Lyca Mobile Problems

NeilF355

I have had a similar problem with adding a payment card. Inputting the details of the Debit card I used to initially to order my new sim resulted in the "Merchant credentials Failed" message. I tried a credit card from another bank and that was saved successfully, followed by another debit card from a third bank which was also saved successfully so I have no idea why I couldn't add the first card.

I've emailed all the details to their customer services desk and am awaiting their reply.

RN61

Put my 1p Lyca MSE offer SIM in my phone tonight and after what seems like hours of PINS, PUKs, SIM numbers, SMS, passwords, flaky website and app, and restarting phone again and again, I find that said SIM appears to be just a PAYG with 100 talk minutes showing, but nothing else showing by way of the promised bundle, not even SMS. I give up. Lyca is the worst and I cannot believe MSE told me it was a good thing.

TertiaryAdjunct

Hi,
Just to add my 1p's worth. I used the 0.01 pound offer as well and it was meant to renew yesterday apparently - got a text message saying "Dear Customer, We are unable to renew MSE EXCLUSIVE bundle for GBP 0.01 due to payment failure.Please contact customer services"  

Card was registered and had money with the account (mono virtual card) but there was no declined notification from monzo or requests showing in it's timeline.

looks like they are doing anything they can to stop the deal. 

I also added 20 pounds top up as I couldn't use the phone thinking maybe it will just renew with that but no. Not only that I then went to put a bundle on it and it was just asking for another authorisation of 15 pounds. Will have to move it to another - will try Lebara offers else just go back to proper phone services instead of this nonsense.

Avoid

TertiaryAdjunct

Oh and also to RN61 comment - the website is full of errors and issues with it whilst trying to register would get regex errors (which should Never be shown to users) this should have been my first clue but clearly was chasing the deal. The website is likely very insecure which is why I'm using a disposable virtual card and a redirect email relay service. NB - I don't know if it is insecure - but these kind of errors point to input/output sanitisation not being performed and exposing functions like regex can lead to site takeovers by malicious  users. The error shown at the time was 

'XML Parsing Failed: test:1:91 error value '<phonenumbertryingtoenter>' does not match regular expression facet '\s*|[a-zA-Z0-9]{19,20}'  

what I had done was enter the phone number when it needed the card ICC number that I was porting - what it is saying in layman's terms is the number is too short and it's expecting 19 to 20 digits of letters or numbers.  
That error message should never ever appear in front of a user - truly badly coded.

TertiaryAdjunct

TertiaryAdjunct said:

Hi,
Just to add my 1p's worth. I used the 0.01 pound offer as well and it was meant to renew yesterday apparently - got a text message saying "Dear Customer, We are unable to renew MSE EXCLUSIVE bundle for GBP 0.01 due to payment failure.Please contact customer services"  

Card was registered and had money with the account (mono virtual card) but there was no declined notification from monzo or requests showing in it's timeline.

looks like they are doing anything they can to stop the deal. 

I also added 20 pounds top up as I couldn't use the phone thinking maybe it will just renew with that but no. Not only that I then went to put a bundle on it and it was just asking for another authorisation of 15 pounds. Will have to move it to another - will try Lebara offers else just go back to proper phone services instead of this nonsense.

Avoid

and just checking a bit deeper found that the date that 0.01 pound attempted to be 'charged' which they didn't, is also incorrect. The last payment was 25 August which was paid and now they attempted again 14 September and cancelled the contract.

AVOID AVOID...

NeilJung

Fact is, there are what here? Two pages of mostly negative posts about Lyca, and is that really ALL of the MSE members who signed up for the Martin blagged deals or is it a handful of squeaky wheels?

I signed up today, using the link on the main site, and I will definitely concur that it wasn't entirely a smooth process. A lot of what was said above resonates. Initially, the 8 digit code I was provided "didn't work". Ok. Fine. I had just spent several hours over three days with three different 3 mobile reps trying to get a PAC code that also didn't work...I was getting used to having to persevere.

I persevered.

The first CS person was a little difficult for me to understand personally, but I did manage to find the 8 digit code in the email after some perseverance on their part and careful listening. I thought that was it! Great...now on to join Lyca and reduce my phone bill to a fraction of what I was paying with no long contract!

