3BB Internet and Poor Customer Service

[manfrommanteo]

I've had 3BB internet for the past 13 months. The internet has been good with only two occasions. This is where the problem lies. Last year, after I first got service with them, I was dropping calls and connection, which was not only frustrating but costing me money. I called 3BB and they kept promising that someone would be out to look at my internet/equipment, but it took multiple phone calls in English and Thai over the course of 5 days before anyone showed up. Once they fixed the problem, it worked great until last week.

On Friday, I called them about the connection speed and cuts/drops, and they told me no problem, sorry, and someone would come out the next day. The next day around 1 pm, I called them to get an idea of what time I might expect them to show. I was told they would be at my place before 5 pm. At 4:30, they called and spoke to my wife to inform her that they would not be out that day. I called them back and they ensured me that the tech support would be at my place the next day, on Sunday. On Sunday, after nothing, I called and they told me someone would be at my place before 5. Of course, you can guess what happened. At 4:45 pm on Sunday I called 3BB customer service and was told, "Sorry", and that someone would be out sometime to fix my problem.

I asked them why they told me someone would be out on Saturday and again on Sunday if they did not mean it. I told the cs rep that doing so is what we call lying. If they couldn't give me an honest estimation of the day they would be out, they should be straight and just say so. But by telling me "Saturday", and "Sunday" and "today" and then having no one show leads to customer dissatisfaction, unhappiness and distrust, as well as poor service. "Sorry" is all I got. I asked for a discount on my next bill to make up for my frustration and their lies. "Sorry, I cannot do" was the answer.

In short, I can't recommend 3BB as their customer service is horrible and their attitude is very bad. They seem to only know how to give a day that they say they'll be out to fix a problem, but don't honor it. They only can say sorry, but not make it right for the customer.

How is True or TOT for customer service? Should I look elsewhere such as a sattelite system? Any observations? From my experience, the actual internet service from 3BB has been good, has been acceptable, but as I said, when I need help, their customer service is absolutly among the worst I've ever experienced anywhere.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I think there are a few variables that come into play.

1. The CSR service is likely to vary some depending on which office location / city / region you're dealing with.

2. There's a difference between the technical knowledge that the people answering the phone in English have vs. the actual technicians who end up being responsible for fixing problems.

In my couple of months experience with 3BB in Bangkok, the CSR's answering their English call center in BKK have been exceedingly polite and easy to talk to -- and conversely -- absolutely ignorant when it comes to even the most basic Internet technical issues, even including such things as being able to answer when your service goes out, if it's just a problem for your home or street, or part of some broader, area-wide outage. They simply never seem to have a clue.

On the other hand, their tech support staff in Bangkok seem to know what they're doing, and seem capable of solving technical problems when brought to their attention.

In the alternative, True Online's CSR often were equally polite and unknowledgeable, but their technical staff often seemed to simply be unable to identify and/or solve basic connectivity problems. And their solution, when faced with such a problem, was to simply start replacing cable segments leading to your home, even if they had no actual knowledge that that's where the problem was occurring. That, and, IME, if I had a dollar for every time True Online promised to call me back re some service issue and then entirely failed to call, I'd be a VERY VERY wealthy man.

 

[JetsetBkk]

Not a problem in Phuket. Where are you from? "Manteo", "Location: Earth" doesn't help.

Flat out speed for me:

Edited August 1, 2016 by JetsetBkk

[manfrommanteo]

I'm in Roi Et. It is working great now that they came out and did whatever it is they do to make it work up to expectations. Maybe it's like Tall Guy said, location of the office??? It's just irritating when they say they'll be out and days go by and it's the same ole line. Maybe it's me and my expectation which is at fault. As I said, when the service works, as in my case for roughly a year, it's great. It's trying to get someone to come fix it that causes the frustration when it's not working properly. The CS people are always pleasant, but then again, I don't want to hear "sorry" and have them give me a day and then it passes and the process is repeated several times until finally someone shows up.

