Hi,
I hope you are reading this before you have considered joining Sky Mobile or at least I hope you are in your cooling off period.
I joined Sky Mobile on Friday 13th September 2024.
Firstly, there was an issue with the initial set up. The agent assumed I was pre-pay because I was with the same network as him so then when I went to port my number, it would not work.
I had to call back to cancel. At this stage, I was really getting a bad feeling. And I had been with Tesco Mobile for 7years without issue.
On the cancellation call the agent convinced me to try again and then there was some waiting around for the cancellation before I received a call back for the new order.
I ordered an eSim for myself and and physical SIM for my partner. I activated my eSim without issue and successfully moved my number.
On Sunday 15th September I realised the mobile data coverage was not as good with Sky Mobile on the Vodafone network as it is with Tesco Mobile on the 3 network. I live in a rural area surrounded by phone masts so any network works really but 3 seems to work best through Tesco Mobile anyway.
So per the T&Cs on Sky's website, I had nothing to do only phone my new provider and get the number sent back.
I phoned Tesco Mobile and they issued a new SIM in the post which arrived today, Wednesday 18th Sept.
I phoned Tesco to port the number to my new Tesco SIM and they sent me a transfer code for the 089 number on the sim. Then while I was on the phone Sky Mobile sent the following message
"Hi, Your one-time Sky authentication code is ******. It's valid for 8 hours, so please use this to authorise the transfer request for mobile number 08********. Just go to sky.com/mobile/leaving-sky"
When I clicked on the link, logged in to the site and then entered the code I received an error
"Whoops, there's been an error
Sorry, we are experiencing some technical difficulties, please try again later
Go to My Sky homepage"
Anyway I called Sky just to be sure and got through to the Shared Services call centre. The man I was speaking to was really nice and I told him the issue.
He also pointed out that if he did the cancellation I would lose my number so I said no I definitely want to port it back to Tesco Mobile I just want to authorise that request.
He put me on hold and then came back and said I didn't need to do anything. And I asked why I got the text and he said to try the link later. Naturally, I said do I need to do nothing or do I need to do something. This is the reason for my call.
He put me on hold again and then came back with advice on the pre-activated number which was null and void as we were never going to activate my partner's number (despite receiving two SIMs in today's post).
I brought it back to the point of my call then he put me on hold again then asked if I was using a VPN. I wasn't.
So let the record show I initially used the chrome browser on my android mobile. Then Chrome on my laptop and then Mozilla Firefox and Chrome Canary. Then I wiped cookies and cache on the latter two browsers and tried again. Then I tried Firefox Hidden Browsing, Chrome Incognito on my mobile, then on my laptop.
I am not keen on deleting cookies on Chrome because I have Revenue ROS certs attached to my browser.
Then after that he told me there was definitely no one else having this issue. When I asked how many people in Ireland were currently cancelling Sky Mobile (remember it only launched here last week) he said they couldn't put a number on it.
Anyway at 42mins on the call I asked to be passed to the technical team. 6mins later I was put through to the rudest woman. Clearly the first agent hadn't understood my issue at all so basically I had to start from scratch.
She put me on hold while she went to the technical team and like the previous agent said there was no technical issue with the Sky website. I said look I just want to cancel my account so she said she would put me through the loyalty team. I am not messing, I was on hold for 7mins when she came back and said may I know the reason you want to leave. When I asked why she had had me on hold for 7mins she said she was "just checking I was sure" then put me on hold for another 5mins and dropped the call.
I phoned back to get through to the loyalty team. Same thing again, but worse. This woman on the loyalty team talked over me and shouted repeatedly. And ultimately told me how to transfer my number to Tesco Mobile by callling them.
I raised an official complaint 40mins into this call and I look forward to my call back on Thursday 26th September.
Anyway I tried again. Warning if you have Sky Mobile you will automatically be transferred to Shared Services so on my third attempt I said the issue was Sky Broadband and got through to Jane in the Dublin centre. For the sake of honesty, I did burst into tears with relief. Unfortunately as I am now flagged as a mobile customer, back to shared services I went. After another 45mins and a lot of being on hold I was told there was technical issue. However they seemed to think that the technical issue was with generating a code rather than following the link.
But I said look once it's a technical issue that's great. In fact 2hrs and 43mins ago if someone had said yes there is a technical issue on our end I would have said, that's great have a good day.
So I asked for the new information to be added to my complaint ticket where I was told there was no technical issue.
I also said for the purposes of the call that at 12:03pm on 18th September 2024, I gave notice to cancel during my cooling off period. I can be billed for any services used during the cooling off period but if I try to cancel and my cancellation is refused, I should not be charged. Let's see if they agree.
Conclusion
So Irish customers, if you are thinking of leaving your crappy mobile provider because of their crappy customer service you are likely just going to be speaking to the same people in the same shared services centre. They are so polite but are extremely limited on any issues with are not on their script. And I think it is remiss of Sky to put people in this centre in this position. If the issue has been escalated to a point, somebody in Irish call centres should take responsibility and even have the agent listen to the rest of the call for training. It's what happened in my call centre days.
I strongly suspect all the hold time is people waiting for additional scripts if you have a non-standard issue. And much like with other providers you are never allowed to speak directly to this phantom technical team.
If you are thinking of leaving a good provider to go to Sky Mobile for €15/month for life - do not even think about it.
My €20 Unlimited Sim only plan is worth it's weight in gold by comparison.
If they let me, I will detail the outcome of my Complaints call (one day before my cooling off period ends).
Hopefully I'll have more success than I did trying to cancel Sky Broadband within the cooling off period.
PS if you try to log a complaint through the website it says page not found
https://www.sky.com/help/forms/complaints-roi
