[@NickyColman]

In the last few weeks we have seen improvements to ThreePay in regards to the 30day rule on its £15 vouchers and its likely that in the run up to Christmas ThreePay is likely to get a makeover.


But given the chance, what would you change to make ThreePay better?

[3GScottishUser]

I dont think the change to the £15 top-up has a lot to do with offering better value, its clearly an attempt to hold on to ThreePay customers. What is surprising is that this change contradicts the whole ThreePay strategy as it attempts to keep low spenders on-board. Truth is that 3 UK can't afford to loose any customers now and with nothing decent in terms of handsets for ThreePay users to upgarde to at a reasonable price this change is the least they could do the stop what must have been a stampede of leavers recently.

[@NickyColman]

So what would you change?

[Ben]

According to Mobile the retailers are still awaiting Three's Threepay makeover for this Christmas - they're expecting something good.

[3GScottishUser]

Well they need a decent selection of handsets at affordable prices for a start. The NEC e338 and that Motorola c975 junk just aint good enough. The LG's etc at £250 are not at the races either when Vodafone sell Samsung's for less than £120 and Orange now have Sanyo s750's for less than £80.

3 UK are going to have to bite the bullet and take a far more traditional approach to pre-pay to make any headway. Their massive handset giveaway last year led to little in the way of additional revenues as many dissatisfied contract customers bought pre-pay handsets to see if they could get a better service (I did that with a c975 - bad mistake). Box splitters had a field day sending 1000's of 3 handsets abroad to make big profits.

3 need to offer value that is realistic both for themselves and their customers. For too long there have been too many 'catches'. Cheap handssets, relatively cheap calls but no Internet access and time limited top-up's. They have to make the proposition something easy to understand and above all reliable with all the facilities one expects nowadays from a moble device. How about a straightforward 10p/min for voice to any network, anytime and 5p/texts. A £15 voucher would buy 150 mins of talktime, £25 250 mins and so on. Simple, easy to understand and competitive perhaps they could provide videocalls at 30p/min and the usual bundles for add-ons. Not earth shattering I know but a good deal when compared with the others and the headline prices beat EasyMobile, Virgin and Fresh.

[@NickyColman]

I agree ThreePay has to "devolve" somewhat and become more of a traditional Pay As You Go service in the way of getting rid of the 30 Day Rule and better handsets.

However, I like the idea of allowances of certain types of credit! To me it gives more options! Often while on PAYG you could wipe out your remaining credit on a single call! Where as with ThreePay you can still do that, but it still leaves the options of texts and additional credit as a backup.

Three still need to innovate to capture the eye of the buyer, but they also need to think practically.

[3GScottishUser]

Exactly.

I quite like the way some of the others price non-voice services when you buy a bundle. On Vodafone for example when you buy a data bundle you can use it for anything. 1 credit = SMS, 2 Credits for MMS and 3 credits for Video Messages. The same could be done with Video calling and voice minutes.

Simple, transparent pricing with the maximum number of options for customers to use their credit on the things they want to buy, that's what we want to see.

[Hands0n]

To answer the question first (and have a bit of a prattle later .....); I would firstly want to see Threepay propositioned better [clearer] to the Customer. It is a bolt-on enhancement to anyone who has followed Threepay from the start. But is is not too clear at the outset what exactly is going on. So some of 3's marketing gurus need to get their thinking heads on to design one of their typical leaflets that sets out the Threepay proposition clearly and concisely.

Next enhancement to Threepay should be to get Top Up Swipecards out into the field in the same way that the other mobile ops do. Lets make it a bit easier to top up.

Next - reduce the price of the USIM from the penny-less-than-a-tenner to either £5 or make it free. Create a means of re-invigorating those Threepay handsets that have been consigned to the box/drawer/cupboard. Oh, and make a big noise about it too.

Next - this has been said already - get some decently affordable 3G handsets out pronto, they're lagging behind the 2G and 3G competition badly. Create a response to Vodafone's Simply handset - there is a ready market for these (not everyone is a techno junkie).

------ Okay thats about it for me ----------


I suppose it all depends on what 3 actually want Threepay to be. It was initially cited as being a non-contract way of having a 3 mobile. I seem to recall ole Bob Fuller saying [earlier in 2005] that 3 wanted Threepay to target spenders. Well, the folly in that concept is that it left 3 with nowhere to go for the traditional PAYG Customer. Something the Customer found out pretty soon after the 4Q/2004 Threepay [virtual] giveaway. After 30 days their credit was lapsed leaving them with ............ nothing! A few top ups later and the Customer started to find out that this 3 PAYG was nothing of the sort. I base the above scenario on the direct experience of my daughter, some of her peers and a small number of friends who also tried it out.

