SMARTY / 3 being complete waste of time.

LongLensPhotography

LongLensPhotography

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They eat my nerves and time so may as well give a 0* feedback about them.

Connectivity is lately horrible.

Never seen 4 bars of signal and no internet on a browser and nothing happening. Alternatively they swicth you over to 4G, and again that has 0 kbps speed,. Never been this bad before. Complete waste of time.

AVOID AVOID AVOID
 
Never had a problem - great value for money.
 
Not had a real issue in the several years I've been with them, and great value.
 
It may be a location issue? How is signal out and about.

I had a somewhat similar problem with Lebara here in France. My Giffgaff/O2 SIM gave good connectivity, but the Lebara SIM would not manage any data. However I have recently swapped to just O2 and have better connectivity in the UK as well.
 
I'm currently on Three and it's almost totally useless in central London. You get a strong signal in most places, but there's so much contention on the mast from the thousands of people there that you can't actually get any data. They might have massive coverage all over the country, but if there are too many people on one mast and they're giving priority to voice calling, then you get a seriously bad service.
 
I used to be with 3 some time ago, we're now on a mix of EE and O2 (one standard, one business), and its noticeable when out and about that they each get a different level of signal / data (the O2 business number is usually better than the basic O2, but there are places where both are rubbish) - and there is now one 'best' of the three.
You need to find the provider that gives best performance where you most use your phone - but it's not easy to find out, as coverage maps are a rather 'coarse grained' tool.
 
3 are pretty rubbish hence the super cheap offers
try 1p mobile they use EE but off great sim only deals £10 for 25gb /unl/unl
 
ancient_mariner said:
It may be a location issue? How is signal out and about.

I had a somewhat similar problem with Lebara here in France. My Giffgaff/O2 SIM gave good connectivity, but the Lebara SIM would not manage any data. However I have recently swapped to just O2 and have better connectivity in the UK as well.
Click to expand...
Good signal actually, when they don't mess about. I would get it if I had 1 bar or so. There are some very borderline locations in the countryside almost without a signal. You would expect 4 bars to give you service.

It actually looks like their DNS / IP is either intentionally or unintentionally messed up. What a shame androids make it so freaking hard to set manual DNS. 1,1,1,1 works a treat until 3 intentionally starts completely blocking it after a day or so. Something really wrong with this company integrity on so many levels.
 
garryknight said:
I'm currently on Three and it's almost totally useless in central London. You get a strong signal in most places, but there's so much contention on the mast from the thousands of people there that you can't actually get any data. They might have massive coverage all over the country, but if there are too many people on one mast and they're giving priority to voice calling, then you get a seriously bad service.
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sounds kind of familiar, except not too many people here. It is just a small town.
Worst of all they throw you off of a decent 5G connection which appears to work most of the time, and you land on the slowest of the slow 4G which takes like 5min to load daily mail and fails whatsapp calls. That bad. And phone really struggles to go back even by resetting connection. And even if does you are still back to 4G soon. It wasn't great, but never before this bad. Support has absolutely no clue what is going on.
 
Think mobile service / coverage in the UK isn’t very good anyway, I don’t get a very good signal in many areas in north Wales even in Wrexham town centre, we went on holiday to Switzerland and was able to get 5G everywhere even up in the mountains at both the Simplon and Grimsel pass
 
I'm happy with my Smarty coverage locally.

Screenshot_20240907-112653.png
 
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All networks are s*** at times. There is no 'one', better than the other.
 
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dcash29 said:
All networks are s*** at times. There is no 'one', better than the other.
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Don't you agree that no service with an illusion of full service is a bit of a problem?! Can't send or receive emails most the day now!
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Don't you agree that no service with an illusion of full service is a bit of a problem?! Can't send or receive emails most the day now!
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I've had the same lately, full bars no modulation and cut calls. After complaining apparently they have upgrades going on. I question their site states no such thing but I'm told they don't always publish. It probably total b*****ks as EE used to say they had a fault on the mast located in school grounds and they couldn't access during holidays, again, total b*****ks as they are to be able to switch off a mast within 24 hours.
 
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Have tried a sim from another network, just to check it's actually smarty and on a phone problem
 
Delphin said:
Have tried a sim from another network, just to check it's actually smarty and on a phone problem
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Me? It's Smarty, it only started since I was with them, however the issue seems to be resolved.
 
i changed from EE in March after being with them since 2007. They just messed me around on data and price so i changed

Really regret choosing Smarty though. Its hopeless in comparison
 
A_S said:
i changed from EE in March after being with them since 2007. They just messed me around on data and price so i changed

Really regret choosing Smarty though. Its hopeless in comparison
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You can leave, next month
 
Recently got a 3 5G data only SIM for £30 that gives me 25GB of data every month for 18 months or so and quite frankly when I tested it on my iPad it was the fastest internet I have ever seen, was quite shocked.


IMG_0195.jpeg
 
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dcash29 said:
You can leave, next month
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I will be when i get time to shop around.

Its aweful, signal is so poor. I don't even have a connection in my office 5 miles outside of birmingham (unless I stand by the window).
 
