Sky Mobile Ireland not fit for service yet, many problems

[Irish-Steve]

So, Sky Mobile Ireland has launched, and so far, it's been a nightmare! I ordered on 10 Sep, and during the call, was told my sim would be 2 to 3 days, which it wasn't, and then came the first issue, there was a link online to order a replacement if it didn't arrive in that timescale, but the link crashes, probably because it's not been correctly configured on the Irish Server, and clearly wasn't tested by anyone who knew what they were doing.

I tried to register a complaint via the text number, and the response time for that was 22 HOURS before I got to speak to a representative, and in the intervening time, my sim card arrived in the post, on Sep 18, during the conversation we were able to highlight a few things, but I couldn't install the sim as I was away from home all day, so I tried that when I got home, and that didn't go well, the initial entry was fine, but then I was supposed to get a text message to confirm the port from Eir, which couldn't happen with the Sky sim in the phone, so I switched back, but it didn't arrive, despite numerous attempts to get it, at which point, in the early hours of the morning, I gave up. At 8 this morning, I  got 6 text messages to activate, but that wasn't possible, as they're only valid for 15 minutes , and this was 8 hours later. 20 minutes later, I got a message to say that the port of my number had happened, but there's no indication on the phone of the number in use, if I go to the about page, the phone number is 'unknown'. It seems that it is connecting, but I won't know on all the apps for sure until I try it in more detail, on line banking seems to be working, which is important, but as for some of the other apps that auto fill things like phone number, that's going to be 'interesting' to see what it makes of that now.

The AI system on the Sky web page  is a disaster, it clearly doesn't know about Sky mobile, I asked for a sky mobile phone number, and it gave me the options for Billing, TV or broadband and Talk, NOTHING for Sky Mobile, and the same is true with help pages, there's nothing for Sky Mobile working.

There are bugs in the AI system that's attached to sms service, it is losing the font data mid message, so I get a couple of lines of English, and then it switches into a Japanese style character font, which is not exactly helpful, and that was also true when the rep eventually got to me after 20 HOURS waiting for a contact to register a complaint.

All in all, it's not been a particularly easy or seamless transfer and it's VERY clear that whover signed off on this new service being ready for customer use is not capable of running a bath, let alone a technically complex service, there are so many holes, gaps and failings at the moment, it's a huge embarassment, and I just hope that I'm not going to find even more problems going forward, it seems from other posts here that there are a lot of grey areas that really should not have been exposed to customers, but they have been.

I'm reasonably tech savvy, but the thought of trying to work through this process for people who struggle with things like phones is scary, there are just so many gotchas at the moment, the process really needs to be a lot tighter than it is, and better documented for things like porting from another network, having to keep swapping sims to get the result is not a good plan, that's just not easy or quick, especially on the newer phones that need a small pin to get the sim out, the activation process when switching providers really needs to be capable of being processed with the old sim in the phone, so that the text confirmation number can be received before putting the new Sky sim in to the phone, swapping sims over several times is not a good idea, especially for older users who may have issues with things like arthritis or poor eyesight, 20 year old nerds can do this in their sleep, but there are people in their 70's an 80's who also need to be able to easily accomplish this task, and for some, it won't be easy.

[Addie15]

Hi there,  @Irish-Steve. I’ve escalated your post to our Community Messaging team who will invite you to a private chat shortly and help you with this. 

Just look out for the colourful bubble to start the conversation.

Here's more information on how Community Messaging works - https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Did-you-know/Escalating-a-post-to-a-Sky-expert/ba-p/3711147 

[Niall17]

I'm having similar issues with trying to port my number everyone pushes me towards porting on the my sky app. But it's all set up for the UK and does not work in roi 

[Irish-Steve]

Had a long conversation with the second level team earlier this afternoon, and they are very much aware that they fumbled the ball, and have some catch up to do before things are right, my experience was not great, but I am up and running, but I suspect that some of the issues were a system level error on the Sky server, as the messages I should have got almost instantly didn't turn up until 7 hours later, and some of that could have been a setting on the phone from the previous network provider, I had do not disturb set up and that kicked in before the systems had responded, which delayed them even more. My port information was already pre loaded before I activated, so I'm not sure if the process works or not at this stage, in that about 20 minutes after all the text messages arrived with the code I'd been waiting for, I then got a message to say the number was active, but it didn't actually show as inactive on the Eir system until a couple of hours later, so I can't prove exactly what happened, and there's no way for me to be sure if it happened automatically, or if some operator intervention was made at the Sky end of things, clearly there have been issues that they were not ready for, and it didn't work as it was supposed to. What's very clear is that as the code for the port has to come from the previous supplier, it is never going to arrive with the Sky sim in the phone, so putting it in the phone to do the initial setup of the Sky sim is going to cause issues, and they're now well aware of that, so I suspect the process will change very quickly, I actually used the Web site interface on my laptop to process the activation, rather than the app, and that code seems to have worked, so I can't comment on how the app looks on a mobile, it's altogether possible that there is an issue with Irish or UK versions on the Play store, I've not looked into that in detail because I didn't need to.

