3BB vs True online pricing

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I had a weird experience with 3BB leading to my ultimate sign-up with them, typical perhaps of Thai company services.

For some months, and on a couple different visits to their counter at CentralWorld, I'd been asking the 3BB staff there what internet service they could provide to my home in central BKK. And every time, they said they couldn't provide fiber. Then on my next to last visit there, they finally said they had fiber on my soi, but the line was full and they couldn't add any new customers.

So then a couple months passed, and I gave up on the CW counter, and finally called 3BB's customer service hotline direct, and asked the same questions. And the call center staff couldn't answer whether and what service they could provide to my home, but would send out staff to check my locations and then answer back in a day or two. So I said fine to that.

Next day, I got a call from 3BB saying they could provide their regular FTTH service to my home no problem. But to do the actual signup and signing of documents, I actually had to go back to their counter at CW and deal with the same people who repeatedly had told me they couldn't provide fiber service to my home... Except, now they could...

PS - I should clarify, that 3BB actually provides at least three different flavors of internet service:

--regular ADSL

--VDSL (a supposedly higher speed version), and

--FTTH fiber.

Depending on one's location, they may be able to provide none, one, two or all 3 of those services. So it pays to ask and check on your situation with each of them.

[Happy Grumpy]

3BB came out to us trice.

Once to set it up.

And a year later when we changed to a WiFi router.

They came almost immediately, all done professionally, and were a joy to deal with on the phone.

And another time there was a big storm and power outage in the private village. Power came on but the internet didn't. Mrs. got onto them straight away and they sent a team out immediately. It came back on a few minutes later so she informed them. They told the crew that were on the way and they got back to us saying they'll come out anyway and check everything is okay. Which they did.

Couldn't fault them a satang.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

In my month+ experience with 3BB, I've had their internet service go out twice:

--first time, shortly after install, a tall truck or bus came down my soi and apparently hit/pulled the too low hanging fiber cable. That happened on a Saturday, and it took 3BB until Monday to get our service back.

The service guys who only spoke Thai told me wife they'd re-hung the fiber to a higher level, so hopefully the same thing won't happen again. We'll see...

--the second outage happened about a week ago here in central BKK where, as best as I could tell from talking to them, they had some kind of major fiber break totally away from our neighborhood that nonetheless killed our service, and probably a lot of other customers of theirs as well. That day, the service went out about 5 pm, and ended up being restored by about 1 am the next day.

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The other thing to mention about 3BB is about what they used to call their Premier service, which no longer is officially advertised. They used to offer separate and separately priced Premier packages that supposedly offered better international connections for those wanting that vs. their regular domestic plans. However, if you read the forum posts here in recent years from 3BB Premier plan customers, the majority sentiment seems to be that they weren't really getting any better international service, just paying more.

At any rate, when I signed up, I ended up speaking on the phone with an English speaking tech supervisor for them, and we had a discussion about that, after I explained to him that most of my internet usage was going to be international, and I wanted to know what to expect from their 100/10 fiber plan in that regard. Basically, the tech guy told me that although they no longer officially offer those Premier plans, that if I wanted to, he could change my service for the same price to a Premier type routing where I'd get something like 5 Mbps down for international.

Well, I told him I'd think about that, and I wanted to see how their basic 100/10 plan would fare for international use by itself. And thus far, without getting into any of the Premier stuff, I must say the international connections via their FTTH 100/10 plan have been very good. And I'm able to stream HD video from the U.S. almost all of the time without any degradation, something I wasn't able to do under my prior True Online 30/3 Mbps cable service.

[Mike45]

I'm trying to choose a local provider now.

TOT has a fiber line available.

True doesn't have fiber but they say there service works great.

3BB says that I'd have to wait 3 weeks to get their fiber.... meanwhile they want me to sign up with there VDSL until they can hook up the fiber.....sounds like a bait and switch.

[casualbiker]

In my month+ experience with 3BB, I've had their internet service go out twice:

--first time, shortly after install, a tall truck or bus came down my soi and apparently hit/pulled the too low hanging fiber cable. That happened on a Saturday, and it took 3BB until Monday to get our service back.

The service guys who only spoke Thai told me wife they'd re-hung the fiber to a higher level, so hopefully the same thing won't happen again. We'll see...

--the second outage happened about a week ago here in central BKK where, as best as I could tell from talking to them, they had some kind of major fiber break totally away from our neighborhood that nonetheless killed our service, and probably a lot of other customers of theirs as well. That day, the service went out about 5 pm, and ended up being restored by about 1 am the next day.

------------------------

The other thing to mention about 3BB is about what they used to call their Premier service, which no longer is officially advertised. They used to offer separate and separately priced Premier packages that supposedly offered better international connections for those wanting that vs. their regular domestic plans. However, if you read the forum posts here in recent years from 3BB Premier plan customers, the majority sentiment seems to be that they weren't really getting any better international service, just paying more.

At any rate, when I signed up, I ended up speaking on the phone with an English speaking tech supervisor for them, and we had a discussion about that, after I explained to him that most of my internet usage was going to be international, and I wanted to know what to expect from their 100/10 fiber plan in that regard. Basically, the tech guy told me that although they no longer officially offer those Premier plans, that if I wanted to, he could change my service for the same price to a Premier type routing where I'd get something like 5 Mbps down for international.

Well, I told him I'd think about that, and I wanted to see how their basic 100/10 plan would fare for international use by itself. And thus far, without getting into any of the Premier stuff, I must say the international connections via their FTTH 100/10 plan have been very good. And I'm able to stream HD video from the U.S. almost all of the time without any degradation, something I wasn't able to do under my prior True Online 30/3 Mbps cable service.

When we went to the local shop to enquire about internet they said they couldn't do it from the box closest in the Moo Baan but could link up to the one 150 metres away on the main road.. I wasn't so happy with that idea.. so I asked if there were any other options.. no was the answer.. I asked does the Moo Baan have fiber.. ohhhhhhh wait a second.. button presses..then a new map overlay popped up. Yes they do.. only one connection left.. good I'll have that then.. happy customer ever since. So moral of the story ask for fiber not just internet as it shows as a different map overlay!

[JaseTheBass]

Never use True for anything unless you really have no alternative. Truly awful.

[recom273]

The supervisor wasn't quite accurate with his info because he knew no better, he said the package I use is for visiting overseas websites and the cheaper packages were fine for visiting domestic sites ( which means sites cache'd by 3BB ). So it looks like moving to a cheaper package with true online wouldn't be cost effective for me.

That sounds like 3BB's old Premier plan which cost more than their regular plan but gave faster foriegn speeds.

Interesting twist .. I got a bill today asking for around 600B instead of the 963.00B. So I called 3BB yet again to see if I could get to the bottom of it all.

Apparently, when my wife went to pay the bill at the counter, the girl said - why are you paying this much ? You should be on this package here .. And told her to sign here, show her ID card and she would be eligible for a cheaper package.

Today, I had to go to 3BB and ask why they were advising my wife about packages and change it back to the original price. I now have to find out if the route settings have changed to my seedbox.

Grrrr.