“Avoid company. Purchased 2 sim cards. Only one arrived before holiday. Smarty linked wrong sim that had not arrived to my phone!!! Most awful offshore call center. Emails and messages ignored ,not read and or deliberately misunderstood. Still not sorted and abroad with work calls and frail elderly parent. Worst call center ever experienced !!!”
“Awful customer service, we received our new sim and it was not working so the only contact I had was via a webchat. I was on the chat for over an hour, each question taking anywhere up to 10 minutes for a reply. Received a new sim only for the same thing to happen. I had to spend nearly 2 hours last night on the chat explaining what had previously happed for them to say they will need to send mw yet another sim! AVOID!”
“Joined smarty last week. Wanted to keep my mobile number which I have had for 15 years sent smarty a pac code with old provider. Should of gone live 4 days ago. Then chat with them 3 days ago and said we raise an issue with technical team 24/48 hours max not heard from them chat with them again this morning still no number been transferred then they say raise a issue 24/48 hours I hope smarty have not lost my phone number it's caused so much stress panacking if I lost my number. Mobile number you gave me with smarty is
07462786842 so if you see this smarty please fix the issue or I will be leaving and reporting for losing my number just an update today 21 October still not fixed no number been transferred after spending near a whole day today with messages chat”
“When it breaks you’re stuffed.
I bought a smarty SIM card and USB drive to give me internet access in a new build until I received broadband connection.
It worked perfectly out the box, plugged straight into the TV and allowed me to stream TV no issues, I could also connect my other devices.
After approx 3 weeks it suddenly didn’t work. I tried all the usual things to fix it and the troubleshooting hints on the website. They didn’t work.
You get directed to a webchat - I’m on there now, 30 mins after sending my question I got a reply, asking mainly for information I had already provided, after I sent a reply, the customer service person went “offline”.
It keeps happening, I send a reply and the agent goes offline for 10 / 20 mins at a time before coming back on and sending another pointless question and disappearing again.
Still waiting, hugely frustrating. I can’t find an alternative way to report the issue to them.
As per some other reviews, when it works it’s great and well priced, when it breaks you’re stuffed. Nightmare to get any help.”
“Really bad company. Fed up really. Ordered a sim, and got literally no connection on my phone from day 1, no internet, couldn't send texts or make phone calls as I was kept being told "I'm not connected to any service!"..
Spoke to the company via chat,extremely unhelpful. They told me to get replacement sim hich came much later than expected. I asked them in the mean time what do I do without a phone, they said I could order a new sim, use that until free replacement sim comes then I'll get refund for buying new sim..however this did not make sense as delivery times were the same..both new and replacement sim would have reached much later..lucky I had a tablet sim with Vodafone so could use that whilst sorting out rubbish Smartys sim company.. not happy at all. I've wasted soo much time, just sitting their waiting for the internet to load.....aaarghhhh”
“Poor service, I may as well be speaking with their bot he/she would make more sense. I simply wanted to add an adiditional line to my current service, I had a PAC code etc So much head ache and different stories from different agents on their chat, very unprofessional, felt like I was talking with someone from their bedroom. Not a professional set up at all. So much headache I gave up I will take my new line somewhere else. PARAS CLEARLY DOES NOT KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING!!!!!!”
“Can’t do anything regarding the account unless you use there app. If you forget your password you can’t change it. No contact number to call customer service which is illegal. I can’t fault the coverage but there customer service is the worst I’ve had in years.”
“Absolute rubbish. You may ask to update your personal detail hundred times and after a few years they will keep asking you for old details - apparently changing it it’s too difficult!!
Also, barely any connection in London and any time I go to a new place abroad I cannot connect to data. Rubbish, don’t recommend.”
“Trying to use mobile hub in Greece with smarty data only sim. Not receiving any data, put sim in phone altered apn setting still no data, suggests it’s connected to 3G but no data being received”
“No signal in majority of place my THREE SIM had signal.
I have an unlimited calls, 50GB data, roaming 12GB Line, and my line was suspended because I used 83minutes of calls in the entire month, and it was deemed as Excessive and then they utilised their T&C section 8 to identify they have the right to play games with customers as a SIM from Smarty is decoration and not to be used (if it ever had signal)”
“I signed up because they said I could get a 15$ cash back on a purchase I put my car details in and every week they've been taking 13$ form my account!!! That's fraud!!!”
“Just come back from a holiday in Florida. Four of us with Smarty sim cards had NO service at all. A large number of emails were exchanged trying to resolve the problem, but to no avail. I'd even spent £35.00 on my phone and £10.00 on my wife's phone on out of plan specifically to cover use in the USA.. Most of the £35.00 was taken up in responding to the many emails between myself and Smarty. The annoying thing was that those of the party had other carriers (Vodaphone, O2, EE) NONE of them had connection problems. The problem has still not been resolved as far as I am aware. So, if you are going to the States, beware of possible problems (unless you already have the solution)!”