So, I think that what 3 have done with the £15 Threepay top up is excellent news both for 3 and for the Customer. Now there is a means of achieving the true PAYG model without the sting of the original Threepay. I am somewhat in favour of 3 hanging on to the 30-day expiry for the more expensive top ups. It addresses their desire to be able to offer a non-contract 3 mobile facility.

[getti]

Some news for people. 1st November will see a £10 topup for Threepay. I am getting all the exciting changes in Threepay sent to me soon but i promised not to tell until i am allowed to.

I will let people know if its any good though

[3GScottishUser]

Wow - they must really be going for the heavy spenders!!! LOL!!

I am beginning to fear for ThreePay's prospects this year as there just does'nt seem to be enough time now to make an impression before christmas. The big stores will have all their marketing and promotion 'done and dusted' by now and there appears no sign of any cheaper ThreePay handsets yet.

Keeping them guessing eh? Good ploy....meanwhile Orange, Vodafone and 02 march on with handsets from £69 on 3G PAYG.

[getti]

All i have been told so far is if you use your phone a lot then threepay will easily be the best option for you.

Will it keep me on Threepay? Hell no :D

[Hands0n]

They still seem to be missing the large medium-to-low volume user. Unless they make Threepay to compelling in the tariff that it will encourage more use [for the similar amount of spend].

If 3 are still going for the high-spender population on Threepay they will be sorely disappointed, rather like they were after the 4Q/2004 Threepay hiatus that subsequently fell entirely flat for the bulk of 2005.

[Hands0n]

Well, here we are on 1st November 2005 and the first day of the new Threepay cash-only top ups for £10, £15 and £20. The biggest benefit of these is that they will not expire (subject to some specific Ts&Cs where you've got to make/receive a call within 180 days or the USIM gets disconnected).

I tried out a tenner top up this evening and it worked just fine, although I could not do this via the phone browser or via the Internet. The online portal just did not respond to attempts to use My 3. But good old 444 worked just fine. Some time later the online portal came back and I was able to read my balance.

Interestingly enough, My 3 account usage says that I have £10 in credit with an expiry of 30 days. You'd think that they had enough time to get the online info right before launch!

So is it going to attract many new people, or tempt some of those who left because of the 30-day rule to come back? I rather think so. My good lady is going to give up her £25 O2 contract in favour of the Threepay that I gave her earlier this year. She only stopped using Threepay because of the 30-day rule where she was donating money each month to 3's Christmas Party. Now the whole Threepay deal seems much more equitable to her [and no doubt many other 3 absconders].

I suspect that 3 have made a very sensible decision here. Time will tell, but I reckon that 2005's final quarter Threepay sell for 3 will likely be more sustained than 2004's providing they dont go dumping cruddy hardware at knockdown prices! They just need to get some of the better quality handsets down in price a bit to make them more saleable.

Edit: I've noticed an online top up choice of £5 - but have'nt tried it ..... does it work? Has anyone else tried to top up with a fiver?

[3GScottishUser]

The non-expiring top-up is'nt to benefit the customer really, it's to retain subscribers for longer after the desertion of 1000's who quickly binned older NEC cheapies.

The new scheme will provide 3 with some much needed stability for a few months, I imagine.

[Hands0n]

Lets not be at all cynical about this. The benefit [for the want of a better word perhaps] to the Customer is clearly that the 30-day rule has been abolished for these specific top ups. Of course, no corporate gives anything away for nothing. And retention of Threepay Customers is certainly the rationale behind this tariff change. And it has worked in at least one Threepay Customer's case (the Mrs).

The tariff model behind Threepay was flawed from the start and based on some rather absurd assumption that folk would be happy just to be without a contract. That didn't pan out. Folk wanted what they got from other PAYG tariffs and so they walked away from Threepay - not the least because of the very stupid dumping of junk 3G handsets last Q4.

I reckon this has the potential to turn Threepay around - providing that some of the more modern 3G handsets are priced affordably. If they try dumping old stock again this year I don't reckon the buying [Threepay] public will forgive them!

[3GScottishUser]

The one big downside to this significant change is that it drives a coach and horses through two of the previous Threepay stratagies.

1. It makes recovering handset subsidies much more difficult hense the increased (true value0 retail cost of new handsets for ThreePay.

2. It will further affect 3's plummeting ARPU figure which is crucial to any valuation ahead of a sale or IPO.

Still they must have done their sums and come to the conclusion that a little of something is better than all of nothing and as you point out the new deal is much more flexible for customers, especially the lower spenders.