Ad-based virtual network BlykMobile appears to have hit a glitch in its service, prompting complaints from disgruntled customers who claim they are not receiving the credit to make calls.
The complaints have been rejected by Blyk, which said the problem has occurred because users have failed to save the settings on their handsets.
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The MVNO’ offers free calls and texts to students in exchange for pushing adverts onto phones. The complaints centre on customers not receiving their free credit despite still receiving advertisements to their phones.
Blyk promises free monthly tops ups in return for accepting up to six MMS advertisements per day. However, Blyk’s website forum is receiving daily complaints that the MVNO, which is hosted on the Orange network, is not keeping to its part of the deal.
One customer has posted: ‘This is known as false advertising and is taken extremely seriously by Trading Standards. I strongly suggest this problem is resolved otherwise Blyk will quickly begin to lose users who need a reliable mobile network.’
Concerns have also been raised by users that they not receiving the promised £10 reward for inviting friends onto Blyk, while others issues with text messages not being received.
Blyk suffered problems around its launch, when users were unble to send MMS messages.
It was also reported in August that users were turning off their MMS to avoid receiving adverts.
Dean Merrion, Blyk’s sales and marketing chief said: 'We have no technical problems with our top-up facility but every month we have a handful of members who change their SIMs to new phones without saving new settings, which means that they do not receive messages from brands.’
He added: ‘This affects their free monthly refill of 217 texts and 43 minutes. We are aware of this and we always educate our members that an MMS phone is required in order for them to receive the full Blyk media experience.'
The MVNO is due to release new figures about the company’s progression later this month. Early take up of the MVNO appeared to be positive, with Blyk claiming it had 100,000 registration in April, five months ahead of schedule.
Blyk was launched in October last year and is headed up by CEO Shaun Gregory who joined from the Daily Telegraph where he was director of new media.
The MVNO’ offers free calls and texts to students in exchange for pushing adverts onto phones. The complaints centre on customers not receiving their free credit despite still receiving advertisements to their phones.
The MVNO’ offers free calls and texts to students in exchange for pushing adverts onto phones. The complaints centre on customers not receiving their free credit despite still receiving advertisements to their phones.