I don't know if this is a new legal requirement (in addition to replying to an SMS on your old provider), but with Lycamobile you have to insert your SIM card into the phone to receive an SMS with your phone number before you can proceed with a number transfer (which you'll then need to remove anyway to receive your OTP and for some people, even have data). You'll still need the PUK and SIM number anyway for other steps.
The website isn't mobile friendly at all and is a headache to navigate. The page isn't intuitive. On mobile, you have to press a small button that doesn't look like a button to receive a one-time PIN (in portrait mode it covered my phone number so I couldn't see what number I was entering). But the OTP isn't confirmed until you submit the page. Sometimes the button is unresponsive (I was on mobile so couldn't check for javascript errors). Sometimes the page forgets to pre-fill information. The Live Chat button is floating in the bottom right corner and huge and covers some of the fields while you're filling out the form. You have to be extra careful not to click on it and the invisible rectangular padding around the icon doesn't help. And if you want live chat they may be busy anyway with no indication of waiting times.
You enter your birthday and address TWICE, for both confirming your identity and for your previous mobile provider (where you may need to know the network your MVNO uses, which many don't). There is no indication that your identity check has passed as you proceed to the next section or whether the check is actually performed on the final page.
There's no field to enter the PIN you received in an email to activate your data plan. You have to enter an old-fashioned USSD *116*PIN# on your phone once your phone is activated.
Once your phone plan is activated, that doesn't mean you have data. You'll need to "install" the APN settings (with also some "browser" that won't because it's "incompatible"?) via an installation popup on your phone like it's 2009 or enter the data manually. You'll notice there's always R next to the signal icon. That's because Lycamobile does things differently to every other mobile provider I've used in Australia. My data didn't work because I had roaming switched off. And not just any roaming. If you select international roaming the data won't work either. It has to be set to "national roaming" (I don't remember this being a thing with Belong and ALDI, which also use Telstra Wholesale?).
The office hours are your usual daytime 9-6, Monday to Saturday, despite all call centres being based abroad (and the line quality really poor and echoing) and the company being international and based in the UK. The automated message is even in a UK accent and hasn't been programmed to tell you that you've called out of office hours until you click on the option to speak to an operator. It's nice to have someone to vent to though.
The emails look like a backyard operation as well. Random phrases are concatenated like "DateofBirth". While the website adds a space after $ signs. It looks like no one in their organisation has ever proofread an email either…"You've joined a global family over 15 million happy customers".
So if these people can start a phone company that sits over 15 million happy customers then you can too. Worst rating ever. 5/7.
Doesn't sound lycamobile company should be.