Unlocker said:
Recently got a 3 5G data only SIM for £30 that gives me 25GB of data every month for 18 months or so and quite frankly when I tested it on my iPad it was the fastest internet I have ever seen, was quite shocked.


View attachment 432982
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That looks like some top of the range optic fibre. Even ping is good, and that's unheard of for mobile connections; obviously only really important for those who are gaming
 
A_S said:
I will be when i get time to shop around.

Its aweful, signal is so poor. I don't even have a connection in my office 5 miles outside of birmingham (unless I stand by the window).
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Have you complained?
 
Unlocker said:
Recently got a 3 5G data only SIM for £30 that gives me 25GB of data every month for 18 months or so and quite frankly when I tested it on my iPad it was the fastest internet I have ever seen, was quite shocked.


View attachment 432982
Click to expand...
I get 120gb a month for a tenner. 250d/50u and never drops below 75d/10u. Which is perfectly good enough for me.
 
dcash29 said:
I get 120gb a month for a tenner. 250d/50u and never drops below 75d/10u. Which is perfectly good enough for me.
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Mine was a one off payment for a pre-paid SIM on Prime day, it actually lasts until Feb 2027, so a lot more than the 18 months or so that I remembered, works out around a £1 a month for 25GB a month and I still can't believe it's true for the price.

They are currently back to £29.99 on Amazon and they do others as well

My iPad has always been a cellular one and always a different network to my phone for backup reasons and normally I would buy the pre-paid 3 SIM that's a total of 24GB that lasts for 24 months, currently £35 on Amazon. That was OK but this new one is something else price wise.
 
dcash29 said:
Have you complained?
Click to expand...

No - i am not sure what the benefit would be?

Currently sitting in Mcdonalds Welshpool and having to teather to my work phone to get any signal.... its a more than common occurrence.
 
Been with them for years. Excellent value and service.

Dave
 
A_S said:
No - i am not sure what the benefit would be?

Currently sitting in Mcdonalds Welshpool and having to teather to my work phone to get any signal.... its a more than common occurrence.
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Sounds like more wrong there?
 
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I was PAYG with Virgin for years, spending £5-£10 a month until they decided they didn't want to do PAYG any more. :rolleyes: I went with Lebara, £5 per month, for 2Gb of data and unlimited calls and texts, and was happy, until my voice would suddenly randomly disappear for recipients during a call. :oops: :$ Lebara's only help was reset the phone, which didn't work. :rolleyes: So I went with Smarty a few months ago, £10 for 40Gb and unlimited calls and texts, but they had an offer for an extra 20Gb for a year, so 60Gb per month atm.

Never had a problem with calls, the internet speed is variable, but mostly fast enough, but can be up to 150mbs if I'm near a 5G signal. Worked perfectly in Italy, as did Lebara when I used that there, and in other European countries. I think with all these mobile virtual network operator company's, you need to see whose network infrastructure they are using. Lebara are on Vodaphone, and Smarty are on the Three network. I was worried about the 3 coverage, from their reputation, but so far so good. :)

With whatever network you use, if you are not getting what you are paying for, in the places you normally go (no network has total coverage), change to something else, there are many options out there. I think there are four main owners of the mobile network infrastructure in the UK, EE, O2, Three and Vodaphone, and most other company's are 'mobile virtual network operators' using one of those four company's network.
 
Unlocker said:
Mine was a one off payment for a pre-paid SIM on Prime day, it actually lasts until Feb 2027, so a lot more than the 18 months or so that I remembered, works out around a £1 a month for 25GB a month and I still can't believe it's true for the price.

They are currently back to £29.99 on Amazon and they do others as well

My iPad has always been a cellular one and always a different network to my phone for backup reasons and normally I would buy the pre-paid 3 SIM that's a total of 24GB that lasts for 24 months, currently £35 on Amazon. That was OK but this new one is something else price wise.
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which is probably why they are all too happy to rack up that 25GB in a couple of minutes so they can do the upsell. You get very different treatment on unlimited.
 
View: https://youtu.be/CI5KwXCS7fA


Anyone else keeps getting this nightmare connection downgrade happening. As bad as 4G is on its own right, it has data speed of about 1kbps with even emails failing to send.
 
A_S said:
i changed from EE in March after being with them since 2007. They just messed me around on data and price so i changed

Really regret choosing Smarty though. Its hopeless in comparison
Click to expand...
Three and Smarty are the same thing, Smarty being the budget brand.
 
LG9K said:
Three and Smarty are the same thing, Smarty being the budget brand.
Click to expand...

I know... and i chose them because of this and reading that 3 apparently had good coverage....
 
ecoleman said:
Have you tried getting rid of the VPN?
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it would be nice if it was the reason. Sadly it is only there to make their terrible DNS slightly more manageable, and stop them selling absolutely all my browsing data to advertisers - a question they even refused to acknowledge or address in any way.

I've never seen a great ISP DNS, but theirs's really takes the biscuit.

I have also never experienced such a useless support. Well other than Lyca who simply make it impossible to contact them and never even respond.
 
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