Lycamobile: promotional balance trap

I have the very advantageous EU19 bundle with Lycamobile (CHF19 for 30 days with 500mins in CH & EU 500 SMSs and 3Gb 4G data in CH rest at Edge).

They send a text advising that the bundle will be renewed and to ensure there's enough credit to do this. I checked my account on their site and it showed CHF44.67 and so I did nothing. On renewal day I got a text saying 'not enough funds'.

A call to a rather over-excited customer service man at Lycamobile revealed that my real balance was CHF15.19 with a further CHF29.49 'promotional balance' (If you buy CHF100 credit, Lyca tops your account with a further CHF50.)

These promotional balances cannot be used for buying bundles, but for calls and data without a bundle. So to use them I must let my bundle lapse.

Odd...

It's always been like this. Also when you check your balance by phone, it gives you your real and promotional balance. Your promotional balance is kind of useless unless you are calling outside of Europe or doing some roaming to bring the balance down. Of course, you could also lapse your subscription, use up your promotional money and top up again.

I love Lycamobile, but was tired of the roundabout ways you had to use them. I got the Salt 49chf go Europe package that lets me call all of europe and the US for 49 chf. It also gived me unlimited roaming in Europe and 1 GB data per month in Europe

Hijacking your post:

Is your Lyca data roaming works well? I gave up after many trials...

Useless customer service...

It works more or less within Europe. Usuallz they are the secondary networks with poor coverage. In the USA it doesn't work at all

The solution to Data/Web roaming not working is to create an APN (Access Point Names) for each country you are roaming in!

It seams that the Data/Web APN details with Lyca are not fixed to the Sim or the mobile device but to the network you are on.

You can find the APN details here .

I have them on a txt file on the phone and add them as I get into a new country. Once you have done them its set for as long as you have the mobile device.

Other providers tend to send you the APN settings via message but not Lyca

Try this next time and let us know if it works for you also!

Thanks a lot!

Will try and report :-)

Update after a weekend of trials in Warsaw: no success!