I went into the 3UK shop on Oxford Street last night before I arrived at the WildJack Poker night (which I’ll write about later on).
I found a sales lady and pointed at the USB point-of-sale stuff.
“I’m an existing customer,” I told her, “Just how easy is it for me to get one?”
“Er, fairly easy,” she said.
Right. Simple. At least she’s given me a direct response. I imagined, therefore that I’d need to sign a contract blah blah blah.
I asked her for more information.
“Yes, you will need to sign an additional service contract, but the device will be free on an 18 month contract,” she explained.
Good that it’s free. The marketing material said it was going to be £49 quid up front.
But I didn’t get one.
For two reasons: 1) They didn’t have them in stock in that store. Fair enough.
2) A new contract.
That is a total 100% ARSE.
“Oh, and if you do come in on Saturday,” she continued (I’d said I’d come back in and get one), “Please can you remember to bring some identification?”
You what?
So. Not good. That is a load of rubbish. I’m already a customer — I’m already paying 60 odd quid a month — why do I need to take out a NEW agreement and bring in sodding identification? I’m AN EXISTING CUSTOMER.
This is, ostensibly, because the chaps in the 3UK shop don’t know me from adam. Because their system is a load of shit.
It ain’t good, no sir. I talked to Marc Allera, Director of Sales at 3UK about this the other day. They’re working on it — they’ll have a Vodafone-like super-dooper sales system for their shop employees to use next March. That will prevent me from having to arse about with identification.
Until then, I need to decide whether to screw about hunting for my passport in order to give 3UK some money.
Yes, it’s completely mad! It’s the same on the website – you get a discount if you are already a customer, so you enter your mobile and account numbers, and then still have to go through all the steps as if you were a new customer and get a new account.
Very weird…
To make the experience even better – when ordering on Wednesday the website first didn’t actually ask for the numbers so no discount, then later on when that part was fixed, the field to enter your account number only accepted 9 characters – and the account number is 10 characters!)
Don’t you have national ID’s or a drivers license to use as ID in the UK?