Sky Mobile Ireland - Disaster

[Boyne_Shark]

I couldn't reccommend Sky Mobile to anyone I like or care about. I initially ported over my number with no issue and then did the same with my wife's number, what a disaster. I recieved a validation coded at first to confirm everything went as expected but then realised that instead of porting the number it changed it to a Sky number, this has major significance as my wife has several health issues, including recovering from cancer, and her doctors need to be able to contact her on the phone number they have on file.

I called the Sky Helpline several times , was put through to a call center in India and and was told something different each time, it was very obvious a couple of times they just wanted to get me off the line. If Sky is going to offer a half a*sed service at least have the decency not to outsource their call centers so there's some hope of getting the problems they created fixed!!!

[Doey]

• Exactly as you have explained the same non service happened with myself and my wife. There is no Sky mobile of any significance for Irish customers. (Removed)

Moderator note: Removed inappropriate comment

[Nial]

I won't go into the details - I'm worn out

but 4 weeks with a phone service because of sky mobile and now all I have is LTE not 4G so can't stream /load webpages properly etc with wifi 

DISASTER

AVOID

and I've been a sky customer for over 22 years!!!

[kpnbt]

What's worse, Sky advertises a 4G network, but it's not available. 3G, LTE (that's a 3G boosted, not 4G). 

and even worse, I had people trying to contact me and they never got through. not even to my voicemail, the call just fails. And this happenes when I try to call sometimes. I tried this with my partner, full bars, wifi calls on... no connection to the other's phone.

[Deezell]

It's 2G, Sky's carrier Vodafone have switched off 3G. Data is switched off during 2G calls also, so no browsing or maps while calling. Ideally you use 4g calling aka VoLte, but Sky botched this and it's not showing on numerous phones, lots of threads devoted to it. WiFi calling also not showing, so a double whammy.  Roy definitely not happy with this.

[Seeyouhearyme]

To be fair, I had that problem with Tesco Mobile until they recently updated their network to 5G. They have updated all their 4G customers for free you just have to ring and get your sim refreshed. 

From day one, Sky Mobile has been advertised as a 5G network so there is no excuse for the dreadful performance.

No way Roy would endorse a shoddy performance. 

[MattD6]

I would strongly recommend people stay away from Sky. I know some people have had an ok experience but I have had a complete nightmare and it now looks like I may lose my original phone number which I've had for years because of issues with their account/billing system.

I was previously with Vodafone and had no issues with them at all but wanted to try Sky because it was much cheaper. I signed up on Saturday and received my eSIM details that evening. I put in the request to move my number from Vodafone and this morning my number was successfully transferred. Everything was working fine initially but an hour or so later my SIM stopped working. I couldn't make calls/texts or access the internet and when I went to my account on sky.com, it said it had been 'restricted'.

I called customer support, and was told it was a technical issue which they would escalate but it could take up to FIVE DAYS to fix the issue! After jumping through a tonne of hoops I was eventually told the problem was that I'd failed a 'background check' so my SIM was immediately cancelled. This is completely bizarre to me because I have never run into this with other providers or heard of it happening. No one at Sky could tell me why I failed – one agent said I might have outstanding bills with Vodafone, but I called them and I don't. There's also no way to repeat the checks so I was told that my only option would be to move another provider.

This was super frustrating but I decided I'd just go back to Vodafone and that's where things got even more tricky. My phone number had been transferred to Sky, but the SIM was now deactivated, so there's no way for me to receive the verification codes to transfer the number (or request a PAC code by text).

I called Sky back and no one knew what to do about this, they just kept transferring me to different departments. After speaking with 4 different people, I finally got someone who said they could try temporarily re-activating my SIM so that I could receive the activation codes. However, this requires them to make a request with their backend team and will still take 24-48 hours. He also admitted that this may not be possible for them to do, in which case I will just lose the number.

[Seeyouhearyme]

That is just awful and unfortunately what is going to be typical for everyone when things go wrong. 

I 100% accept technical issues happen all the time, but in Sky Mobile they have no procedures in place and therefore have not trained their staff to offer any meaningful assistance. 

