Have You Run Out of Mobile Data on EE, Good Luck Trying to Top Up

Customers with one of EE’s mobile data (Mobile Broadband) SIM’s, specifically those who have run out of data and need to buy a new top-up, may be struggling to do so due to a comically silly error that really should never happen.

Most mobile operators will white-list (exempt) part of their website from attracting data usage charges, which means that customers can always access their accounts, bills and top-up even if they’ve run out of a particular allowance. This is especially important on operators like EE, which restrict your Internet access when you run out of mobile data.

However a silly error on EE’s part suggests that somebody forgot to white-list the bank processing system on their website, which means that those who have run out of data and need to top-up online via the website using mobile broadband can no longer do so.

At least they let you load the top-up page, which then effectively says you can’t top-up without topping up first. Brilliant, thanks EE. But most entertaining of all is the new error message, which advises customers to stop bothering with Mobile Broadband and use WiFi instead (note to EE: If they could get good WiFi then they probably wouldn’t be using mobile data).

Thanks to ISPreview.co.uk member DTMark for pointing out this most silly of situations to us (here). The problem appears to be sporadic, which means that some weeks it works and others will see the same error return.

DTMark said:

“In the last few years, the “top up” part of the system is broken about a quarter of the times I need to use it. There seems to be some sort of inter-departmental issue between the people who build [EE’s website] and those who administer the network.

When the credit runs out, the users access to the internet is blocked. Makes sense. However in order for the payment to work, the 3D Secure bank pages need to be whitelisted so that they still work. There seems to be, still, after years, an issue with implementing this.

Now and again the bank authentication part of the top up gets disabled, presumably after someone spots that income from this stream has fallen to zero because nobody can use the system.”

Usually the only alternative for those affected is to go into one of EE’s stores or phone the top-up line, although the best solution would be for EE to fix their website. Luckily in DTMark’s case he was eventually able to top-up his EE data SIM, albeit by swapping to a Three UK SIM to process the order. This is perhaps not the result that EE would have intended.