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Network problems

apav
SMARTY Pioneer
SMARTY Pioneer

Hello everybody,

I moved from BT fibre to unlimited smarty to save money. It was £10 cheaper per month but I had to buy a phone. I got a £159 phone looking for the long term option.

Once they sent the phone and the sim, I found out that there is network connection where I live. That was a relief because the online checker is not to be believed. It shows both no connection at all but also amazing 3/4/5g at the same time.

Everything worked fine. I used the phone to usb tether to the laptop. I could do everything except using the NSI website. I found out lots of similar reports online. A bit more research led to GNAT and gaming problems for others.

I basically cannot use online banking with smarty but this is life. I tried to find out what was going. Nobody replies on the emails. I tried the chat. I was trolled. They asked for info once per week. The following week they troll you with something else.

Two months later they told me that there was no investigation to find out what was going wrong. I was just chatting and they were making a commission. It did not make sense. On top of that, my sim would start disconnecting.

I have no idea what is going. I tried to check all possible settings. My sim says mobile number unknown. I read about this online as well. Everybody says that it should give the number there but it is not the source of the problems.

With the cold on December, the sim stopped working altogether. No calls. No internet. Once it went back, I manage to chat with them. Sir, there are no problems Sir. Oh Sir, actually Sir, yes Sir, we are working on the mast Sir. It will be fixed by the end of the week Sir.

And it has been going like that for more than one month now. I got upset. I contacted them on the chat again and they said lols, if you do not like it, just leave, there are no problems with the service.

They ask me weird things like whether I am on 5G, etc. I have no idea where I am but all I see is that the phone says 5G connection and the speed test is 0.01 mbps. The smart chat trolls tell me that this is not a problem and I should leave.

Did I just waste my money since October? I stopped BT, save £10 to cover the cost of leaving the EU, and I have paid this money in  advance to get a 5G phone with a so called 5G sim to get 5G speeds. I basically need ADSL 10mbps speeds and I am happy.

I get nothing. They tell me yes, there are problems, we are working on it, and then they tell me that there are not problems. What is going on?

It is just a phone and a sim. There is no setup to do. You just insert the sim and it works. Only that it does not. I am at loss. If I start a fibre application, it will take a month or so to connect me. I will be trapped on another two years contracts with 15% inflation and 5% profit increase over that.

With smarty, there is no contract. You risk some money and you hope that it will work. It worked but it could not do online banking. They promised to fix it but it was all lies. Then it disconnected altogether, they admitted that they did something to the mast, and while they promised to fix it, they troll me to leave.

Tonight I got upset that I found that there is a complaint button on the website. Of course this is fake and it does not do anything. It just logins to the website. So here I am here.

I bought the phone from the 5G list of phones that smarty provides. I ordered the sim from the smarty website. When the envelope arrived, a sim fell off. I tried it. It did not work out. After long hours of stress and trolling with the chat, I found a second sim in the package. This worked. Great success.

Then I discovered these issues with the online banking. Then it started disconnecting me. They kept trolling me that they were working on that. It became worse and worse and then they told me that they needed a new mast.

Now they tell me that it is hopeless. How does it really work? Their checkers give zero connectivity on the maps after you wait for 5 minutes to upload the page, and then immediately it says amazing 3/4/5g free of charge.

You do a speed test and it is almost zero. How is this normal? They messed up with something and the connection is lost for ever. Or it may come back. Nobody knows. Is it worthy trying another sim after losing 4 months of payments and receiving such bad service?

It just feels very unprofessional. Maybe if I already had the phone and somebody on the street was giving a free try out, maybe it would be worthy. But paying real money every month for this kind of mess, it does not make any sense.

It is a fake connection. That is why I did not trust their promises for connection, until I received the phone and the sim. It worked and gradually it dies and does smoke signals only. How can I fix that?

I had something similar with BT until they installed the line. I had to use their free WiFi but it was unable to work with Gmail. I tried their forum and there were a lot of paid chancers telling me that it worked. It took one month for BT to install the line and never used their free WiFi connections.