No. I tried the number again and again...every time it said your connection is either not strong enough or the number is incorrect.

Bear with me, this WAS solved by Lyca CS dept, and it was not their fault.

I called again, and this time was told they would reset my 8 digit number and it should be with me within 2 hours. It wasn't. So I called again. Eventually, I was sent a new 8 digit pin and tried yet again, thinking it must work this time...nope!

I live in a granite house with terrible indoor reception and would previously have 0 bars to 1 bar on 3 mobile and although my phone indoors with the Lyca sim now had between 0 and very occassionally up to 2 bars, this was apparently not sufficient to validate the code on their systems.

By the time I got through to the third or fourth customer service agent, it seemed he had previous experience with the same issue. The first thing he asked me to do was to go near a window and try again. Having tried that already, and knowing how bad the signal can be here, I instead volunteered to go outside and try there.

The CS agent told me to open a new call while on the line with him, which I did with some help, then he told me exactly what to type (exactly what I had typed before, so I was sceptical), including the second code I had been give that had "not worked". Within literally a few seconds I was verified and online with Lyca on the package I had signed up to from MSE!

Literally, all I needed was a stronger mobile signal. I'm not entirely sure why! All I know is that is what the customer services agent suggested, and that was the successful result. I had tried at least 30 or 40 times inputting the exact same characters and code, until I now had a proper signal outdoors, and it had just failed repeatedly.

Checked my account on the website to make sure I was on the correct package, and it was all correct. Currently £2.49 per month for the first six months with only a 30 day rolling contract.

Compared to what I was offered to stay with 3 (£7 per month 12 month contract for 12Gb unlimited calls & texts) it doesn't save a huge amount if I do stay with Lyca for 12 months, and I agree that their website is not the easiest to navigate, and you are going to have to be patient if you have issues with setting up the service, but it's most likely not the fault of Lyca. It wasn't in my case.

Similar issues can arise with any mobile provider, and you will only hear from the unhappy customers who lacked patience. Be polite, listen, and persevere, and I have always found that customer services will do their best to help you, as it helps them too.

d123

oldagetraveller1 said:

d123 - "If it's any consolation I ported into and out of Lyca last week without any problems"

How long after your port in did you manage to obtain a PAC?

I wonder if their system hasn't caught up yet and I'm trying too soon after porting in?

Apologies, I've only just seen your post. I ported in on the Monday and obtained the PAC on the Tuesday, ported back out on the Wednesday.

oldagetraveller1

d123 said:

oldagetraveller1 said:

d123 - "If it's any consolation I ported into and out of Lyca last week without any problems"

How long after your port in did you manage to obtain a PAC?

I wonder if their system hasn't caught up yet and I'm trying too soon after porting in?

Apologies, I've only just seen your post. I ported in on the Monday and obtained the PAC on the Tuesday, ported back out on the Wednesday.

No apology necessary. Thanks for the information.

It was me being too impatient to receive a PAC! Provided, via SMS, the day after porting in and used the day after that.

JohnReese

The offer price seems excellent. I do agree that their website is not the best and very glitchy. Like someone mentioned above, it came up with an error message upon payment saying "Transaction failed" and the basket went completely empty which was off putting. I did later get an e-mail saying "payment pending", and then subsequently the next day a confirmation e-mail.

The SIM letter that arrives seems customer friendly. They need to get whoever designs that to completely redesign their actual website. I think if "Auto renew" is off, or if you use a PAC to switch (thus ending the contract), then you can switch network in any case. 

Price good. Website not so good though. 

I thought the Lebara website is much smoother by comparison and they had a similar 1p deal apparently.  

honeyend

My experience. Needed a spare sim for my tablet as our broadband is sometimes very slow, and I like watching Netflix.
I have always has SIM only deals, you put them in, they send you a text, and away you go. Not with this lot, the process is so convoluted, the SIm worked, it sent texts, but I could not dial out, used any number of variations of code, thinking it was me, then it didn't work at all.
  Then after my husband also could not make head nor tail of it phoned customer services, who obviously thought I was clueless,'is there anyone else there?', but would listen to a man, saying the same thing. Then hung up on me.
  Second call went through the same thing, and 24-28 hrs to escalate it, so I have hopefully cancelled the deal.
  This should come with a MSE health warning.