Customers are left swinging in breeze for random time periods hoping the issue will be resolved. 

I really hope you get this sorted. 

[MattD6]

Just spoke to Sky again they told me it could take up to TWO WEEKS for me to get my number back. I explained that this was completely unacceptable and eventually the support agent spoke to their supervisor to come with another solution. They assigned the issue to some team which handles SIM card issues but I was told that I would still need to wait 3 days for them to call me back. It's still not clear what they'll do or how long it will take. Also how can I wait for a call-back if I dont have a phone? Wish I could go back in time and never sign up for this terrible service

[MattD6]

It's been 3 days and I still haven't been contacted by anyone at Sky. I called in myself and was told it's actually going to take 5 working days so I'll need to call back next Tuesday. This whole thing is so incredibly frustrating. I've got a complaint reference number though so if it goes beyond the 10 day mark I'll be reporting them to Comreg.

[MattD6]

It's Tuesday and unsurprisingly I still haven't heard from anyone at Sky. I called them myself and spoke to a customer support agent who was very confused and wasn't able to do anything to help really.

Initially she tried to transfer me to the loyalty department because they handle cancellations but I told her another agent had tried this and they weren't able to help. The loyalty department had told me before that they're only able to cancel my account in which case I'd would lose my number completely.

I explained that there was meant to be a ticket opened for a backend team to provide some way of porting my number and asked if she could check the status. She said she could see the ticket but there was no activity on it. I asked why no one had looked at it when I was told I would get called back by last Friday (and then by Today) but she said she didnt know why.

We went back and forth on this for a while and eventually I told her that I had been in touch with Comreg and now have an active case open with them. Comreg can only get involved 10 working days after I requested a complaint number, which will be the 12th, but I wanted Sky to know I'm speaking with them and will ask to escalate this issue if needed.

After I said this, she said she would contact the backed team and give me an update by tomorrow. I found this kind of hilarious tbh and was just like "why should I believe you?". She was incredibly insistent so I said fine. I'm pretty sure they're just trying to shrug me off to stall things but this is the last chance I'm giving them. If/When I don't hear back by tomorrow, I'm just going to call back and ask to speak to supervisor or more senior agent.

To be honest, I actually dont think anyone at Sky knows how to fix this. They all seem completely stuck because my account is restricted which means none of their usual solutions will work and now they dont know what to do.

In the meantime, I got in touch with Vodafone yesterday to ask about reverting the port of my number after someone on boards.ie suggested it and it looks like this might be an option! I was initially surprised they hadn't suggested this before, but to be fair they had to confirm a bunch of details to check if it was an option. The Vodafone CS agent said she gave my details to their porting team and if they're able to revert the port it should happen in 24-48 hours. I don't want to get my hopes up too much but it would be amazing if this ended up fixing things for me. I haven't told Sky about this, just in case it doesn't end up working.

Also! I decided to get a credit report last week just to re-confirm that there's no issues there. It arrived yesterday and as I expected my credit rating is fine. So I still have no idea why my account was restricted in the first place.

[Seeyouhearyme]

This is absolute madness. 

If I hadn't had such a frustrating experience myself I'd never think it was possible. Especially that I used to say Sky Customer Service set the standard for all utility companies. 

I have recurring nightmares about living somewhere without Sky TV (first world problems) but genuinely throughout the whole experience I was prepared to tell them to shove the whole thing. 

And worse still, the people in the call centre wouldn't care less.  They are paid to their jobs and they are doing what they are asked to do. Me throwing the baby out with the bath water is of no consequence to them. 

Please let me know how you get on. 

Oh and a mistake I made - I lodged an official complaint and was due a call back. Then when the phone issue was resolved the agent said Oh I was to call you tomorrow can I remove the ticket?  I said yes, thinking we were going to discuss how I "felt" about my treatment during the whole ordeal. And she said I've removed that now and the issue is resolved. OK it was resolved but it didn't need to be such a saga. I wish I'd even got to say that much but I got totally caught on the hop and poxy politeness kicked in and I said thanks and that was it.