Is Lycamobile as bad at Customer Services as all reviews say?

Edelman

I have recently been looking at the Lycamobile offerings, and they are quite amazing.  As Plusnet is closing, and porting people to EE, the question of... will EE push up pricing, or honour what we have with Plusnet.

Voda is poor in my area, so it has to really be an O2 provider.
But look up any Lycamobile review:  Trustpilot, Facebook etc, and 95% appear to be shocking.  From bad customer service, to poor transfers etc.

I see MSE has "bagged" a deal with them.  But is it worth taking, if their service is so bad.
I emailed them about a week ago.  So far, no reply.

Are they really worth it?

TehJumpingJawa

For 1p/month for 6 months.... I'm willing to put up with bad/no CS 🤪

So far porting went through fine, billing has been on time & accurate, and signal has been as expected.(for O2).

Nice bonus I didn't expect; you get access to O2 public WiFi.

savergrant

Didn't port in so can't comment on that. Sim worked straightaway and ui pretty clear. Just be careful about autorenew and autotopup as they can confuse people. Never had any issues with service as mainly a data and calls backup.

savergrant

There are other options piggybacking on ee to consider, plusnet (and btmobile) is a special case as it is/was a sub-brand rather than a separate company contracting on ee's network.
Take a look at nowmobile, rwg mobile, or 1pmobile's deals.

adindas

TehJumpingJawa said:

For 1p/month for 6 months.... I'm willing to put up with bad/no CS 🤪

So far porting went through fine, billing has been on time & accurate, and signal has been as expected.(for O2).
Nice bonus I didn't expect; you get access to O2 public WiFi.

Exactly, Some people are willing to spend time unproductively by focusing on trivial things and have forgotten what they paid for and what they have got. If you could not contact the CS, just forget it order a new simcard if the bargain is still there. If not forget it and move what you have to loose with 1p ? I will never port my number for a deal like this. Once you port your number then it you are already on the hook.

savergrant said:

Didn't port in so can't comment on that. Sim worked straight away and ui pretty clear. Just be careful about autorenew and autotopup as they can confuse people. Never had any issues with service as mainly a data and calls backup.

I just found out you could cancel the auto renewal without the need to register your number. Just dial *190# and entering 1 to confirm the cancellation. I just did it recently still working.

HillStreetBlues

What happens if you to cancel auto-renew? does sim switch to PAYG?

savergrant

HillStreetBlues said:

What happens if you to cancel auto-renew? does sim switch to PAYG?

Yes. You would need to topup to have a credit balance. And their payg prices are nothing special, so it's not advisable.

https://www.lycamobile.co.uk/en/rates/#National

True payg is basically a shootout between 1pmobile (1p per min/text/mb but need to topup £10 every four months) and rwg (5p/5p/1p but no regular topup needed) and discussion around which is best gets quite tetchy!

TehJumpingJawa

adindas said:

TehJumpingJawa said:

For 1p/month for 6 months.... I'm willing to put up with bad/no CS 🤪

So far porting went through fine, billing has been on time & accurate, and signal has been as expected.(for O2).
Nice bonus I didn't expect; you get access to O2 public WiFi.

Exactly, Some people are willing to spend time unproductively by focusing on trivial things and have forgotten what they paid for and what they have got. If you could not contact the CS, just forget it order a new simcard if the bargain is still there. If not forget it and move what you have to loose with 1p ? I will never port my number for a deal like this. Once you port your number then it you are already on the hook.

savergrant said:

Didn't port in so can't comment on that. Sim worked straight away and ui pretty clear. Just be careful about autorenew and autotopup as they can confuse people. Never had any issues with service as mainly a data and calls backup.

I just found out you could cancel the auto renewal without the need to register your number. Just dial *190# and entering 1 to confirm the cancellation. I just did it recently still working.

Another way is to cancel the DD with your bank.
When Lyca attempt to take the next payment, it'll fail and they'll automatically switch the SIM to PAYG (after sending you a warning, and a few days grace period to fix payment method).

I accidentally did this to an earlier Lyca SIM that I bought for my dad's phone *just* before my bank switched me from VISA to MasterCard.
He never told me about the warning message until after the grace period had expired 😭

savergrant

Most mobile networks don't take direct debit, they take recurring payments by credit/debit card. These are harder to cancel as they don't appear on a list of payees (in effect each payment is a one-off spend) so you would need to inform your bank that you are not authorising any further payments to that business. Or you could 'lose' your card and request a new card and 'forget' to update your payment details.

adindas

savergrant said:

Most mobile networks don't take direct debit, they take recurring payments by credit/debit card. These are harder to cancel as they don't appear on a list of payees (in effect each payment is a one-off spend) so you would need to inform your bank that you are not authorising any further payments to that business. Or you could 'lose' your card and request a new card and 'forget' to update your payment details.

Exactly. You will not see it on the DD list. So to cancel you will need to spend time on the phone which could be painful and time consuming.

Another way is to use the pre-payment card such as Revolut and put minimum balance. So once they try to take further payment it will fail.

GenieBoy

savergrant said:

Most mobile networks don't take direct debit, they take recurring payments by credit/debit card. These are harder to cancel as they don't appear on a list of payees (in effect each payment is a one-off spend) so you would need to inform your bank that you are not authorising any further payments to that business. Or you could 'lose' your card and request a new card and 'forget' to update your payment details.

This won't work if they have a continuous payment authorisation. You'll have to contact your bank and tell them to stop it.