[JetsetBkk]

51 minutes ago, manfrommanteo said:

I'm in Roi Et. It is working great now that they came out and did whatever it is they do to make it work up to expectations. Maybe it's like Tall Guy said, location of the office??? It's just irritating when they say they'll be out and days go by and it's the same ole line. Maybe it's me and my expectation which is at fault. As I said, when the service works, as in my case for roughly a year, it's great. It's trying to get someone to come fix it that causes the frustration when it's not working properly. The CS people are always pleasant, but then again, I don't want to hear "sorry" and have them give me a day and then it passes and the process is repeated several times until finally someone shows up.

Maybe you just hit a "busy time" when all of their guys were out on jobs. I think part of the problem is to do with the Thai way of communicating - they don't want to upset people by telling the truth so say what the customer wants to hear, "tomorrow". 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, manfrommanteo said:

I'm in Roi Et. It is working great now that they came out and did whatever it is they do to make it work up to expectations. Maybe it's like Tall Guy said, location of the office??? It's just irritating when they say they'll be out and days go by and it's the same ole line. Maybe it's me and my expectation which is at fault. As I said, when the service works, as in my case for roughly a year, it's great. It's trying to get someone to come fix it that causes the frustration when it's not working properly. The CS people are always pleasant, but then again, I don't want to hear "sorry" and have them give me a day and then it passes and the process is repeated several times until finally someone shows up.

For me here in BKK, 3BB was punctual and on-schedule when it came to doing my original install at home.

Since then, I've had a couple short-term outages, not because of any problem inside my home, but once because a truck hit their cable on my street, and some other times when they had network problems, fiber cuts, etc. None of those required any tech visits to come back out to my home.

I think the longest time I've ever had their service go out was the time when the truck hit their cable on my street, which happened to be a Saturday, and as best as I recall, they didn't end up having someone come out until midday Monday to do the repair on the street. As I said, that was the worst. Most of the other times, it was outages lasting a few hours to maybe a 12 hour period before they fixed their issues elsewhere up the stream from me.

As others have said, when their service is working, it seems to work very well. I'm satisfied with their 100/10 MB plan. I was a bit leery when I had a bunch of outages in the first month or two of their service, but since then, fingers crossed, things have settled down and there haven't been any lately. I do understand that some things are beyond 3BB's control, such as cars knocking down their cables or construction crews cutting thru them.

But, that's also why I've arranged a wifi hotspot connection as a backup, just in case, though the ability to do that depends on whether you have a public or mobile subscription hotspot nearby where you live. I happen to have that. Failing that, I'd make arrangements to use my 4G mobile data plan via tethering. You wouldn't want to be streaming lots of Netflix movies via your Thai mobile plan (at least in most cases), but it certainly can work for a day or so long outage, when those rarely occur.

Edited August 1, 2016 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[JSixpack]

Had a similar problem w/ 3BB in Pattaya. It was good for about a year then went downhill. Then I found that the techs would lie to the office that they'd been out to my place when in fact they hadn't. I think they were the source of the wrong time estimates. I finally got so disgusted w/ them that I went w/ TOT, even knowing its reputation on TVF. To my pleasant surprise, TOT has been great. Fiber wasn't offered until a few months later; I upgraded and it's been completely reliable. Not the fastest in the world, but acceptable. I do some streaming intranet and did find their router too slow. Now I'm using a simple switch for that and I'm happy. 

[KittenKong]

I'm in Jomtien and have had the "superior" 15/1 ADSL 3BB package for a couple of years. In that time I have called them perhaps 4 times for disconnection problems, and each time they have fixed it within 24 hours. On at least two occasions the problem was actually inside my building and so technically not 3BB's fault. Even so they got involved with the building to get it fixed.

 

Would I rather have a direct fibre connection to my condo? Yes, I would, because they are more reliable. But in my building I cant have one at a price I am prepared to pay so that's out.