The Family Mobile scheme looks really great. Very cheap call rates and SMS rates, automatic top-up, no minimum monthly spend, no expiry of credit. Also, they are partnered with IKEA so you expect that the quality is going to be good in every respect. I decided to get a couple for my kids who are going away for a few weeks this summer. I am so disappointed so far. The Sim cards arrived - without instructions, without PUK numbers, without the default PIN number. The website didn't work correctly so that it became impossible to activate them without help from the Family Mobile cust.service team - of which there only seems to be two (not their fault) - but it means a longer than 10 minutes wait on the phone until they get round to you. It took two phone calls of over 30 minutes each to get both sim cards activated. The website instructions are very poor and don't provide all of the info needed. Anyway, well and good, the sim cards work - although the website still shows them as being inactive. the Cust service rep told me that there are issues with the website (there certainly are) and that what I see may not reflect the true situation (it certainly doesn't). More worrying was the fact that I had authorised automatic top-up which means that Family Mobile has access to my money. There is meant to be an itemised billing service available and you are meant to be able to check online what the state of your account is - usage and so on. None of this is working. I have used one sim to send sms messages but there is no trace of them on my account console. In fact it is impossible to manage the account or to see how much activity - and how much expense is being incurred by your children - even though, being able to manage your children's accounts is one of the features of Family Mobile. The customer service rep said she would escalate it but didn't know when - or even if someone would call me back. Can I speak to a supervisor? No Can I speak to a manager? No Can I have the name of the department which will deal with the escalation complaint? The escalation department. Where are they? Not allowed to tell you. Who will deal with the compalint? Not allowed to tell you. Can I have the posta address of your office so I can write? No So where do I stand? You'll just have to wait. I decided to get the address of ttheir website - they have a legal obligation to carry the address. No address. I tld this to the customer service rep. She agreed that the address is not displayed. No company registration number. Nothing. It says that Family Mobile is owned by the Mobile Partners Group. Well I called them and got through to someone who says that he is the MD of the group. He told me that Family Moble has been sold to CDRator and that Family mobile should not be carrying references to Mobile Partners Group on their website!!! Is this true? I don't know. I am only relating the conversation which I had. I thought that IKEA had better know what is being said about all of this so I called them. they were concerned and will be investigating and calling me back. I contacted the phone regulator about the failure to display company information on the website. They have logged it as an industry complaint ???? (What does that mean?) I now have a contact email for the MD of CDRator - so I'll report back after I have heard from him. Meanwhile, the family mobile website is still not showing my account information accurately. I suppose that I will phone Trading standards as well - and T-mobile because Family mobile are offering T-mobile services. Has anyone had any good experiences with Family mobile? I'd like to know. Google searching doesn't disclose any problems. They seem alright I'd really like to clear up the issue of who owns family mobile too. It is all very strange

I have just received a letter from Ikano charging me £12 arrears fee for receiving their payment on the 17th when it was due on the 16th. I had paid on the 16th using their new payment facility which I initially struggled to get through but did. They are trying to charge me because they claim to have received it on 17th. I offered them the opportunity to reverse the charge and the person I was speaking to said he would only offer to return half of the amount. The strength of his argument is that on the statement it has a small line underneath where it says "Payment to reach us by" saying (allow 5 working days) in brackets. I drew his attention to the fact that it says nothing of this on the information they sent regarding using their new payment facility and I advised him of the basis of the rulings under UTCCR. As he does not seem inclined to remove the charge I will first write a complaint to them as part of my pre-action protocol then happily sue them for £12 plus costs of action. Should anyone else run into the same problem I hope you follow the same route. Service Charge Support LLP Ps I hope this can be tweeted to them.