But their two years contract became more and more expensive with the inflation out of control and it is not that fibre is any good. Yes it was faster but it was making weird noises like an old school modem. BT never admitted any problems while the connection was going from almost zero speed to the normal advertised speed.

Basically, fibre was as bad as 5G. I am not sure how this is possible but this is how it works here. I get excellent fibre and 5G on marketing but in reality it is just a waste of money. I moved to 5G to save money and get the free calls as an extra.

While I can make a call from time to time, I cannot use the internet. I went for the unlimited sim to have no worries about the consumption but I cannot use the service. It takes ages to open your emails. The only other modern service that works, is youtube because it is able to scale down and show you pixels.

You cannot load maps, do streaming, or search online. Everything takes 5 minutes and that is if it works. And all that happened with the cold. The mast is still there but smarty said that they did works on it. I am not sure what that means but since their works, all that happened is bad service.

Thank you for listening to my pain!

11 REPLIES 11

George
SMARTY Moderator SMARTY Moderator
SMARTY Moderator

Hi @apav, I have sent you a private message to see if we can help you regarding this.

BobPrydd21
SMARTY Pioneer
SMARTY Pioneer

Can you let people know the outcome of this please?

Nothing happened, there is no outcome, they sent me a private message to email them at:

 

SMARTYComplaints@smarty.co.uk

 

When you check the smarty coverage, it says amazing 5G coverage but it runs so slowly, that is cannot do online banking and streaming.

 

When you do an internet speed test, it is around 0mbps most of the time. Even when it shows normal mbps, you try immediately to stream and it cannot. You go back to the test and it shows 0mbps again or even when it shows any normal mbps figure, it still does not work.

MSF
SMARTY Guru
SMARTY Guru

Sorry to hear of your problems.

A couple of points I noted.

Does your bank have an app specifically to do online banking? This could be worth a try.

Have you tried using your sim in another phone to see if there is an issue with the phone itself, rather than the network?

 

When you say that you have talked with Smarty, is that the online web chat? I ask because they do not have a phone-based customer service.

Finally, are you sure that you have all settings correct on the phone?

 

I have a similar problem with Santander online banking. I'm connecting on a wireless network with a tp-link Archer MR500 router with a 4G Smarty SIM. I can log in and carry out transactions but it regularly drops out and takes me back to the log in screen. I spoke with Santander technical support and they referred me back to the provider (SMARTY). They suggested the IP address is not fixed or sticky, but as far as I can tell it is quite stable, so I doubt that is the cause of the drop out. If I switch to a mobile phone hot spot with an EE SIM there are no problems. I will keep testing the set up and try and narrow down the issue, but if anyone has any thoughts let me know.

Hello @RogerWa_2059833  - Do you mean the Santander App or the web page version?

I regularly use the app on my mobile with its Smarty sim and never have a problem.

Is this yet again pointing to the TP link as the source of the problem?

Hello. It's the Santander web page. I don't think it's the TP Link because I swapped out the SMARTY SIM for an EE SIM, and with the EE SIM I could not get it to crash. So it's pointing towards the SMARTY connection. I also tried different browsers but the same result, the Santander web page randomly returns to the log in page as though it has lost the session.

Hello @RogerWa_2059833 . I have just tried the santander webpage using mobile data. The first time, it went straight back to the login page, but I was successful the second time.

It does seem to be some problem with the webpage and mobile data because I never get that on broadband. I also never have a problem with the app version either on broadband or on mobile data.

Jonathan
SMARTY Rookie
SMARTY Rookie

I have the same problem connecting to Santander through Smarty. Whether using the webpage or the Santander app, if my connection is via Smarty data I regularly get logged out of Santander. If I connect using broadband that isn't via Smarty, or if I put a non-Smarty SIM in my phone the problem goes away. Generally I have a very good stable and fast connection with Smarty, but connecting to Santander just doesn't work properly.

AnwarAl_2186272
SMARTY Pioneer
SMARTY Pioneer

I tried to open the Internet, but it was of no use. 07491334841

@AnwarAl_2186272  PLEASE do not post your personal details in any public site such as this.

Have you checked the Network Status for your area?