New 3 Feel at Home countries

[[3889]]

3 have just added 20+ destinations where you can use your UK allowance, including Greece, Portugal, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Germany.

 

[Carmel2]

I have been keeping half an eye on this, they say that in Greece they will piggyback onto Wind and Cosmote networks. So for those in the know will the Greek companies be offering the same deals? Unlimited mobile data for £23 a month is not to be sniffed at.

 

[[3889]]

Be aware that you can only use your phone exclusively in a Feel at Home country for 2 complete months / year. Also you're limited to 12gb / month whilst abroad, regardless of your UK allowance.

http://support.three.co.uk/SRVS/CGI...=roaming,varset_subcat=4157,Case=Ext(EM38751)

 

[lindsay]

Dont expect too much from feel at home. Their computer has got its act together and cuts you off after two months outside the UK. The games you could play last year of not using for the first or last three days in a month have been seen through. However the good news is that you get reinstated if you go back to the uk. BUT when you leave the uk again you are off it. At least that is my experience as of now. It had to happen!

 

[TonyMS]

I'm a 3 PAYG customer in Greece. We spend six months a year here. Basically, I want to opt out of Feel at Home, so that I can continue using my phone. The web site doesn't address this. Anyone know whether it's possible?

TonyMS

 

[[3889]]

I'm a 3 PAYG customer in Greece. We spend six months a year here. Basically, I want to opt out of Feel at Home, so that I can continue using my phone. The web site doesn't address this. Anyone know whether it's possible?

TonyMS

Don't buy an Add On. Without this F@H does not come into play on PAYG. Not sure why you would want to use 3 in Greece on this basis, though. Would it it not be better to leave your 3 sim active in the UK and divert calls and texts to a Greek number?

 

[duncan99210]

I've no idea of the name of the EE tariff I'm on but in most EU countries, including Greece, we get free incoming and outgoing calls and texts to all UK and EU numbers up to our normal UK minutes and text allowance. It is not time limited (that is, I can spend as long as I like out of UK) so I've now ditched the Gymsim and abandoned thoughts of a Greek phone. Only minor downside is the data add in: it's £3 a day for 500mb, which is OK for occasional use when the Greek contract runs out of data but too expensive for normal use, although we'd be pushed to use 500mb a day....

 

[nortada]

Dont expect too much from feel at home. Their computer has got its act together and cuts you off after two months outside the UK. The games you could play last year of not using for the first or last three days in a month have been seen through. However the good news is that you get reinstated if you go back to the uk. BUT when you leave the uk again you are off it. At least that is my experience as of now. It had to happen!

I assume this works on the Calendar year? So you could use F@H in Dec and Jan to do all of the festive stuff.

Questions

Is the 2 months measured a 60 (or 2x30) consecutive days or in monthly blocks so if you used it one day in Jan and one day in Mar that would be it for that year?

Having been 'cut off' is reconnection on return to the UK automatic?

During the year, I spend time in Spain, Cyprus and Portugal. I assume the 2 month rule is cumulative for all 3 countries?

 

[lindsay]

Am too lo tec to answer your questions with any certainty but

1 the usage is not the calender year but a rolling 12 months

2 the reconnection to uk system was automatic on two occasions ie on arrival at the airport it worked ok. I have a three mifi. In theory you can insert say, a French simcard and use it in the same mifi in france but need to frig around with the settings eg the APN

 

[nortada]

Am too lo tec to answer your questions with any certainty but

1 the usage is not the calender year but a rolling 12 months

2 the reconnection to uk system was automatic on two occasions ie on arrival at the airport it worked ok. I have a three mifi. In theory you can insert say, a French simcard and use it in the same mifi in france but need to frig around with the settings eg the APN

Thanks

Lo Tech, you are an Einstein when compared with me :encouragement:

I too have a 3 mifi on annual monthly rolling contract and it works well whilst we are in the UK so I do not want to screw it up.

In Lagos, Portugal, free wifi is readily available from the local bars so don't need F@H but would be useful when travelling.

My last question is do they day count up to 60 days per rolling year or is based on just 2 connections in 2 different months?

