SMARTY not so smart customer service

Davesquire

SMARTY offer a great value (hence your rating them in top PAYG). But perhaps their popularity has affected their ability to respond quickly to customer issues. Whilst COVID has affected response times everywhere, the limitations of only having an online customer service portal become obvious. You firstly have to tackle their automated 'robot' response. Despite these being touted as AI, they appear to have a mental age of 6 months and can only spout the few sentences which their consultant programmed them with. You eventually get through to a human online response, but this can take over 24hours. Not good for a mobile comms service. Subsequently, I have departed. A shame, as if they had a real-time customer service I would have remained. Some issues require the context to be explained.

chistery

You can't have unlimited data for £20 and have fully staffed/trained call centres. 

DEBEDEBOH

Far too much malarky, not enough Smarty 🚫📱

I’d like to add my voice here, because my experience with SMARTY has been a comedy of errors.

• They closed my account without my permission.

• Randomly assigned me a false date of birth, which locked me out of security checks.

• I spent hours in endless chat loops, asked eight times to speak to a manager, and still got nowhere.

• I only got my PAC code nearly a week later (instead of within the legal 1-day limit) after being pressured to upload my driving licence into a live chat window — which raises serious GDPR questions.

• And now, even in the complaints process, I’m still being asked to prove my identity.

I want to be clear: Three (the underlying network) are brilliant. The staff in my local Three shop are kind, patient, and go the extra mile every time. And my new provider, Spusu, answered the phone in two rings, spoke like an old friend, and followed up with a kind and simple email. So it’s not the network that’s the problem — it’s SMARTY’s own way of doing things.

Yes, SMARTY is cheap. But cheap doesn’t mean “lawless.” Ofcom rules are clear: a PAC code must be provided within 1 working day. SMARTY broke the law, wasted days of my time, and handled my personal data in ways that felt unsafe.

So if you’re tempted by the price, just know it comes with more than “no frills.” In my case it came with weeks of malarky. And as their own advert says: less malarky, more Smarty. I got nothing but malarky.

PHK

I'm not sure that resurrecting a four year old thread was the best way to bring your concerns to the forum. 

But I would say the Ofcom rules about timescales apply only to the account holder. This means that the account holder needs to be able to identify themselves. 

If there is a disparity between the data the provider  hols and the person contacting them they are right to check identity and update their records.  Uploading in a chat is more secure than e.g. email. 

I don't think the error here is not issuing the PAC but not having accurate records in the first place. That's potentially a more serious error.