Lebara - Dreadful!

Nick_P

On Thursday 22nd may I received three emails from LEBARA with a PAC code. I hadn’t ordered one and assumed it was a scam. On Friday 23rd the number was ported out. It was never received. That same day attempts were made to transfer money in my bank account, to India! Coincidentally the call centre is there! The bank have dealt with that issue. I was paying by the bill by standing order.The number was apparently ported to GiffGaff, without my knowledge. GiffGaff tell me they do not have it. Apparently, The porting process is managed by a 3rd party company independent of all UK networks to ensure that process is fair. The PAC was provided by Lebara and apparently passed to GiffGaff, Lebara have been asked to investigate the breach to the account and raise it to their MNP team, so that I can get the number back. The MNP team (a team every network has) liaise with this third party company and will claim the number back from GiffGaff directly (They have told me there’s nothing they can do, its a LEBARA issue).The call centre tell me the process should take 48 hours. It’s been 9 days so far.

They really are hopeless. The call centre will promise you the world, then do nothing. Contact is almost impossible, apart from the call centre agent saying they’ll sort it.

Be aware, when considering joint Lebara. They’re cheap for a reason.

TadleyBaggie

Never had a problem with them.

born_again

Well known sim swap fraud.

.https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/campaigns/fraud/cyber-protect_protect-yourself-from-sim-swap-fraud.pdf

flaneurs_lobster

Another story here from Which?

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/mobile-networks-must-step-up-to-prevent-sim-swap-fraud-aSsLN6p0CMRq

First example cites Lebara.

The important point that is made here is that the thing you need to protect is your email account - if the scammers can use your nicked phone number to gain control of your email account (because you've used SMS as 2FA) then you will be in a very bad place.

Having bank accounts where 2FA is SMS is also far from ideal, but often unavoidable.