Hopefully, you've managed to get the issues resolved, another thing to check is that the necessary imports for mobile data have been done, my phone was sim free from new, so didn't have any Irish branding or configuration data in it from new, so the procedure for getting Sky mobile data active had to be run in order to get the phone working correctly when the WiFi was turned off to check it was all working, initially, mobile data and texting did NOT work until the relevant files had been installed as outlined in one of the text messages that came in.

[Paulg1]

Had to ring sky twice about new mobile service.

Teleport the number as online link failed.

Two mobile data settings did not set up and you guessed internet link failed.

The chat bot is completely crap and no help. 

Now I have no connection to network can't receive text of phone calls.

[ConorJ]

Similar issues at sign up, had to sign up again and eventually sorted the eSIM myself. Had to set up eSIM, APN etc manually / using guess work. The website etc are useless. Network settings push not working, network shows as Tele2 and data keeps stopping - it's no Vodafone! Already gone back to 3 less than a week later. Very disappointed - this will be very damaging to skys reputation in Ireland. No cate for Irish customers just moving over the uk solution with no care or testing. 

[Logee]

I ordered 2 sims last Thursday and they arrived Monday.  Insereted them and the set up for data was seemless.  The problem I am having is I am trying to port both my exsiting numbers from a single Gomo account.  This keeps failing with an automated email asking me to resubmit details.

The call centre seem to be unsure how to fix this, but finally got told today that there is a known issue. (But there wasn't any issue with the billing starting even though my number has not been ported....)

Now waiting on a callback within the next 48 hours.

[Confused84]

Well I think I'm going back to gomo because I'm having awful issues with apps and devices that were working when connected to my hot-spot now not working when using the sky sim...

Thought it was my imagination but popped the gomo sim back in and low and behold everything works and downloads again...

[Potato2]

Did you get it sorted? I have the same issue and right now I'll simply leave Sky and freeze my payment card so they won't be able to charge me for service they didn't provide. 

[Irish-Steve]

I am up and running, but there are still issues ongoing with several areas, the web site is a disaster of wrong information for Irish customers, and there are issues with roaming outside of Ireland, I couldn't get coverage in the Netherlands on the vodafone network, despite Ireland being hosted on Vodafone, and I suspect that this is an issue with Ireland not having been fully set up yet with all providers, the country code and user numbers are different for Ireland than for the UK, and I suspect that someone has overlooked that in the chaos of getting the system up and running for even basic functionality, Sky have moved their provider of services and gone in house, with a new software package, and the clear impression from a call earlier is that there are issues they'd not anticipated that are now causing grief, and because it's all new, the support teams are effectively swimming in treacle at the moment, they don't have enough in depth detail about how the new stuff is working to be able to troubleshoot the issues, which go further than just sky mobile, they're migrating PSTN to VOIP on fibre as well, which is far from seamless at the moment.

As for when it will all get sorted, who knows, I did high level tech support a few years ago, and for some issues, the only answer is 'it will be fixed when it's fixed', simply because until the full extent of the problem has been identified, the full extent of the fix is an unknown quantity, a long time ago, I got caught by a backup software bug that meant 160 Kb gaps in database files at the end of magnetic tape reels due to incorrect processing by the hardware, the software supplier fixed that bug in about 12 hours, once they knew what it was,  but repairing the holes in the live database took 10 days of 18 hours a day work, as we had to go back over 2 weeks of previous tapes and extract bits from every one of them to get a database without holes, and then roll through 10 days of transactions logs to find the updates for the corrupt file and make sure they were correctly applied, which meant read only access to the relevant file for that entire time, it was a pressure cooker environment of the highest order, with no automatic tools to speed up the process.

There will for sure be some serious discussions happening at a very high level within Sky, this sort of shambles has consequences, and getting it this wrong does not go down well with anyone, hopefully, there is a lot of background work being done at the moment to get things back on track again, I will know in a few days with our issues, and then we'll see where it goes from there.

[Logee]

I finally got my gomo number ported. Then went to Belfast last weekend. Roaming did not work, always fun when the car park requires you to scan a QR code to get back in to it. 

Managed to get on WiFi and resent the data settings and all seems good. Back in Belfast today and roaming worked seemlessly. 

The joy of being an early adopter. 

[Ciaramg]

Exceptionally poor service and I now regret moving over. When I first got my SIM, the activate links were bringing me to a sky glass account and asking questions about that. Tried the bot which was useless. Left it for 2 weeks and tried again this morning and had to call to get sorted. It's really clear that no customer testing was carried out on the porting process, which is shocking. Easy steps could have been added to the SIM envelope to explain to customers what happens i.e. when to put your new SIM in etc. Unbelievably poor customer experience for a company like sky in 2024.

[Brian66]

Hi There. 

Similar to above with service issues ongoing since coming across from Virgin Mobile. Phone works intermittently, and data rarely works despite having coverage. Very close to cancelling now as this is not much use. 

thanks. 

[Geese+Fly]

Yeah I got over all the porting issues and have been up and running for a few weeks now. Moved from Vodafone and since then my coverage has been awful, reception drops out all the time even though we're supposed to be on the same network I left. It's been a very bad experience so far 😭

[Brian66]

I happen to have a work phone also - same handset but on Vodafone. I have to use it for calls and hotspot if I want to get WhatsApp messages. 
Waiting on a call back now from another department  after 4 separate calls with them going through same troubleshooting steps - add apn, reset network settings & repeat....