“I just had the worst customer service I have ever from experienced from Joysten on the live chat. My month's plan expired whilst I still had a data add-on allowance, I was unable to use the add-on, or get on the website on mobile data to review. When I returned home and discussed this on the live chat, Joysten was quite rude and unhelpful.”
“I contacted support with the following enquiry:
'Good morning, I'm emailing with regards to my rolling contract for the period of 21st July - 20th August. Unfortunately my experience hadn't been at all as I had expected having experienced many signal black spots as well as multiple situations where the recipient cannot hear me. I'm incredibly disappointed and as a result of the incredibly poor signal, I won't be staying. I therefore ask if you can refund my monthly charge please. Can you confirm this will be authorised?
Thanks'
After I had done all security checks this is the response I received
'As I see there has been a usage of 9655.50MB on your account and we cannot get it refunded back.'
I then repasted my issue to which I am advised that I can have a 50% refund. This is not good enough and I asked for a full refund to be advised that:
'I do understand your concern but as there was an usage on the account of 9655.50MB and the account being outside 14 days cooling off period we cannot process a full refund and we have provided a refund for 50%'
I responded with the following:
'14 days is never enough to test if a network is good nor bad. Please can you escalate this as I want a full refund. A blocked toilet is technically still usable, doesn't mean it's any good.'
I am yet to hear any more.”
“Been with them a while now fed up with trying to phone numbers only to be told I am sorry but you are not authorised to use this service when I go with a provider I expect to make phone calls not being asked for extra money when I do .I have stopped payment from next month I will find a decent provider who I can make calls with.very dissapointed with smarty will not be returning any time soon.”
“Absolutely terrible internet speeds, between 0.5 and 1.5 Mbps. I cancelled after a week and in fairness they gave me a full refund and service till I swapped to a new provider.”
“After my recent move, my existing mobile service provider fluctuated between 3G and 4G. Time for a change. Rather than listen to the market hype, I decided to try the different providers for a month, thereafter I would make my decision based on signal strength, plan flexibility and the features of the app. I purchased or received a free SIM card from SMARTY, giffgaff and MyLebara thus allowing me to try the different networks on three devices simultaneously. I also included a trip to Ireland and Turkey to test the roaming, or lack thereof given that most networks are now limiting roaming in EU countries or absolutely robbing you in non EU countries, like Turkey.
After 30 days I would let the cards expire after turning off auto renew in the app and deleting my credit card. This is important to me to avoid overcharges and erroneous billing from the service provider.
Giffgaff was exceptional. Within England, N. Ireland and Ireland. A consistent 4G signal, easily switching to roaming with a message saying there are no charges. In Turkey my device connected to the network, I then received a message detailing the charges and would have to use the app to add credit if I wanted to accept the roaming charges. At the end of the 30 days I disabled auto renew, my account was suspended and no charges appeared in my card. The app is simple, informative and easy to navigate.
MyLebara behaved much the same as giffgaff except for poor reception in rural areas of England and N. Ireland. When roaming in Ireland I didn’t receive a message with charges, however there were no surprises on my account. In Turkey the device didn’t connect to the network at all which is also good in avoiding charges. After 30 days my service was suspended without further charges. The app is easy to use, although some navigation is required. They have some interesting plans that include international calling.
Let’s get to the laggard, SMARTY. In rural areas and indoors the signal frequently dropped to 3G, or at best 1 bar 4G. In areas with 5G the service was exceptional, this only occurred in large cities and even then it could be patchy. Roaming in Ireland was seamless and in Turkey the device did not connect to the network. The app at first appeared good with the dashboard, however trying to make changes like billing or plans seems cumbersome. As an example, to suspend service the instructions are to remove the payment method, you would then no longer get billed thus suspending the service. This is exactly what I did. To my surprise my credit card was automatically charged for the next month. I contacted support and explained the situation, and more importantly asked for an explanation as to how my credit card can be charged when I have no payment methods setup in the app. Are they illegally storing my credit card information without my knowledge? The reply from support was to turn off auto renew, but why couldn’t I do this myself from within the app? When I insisted on an explanation as to why my card details were saved elsewhere and used without my authorisation, and the legality thereof, my service was cancelled and SMARTY has yet to provide an explanation.
My test was to flush out this sort of stuff and it succeeded.”
“Appalling! I bought this sim with a Huawei 4g mobile dongle. I have now wasted over 3 hours of my holiday time trying to get this device configured with my Mac and I phone, and it’s impossible. I have spent hours talking on the live chat to technical support at Huawei and Smarty and neither company can get me set up. The sim and dongle simply do not work. I would be very cautious about buying smarty sim’s and Huawei dongles.”