 

[lindsay]

If we are patient some liveaboard techie guru will come up with brilliant answers. Until then my impression is that if you are out of the uk for two whole months and use it at all, then they take you off until you get back to the uk. As previously stated people used to play all sorts of clever games but three put their computers on it.

Three does send you an email to this effect, but you have to look for it.

 

[nortada]

If we are patient some liveaboard techie guru will come up with brilliant answers. Until then my impression is that if you are out of the uk for two whole months and use it at all, then they take you off until you get back to the uk. As previously stated people used to play all sorts of clever games but three put their computers on it.

Three does send you an email to this effect, but you have to look for it.

Once again many thanks. I will have a fiddle with it when I get back to Portugal in about 10 days.

 

[Mistroma]

Don't buy an Add On. Without this F@H does not come into play on PAYG. Not sure why you would want to use 3 in Greece on this basis, though. Would it it not be better to leave your 3 sim active in the UK and divert calls and texts to a Greek number?

This was not correct last year. We were cut off despite customer support advising not to activate any add-ons and just pay full roaming rate from credit. We had no allowances of any sort, just pay & go credit. Still cut off without any warning.

It took ages to sort out and the "ban" lasts 12 months from date of infringement. We complained specifically about the wrong advice and fact that their terms could be interpreted in various ways. We asked them to update their terms to make the situation clear. I don't know if they did but we got £50 to go away and stop pestering them (not exactly the legal terms they used). Three always insisted that Feel at Home is automatic and cannot be avoided even if you choose not to benefit by paying full roaming and not getting a add-on.

They kept stating that their monitoring system was perfect and had no flaws when it was obvious that it did. Not surprised that they figured it out eventually. It would have taken me little or no time to put a query together to pull out the reports they required. I assume that they finally had someone with the required skills correct their original queries.

Very happy with Vodafone this year in Spain, France and Italy. I kept expecting to be cut-off but have been lucky so far.

I saw something in the news about EU looking at roaming again. Apparently they were thinking of capping the time at 90 days total in a year with longest individual trip around 3 weeks (or something like that). I believe companies could re-instate increased charges after that time. I haven't heard any more but assume it will pop up in the news again.

 

[DaveRo]

If you top up 3 PAYG you get 150MB of data valid for a month. I discovered in Norway recently that this is usable under Feel at Home - i.e. data used comes out of that before it uses credit at roaming rates (3.9p/MB). So that 150MB is in effect an add-on.

This may be relevant to the question of whether and how you can opt out of F@H. I didn't buy an add-on, but I did use F@H. So to avoid that, don't use any data. Or don't be abroad within a month of a topup.

 

[Mistroma]

If you top up 3 PAYG you get 150MB of data valid for a month. I discovered in Norway recently that this is usable under Feel at Home - i.e. data used comes out of that before it uses credit at roaming rates (3.9p/MB). So that 150MB is in effect an add-on.

This may be relevant to the question of whether and how you can opt out of F@H. I didn't buy an add-on, but I did use F@H. So to avoid that, don't use any data. Or don't be abroad within a month of a topup.

It wasn't the cost at issue with Three, they only allow a maximum length of time in a Feel at Home destination before they cut you off. It doesn't matter how you use the phone, daily, data, only once or twice. Three just count time outside UK in a specific country. They previously had a weird and flawed way of monitoring and calculating your ban but it sounds as if that's been updated now. However, you cannot opt out of Feel at Home if you are in a Feel at Home destination. Three confirmed that numerous times from people at many levels in their management.

 

[DaveRo]

It wasn't the cost at issue with Three ...

I remember the thread well. But I'm not convinced that we now know how this restriction really works, whatever their management, or even their website, says. And it's likely to change without notice - just as they disallowed use of payg on my tablet without notice after I'd used it for two years. You yourself know how futile it is arguing with them. So my advice is - don't rely on it, have a fallback.

 

[Mistroma]

I remember the thread well. But I'm not convinced that we now know how this restriction really works, whatever their management, or even their website, says. And it's likely to change without notice - just as they disallowed use of payg on my tablet without notice after I'd used it for two years. You yourself know how futile it is arguing with them. So my advice is - don't rely on it, have a fallback.

