it was really bad, this is the second one.
The first thing is their customer service. I have been using broadband from Relish for 4 years before Three took over. I have never had any problems with Relish. I used to have nearly the full signal.
I live near Holborn and not so long ago my signal dropped to the minimum and my internet basically doesn’t work.
When I made a decision to move here, due to some circumstances Relish was my only option and still is. I was basically dependant on it. Now, it caused me loads of troubles.
When I called the customer service, my call was transferred 4 times and they asked me the same questions. It was a mess. When finally somebody decided to talk to me, they were asking me some random numbers and information. It seemed like they had no idead what are they talking about. At the end I was told that my broadband is not registered and that I can’t be helped. RIDICULOUS!! Despite the fact I was paying my bills and using my broadband before. I gave up really frustrated and tried to call them again later.
This time I wasn’t transferred. Their support guy, who seemed like he knew was he was doing, managed to find my account without issues and started looking into the problem.

Not here comes the second part. I was told that one of the cell towers was removed and there is nothing he can do. Without ANY warning. No emails, messages NOTHING. What a disgrace to their customers!!! I have never experienced anything like that in my life. That’s how they value their customers. I asked to speak with somebody higher and I was told that it is not possible. It wasn’t his fault, so I didn’t want to vent my anger on him. Until now I am still struggling to find a replacement. I have already had some problems with Three before. Now, I am changing my mobile network too. I have heard some bad stuff about them from my friends and I was warned. I think I have learned my lesson. The most people I know have a different one or are changing their network.
I hope that this will help the rest of you who are still deciding to or not to go with this company and I strongly recommend to AVOID it. For some people it may work, but once you start having some problems, you can’t rely on them at all!!! It seems like you are secondary or none to them.

I brought 3 broadband 2 years ago when I lived in a caravan. I've never had a problem with speed. Continued streaming play . Nothing . I can only praise 3. I have a sim only contact also for my phone. . Never a problem. I was with ee before . Who were dreadful. So happy days. Keep up the good work guys .

I thought I would give Three broadband a try as our landline broadband contract is nearly due for renewal and we have had several week-long outages due to broken overhead phone lines.

The kit arrived quickly and was easy to install.

However the data speeds were very erratic.
At one point I was seeing 40MB/s+ download and 35MB/s upload speeds with an acceptable 36ms ping. Had the performance kept at this level it would have been brilliant as this outperforms our current FTTC broadband. But the above speeds were very much the exception. Without any change in the router location or obstructions, speeds would drop to less than 3MB/s with pings close to 100ms. Also, the system would not allow my son's XBox to download games or updates, throwing out an error message on every attempt. When I contacted Three technical, the only solution they could come up with was to force the router into 3G mode. At that point data was flowing at a snail's pace and it wasn't even possible to view BBC iPlayer.
I even tried a quality LTE Mimo external antenna as we are some way from the nearest mast. This did improve signal quality, but the speeds were still all over the place.
I didn't want to be stuck in a 2 year contract so decided to pull the plug on the trial within the 14 day cancellation window.
A shame really and perhaps if we were closer to a cell mast, it would have been more reliable. But it wasn't a workable solution for us.
By the way, I think you only get the 14 day cancellation option if you buy on line. Not from a store. So if you are thinking about Three Broadband, my advice would be to take out the contract on line, then you can test and reject it, if it isn't working to an acceptable level.
Customer service was OK throughout the whole experience, but at the end of the day the broadband just wasn't reliable or fast enough.

Three deliberately throttles internet speed and then uses the excuse there is maintenance happening in the area, if that were true all 3 customers would have slow or no network, yet my mobile speed tests at 11.4mbps yet my ai cube broadband speed tests at 1.4mbps with zero devices connected, shameful and I can’t wait for the contracts to end il never use them again their customer service team are arrogant as well when you show them this evidence

Without doubt this is the worst broadband service I have ever used. I have a 2 year contract for HomeFi with a Huawei B535 Router and after 2 months of suffering dropped connection, slow speeds and unable to connect to internet I gave up and bought a Virgin package again. If you are thinking of taking a HomeFi contract Do Not Do It. You will not be happy with the service. The customer service is appalling, unknowledgeable, unhelpful and could not care less about the customer. I live in a 4G high signal strenth area with 5 bars on the router signal connection. When it works correctly it does so at 15-20 Mbps, the trouble is it only works correctly for minutes at a time then drops the connection, fails to reconnect and then when it does reconnect it runs at 15-20 Kbps, the speed of a tortoise. Restarting the router makes no difference. Netflix spends all its time buffering after the initial connection and is unwatchable so their Go Binge promise for Netflix is a lie. Bottom line is that I have thrown away over £500 on a 2 year contract that is absolutely useless for the purpose. Please learn from my mistake. Do Not Use Three.

what a waste of money Huawei A1cube cant watch a decent film or football draging speach advertisments still on when films on what the hell is going on

Broadband speed is very slow and inconsistent.
Customer Service have no I sea how to deal with customers.
Would I recommend Three. HELL NO.

Finally cut ties with Sky after many painful expensive years. Loved the idea of broadband w/o a landline. Never used it otherwise. Really impressed for the first 3mths on 3's pay monthly home broadband deal, just to try it out. Easy setup and great fast reliable streaming at the beginning. Rarely dropped a stream for three months. So we decided to take on a 12mth contract. Another precaution because we didn't want to get 'trapped' in any more long life-sucking contracts. Of course customer service pushed real hard for us to go for a 24mth contract instead. But I stood firm and said "No thanks!". So we stuck with the 12mth one. Well since the contract started, streaming speeds have slowed and become very inconsistent. We counted the stream drop during TV programs at least 10x during one day. That was on every device used at that time with our Huawei 4G Router 3 Pro, supposedly able to handle up to 65 devices at once. We sometimes use up to 4 at the same time. That's it. We even moved the router around and saw some improvement but only for a short while. I have a mobile with 3 and it's signal and stream are much more reliable. Why is that?? I don't hold much hope out for any vast improvement in the coming months and 3's customer service has proved to be frustrating and unhelpful. I wish somehow we could get out of it. Highly unlikely I know. But on the bright side at least it's not for 24mths. We definitely will chose someone else when this nightmare ends. I highly do NOT recommend 3 for home broadband to anybody. There are far more reliable ones out there.

SLOW as fuck, avoid

I got mobile broadband to save money in comparison to fixed line. Speeds were OK at first, but for the past year I've been getting mostly less than 2Mb and often less than 1Mb, with pages taking ages to load, and that's in the middle of a large city. I often have to use my phone to get online. Tried once or twice to contact Three, but the script is always the same, have you tried this, that...Yes I have, I'm an intelligent person and know how to troubleshoot connection speeds. I've now given up and got fibre broadband, which is not much more than Three are charging me. I'm still in contract but I don't care, I just want out. Think carefully before you go for mobile broadband for your main home connection, other much faster connections are now not much more expensive.