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Customer Complaints Code

Terms and conditions

Customer Complaints Code

Making a complaint.

At Three we always want to make sure you have a great experience, and we hope that you’ll never have reason to complain about our services. However, if you think we haven’t done a good job, we’d like to hear from you. We’re also happy for someone else to raise a complaint on your behalf.

We've tried to make the complaints process as straightforward as possible and we aim to resolve all complaints within 14 days. There are a few different ways to register your complaint with us, and you can find them all on our How to Complain page. Our complaints handling process applies to our consumer customers and business customers of all sizes.

If you wish to complain, our aim will be to resolve your complaint as quickly as possible. To help us do this, please provide the following:           

  • details of your concerns
  • how you would like us to put things right
  • your name and address
  • your email address (we will only use this to contact you about your complaint)
  • a phone number and the best time to contact you, as we may need to call you for further information
  • any relevant agreement and/or reference number

What happens next?

We have two slightly different complaints procedures depending on whether your complaint is about the financing of your device, or for any other reason.

Complaints in relation to the financing of your device

  • If your complaint cannot be resolved within 3 business days of receiving it, then it will be referred to the Complaints Team. They will acknowledge receipt within 5 working days and explain how we plan to investigate it. They will also provide a copy of our complaints handling procedure for your reference. 
  • If your complaint isn’t resolved after a period of 4 weeks, we’ll contact you to explain why we haven’t been able to complete our investigation. 
  • If we haven’t been able to resolve your complaint within 8 weeks, we’ll give you an indication of why we’re unable to provide a final response and when we expect to be able to do so. You will also receive a copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service’s explanatory leaflet, setting out further details of the service they provide and how to refer your complaint to them. 
  • Once we have finalised our investigation we’ll respond to you with a final response. Our final response will either:
  1. accept your complaint and offer you some redress or remedial action if appropriate;
  2. offer redress or remedial action without accepting your complaint; or
  3. reject your complaint and explain our reasons for doing so.

If you’re dissatisfied with the outcome of the complaint, you may refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service within 6 months.  

Complaints in relation to anything else

  • While we aim to solve problems straight away, more complex matters may take a little longer. If we need to look into your concerns, we’ll send you an acknowledgement of your complaint via SMS and then commence our investigation.
  • Once we’ve reviewed your complaint, we’ll tell you the outcome of our investigation. We aim to provide you with our final response to your complaint within 8 weeks of us having received it. If we need more information to help with our investigation, we’ll contact you first by phone.

Alternative Dispute Resolution

If you’re not happy after we’ve given you our final response to your complaint or 8 weeks have passed since you told us of your concerns, you may wish to ask one of our alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) providers to investigate your complaint by contacting an Ombudsman. We’ll send you an ADR letter by email or post to let you know when you can take your complaint to the Ombudsman.  

The Ombudsman you can contact depends on the nature of your complaint. If your complaint is in relation to the financing of your device, then you can ask the Financial Ombudsman Service to independently review your complaint. For everything else, you can ask Communications Ombudsman to help.  

Both the Financial Ombudsman Service and Communications Ombudsman are independent organisations dedicated to sorting out disputes between businesses and their customers. Their services are free of charge and Three will be bound by their decision if a case is opened.

You can find out more about the Financial Ombudsman Service or contact them directly by the following methods:             

Alternatively, you can find out more about the Communications Ombudsman, or contact them directly, by the following methods:

Just so you know, Communications Ombudsman will not be able to deal with your complaint if it falls outside its remit. If that’s the case, they’ll let you know and explain why not.

Complaints made to Three UK

Read our latest complaints data