Agree 100% but I was expecting them to fix the holes left by their poor monitoring system. It is pretty trivial to put a query together to give the desired result. However, I always felt that management had probably defined the rules very badly to IT. I don't think that anyone senior really knew exactly what they were trying to achieve. Explanations varied but I just kept on drilling down to get to the root of it. As far as I can remember it was interpreted as 2 full months in a Feel at Home country and you'd be cut-off if you had not made a chargeable connection back in UK. That meant you'd be OK to connect on 2nd of April and not be caught until 1st June. However, they also seemed to have problems if the phone was disconnected for a while and then turned on again without changing location. So you could actually go for many months without a problem.

I got the impression that cut-off was a manual operation and therefore even more variable. We didn't get any notification so that wasn't automated.

As you say, arguing was futile. I eventually got one guy to cancel our 12 month "ban" so we could use the phone on a short trip to France. It was re-instated a week later because we'd infringed their rules again. In fact we had not been out of the UK for 5 months but Three picked up the end of our previous trip as a second infringement even though they'd already cancelled service. That was due to Three starting the first "ban" from the beginning of our earlier trip and the second from date they'd cancelled service.

At least they gave me some money for my trouble and it didn't involve a great deal of effort. Our fallback was to switch to Vodafone with an O2 spare this year plus the same Three SIM as a final backup.

Vodafone has actually been very good. Call costs have been negligible and they even refunded quite a few calls to cover cost of calling home from Nice area after the terrible incident there. I didn't hear of any other company making a similar gesture and thought it was good of Vodafone.

 

[nortada]

Agree 100% but I was expecting them to fix the holes left by their poor monitoring system. It is pretty trivial to put a query together to give the desired result. However, I always felt that management had probably defined the rules very badly to IT. I don't think that anyone senior really knew exactly what they were trying to achieve. Explanations varied but I just kept on drilling down to get to the root of it. As far as I can remember it was interpreted as 2 full months in a Feel at Home country and you'd be cut-off if you had not made a chargeable connection back in UK. That meant you'd be OK to connect on 2nd of April and not be caught until 1st June. However, they also seemed to have problems if the phone was disconnected for a while and then turned on again without changing location. So you could actually go for many months without a problem.

I got the impression that cut-off was a manual operation and therefore even more variable. We didn't get any notification so that wasn't automated.

As you say, arguing was futile. I eventually got one guy to cancel our 12 month "ban" so we could use the phone on a short trip to France. It was re-instated a week later because we'd infringed their rules again. In fact we had not been out of the UK for 5 months but Three picked up the end of our previous trip as a second infringement even though they'd already cancelled service. That was due to Three starting the first "ban" from the beginning of our earlier trip and the second from date they'd cancelled service.

At least they gave me some money for my trouble and it didn't involve a great deal of effort. Our fallback was to switch to Vodafone with an O2 spare this year plus the same Three SIM as a final backup.

Vodafone has actually been very good. Call costs have been negligible and they even refunded quite a few calls to cover cost of calling home from Nice area after the terrible incident there. I didn't hear of any other company making a similar gesture and thought it was good of Vodafone.

A very informative post.

My reading of the current situation; once you connect from a F@H country you are assumed to remain in that country until you make a connection when back in the UK.

It follows if you make just one connection in a F@H country, after 2 month you will be cut off and remain so until you leave that country and make a connection from back in the UK.

Still not sure of the situation if, having made a connection in a F@H country, (say Spain) you then move to say Portugal and try to connect? I suspect the ban will still remain until you connect from back in the UK. Moreover, for the next 12 months the ban will be reinstated the moment you next try to connect from any F@H country.

A great system for those who spend less that 2 months a year out of the country but virtually useless for all others.

Just a cheap marketing gimmick, which is what 3 wanted.

 

[nortada]

There is a lot of detail on F@H on http://kenstechtips.com/index.php/threes-feel-at-home

 

[[3889]]

That's useful info ,Mistroma. Nortada's link explains the 2 month business: any calendar month in which the sim is used at all in the UK does not count towards the two month limit.
This works well for me but I can see it being of limited use for liveaboards.