If you run support at an eSIM company, here is the uncomfortable finding from our latest benchmark: customer service is the main complaint in only 11% of 1–2★ reviews, but it shows up in 27% of them. Support rarely breaks the trip. It decides whether a broken trip becomes a one-star review.
Some context. We refreshed the eSIM Customer Service Benchmark this week with Trustpilot data from the 20 largest eSIM brands, 377,827 reviews in total. For this cut, a model read and labeled 8,300 1–2★ reviews posted in the last 12 months, recording both the main complaint and every other issue each reviewer raised. Disclosure up front: I run Aissist, which sells AI customer support software, so weigh my opinions accordingly. The method and every table are public.
The product fails first
Connectivity is the main complaint in 48% of low-star reviews and part of the complaint in 56%. Activation, where the eSIM never works at all, is the main complaint in another 18%. Put those together and two in three angry reviewers are angry because the thing they bought didn't do its one job, usually right after landing.
A typical one, from an Airalo review:
"We purchased 2 eSIMs for Tanzania and both didn't work 90% of the time, either in mainland or Zanzibar."
No support team fixes a tower in Zanzibar. That part is a network and product problem.
Then support makes it worse
Here is where it gets interesting. 57% of support complaints sit on top of a product failure. The traveler had a problem, went looking for help, and the help became a second problem. That is the gap between 11% and 27%: support is the headline in a few reviews and the aggravating factor in many more.
So what actually goes wrong? We labeled 3,464 low-star support complaints by type. Of every 100 support failures:
29 are support that engaged but couldn't fix the problem
28 are slow or missing replies
14 are refund refusals
13 are a bot with no path to a human
3 are rudeness
Rudeness at 3 surprised me. Agents in this industry are, by and large, polite. They are just not fast enough, or not empowered enough. eSIM support doesn't have a manners problem. It has a reach-and-resolution problem.
The timing makes it harsh. A traveler with no data can't wait until tomorrow for an email reply. One Maya Mobile reviewer put it plainly:
"The customer service is emails so please do this in advance as the replies are so slow and unhelpful."
"Please contact support in advance" is not advice anyone wants to give about a product you buy for when you're already abroad.
The failure mode differs by brand
The mix matters, because each failure mode calls for a different fix.
A brand losing on reach and a brand losing on resolution can post the same star rating and need completely different roadmaps.
What I'd do with this if I ran eSIM support
Tag support tickets by the product failure underneath them. If most of your support complaints ride on connectivity and activation, your best CSAT project may be a faster troubleshooting flow for those two cases, not a new tone guide.
Treat time-to-first-response abroad as a product feature. For this category, "we'll get back to you within 24 hours" means "after your trip has already gone wrong."
Let the front line act. "Couldn't fix it" is often "wasn't allowed to fix it." Whoever answers first, human or AI, needs access to provisioning, usage data and refund rules, or the conversation just becomes a slower route to the same dead end.
If you use a bot, make the handoff instant. Bot walls are 13% of support failures. Automation that answers fast but can't escalate simply moves the frustration earlier.
The short version
Most one-star eSIM reviews start with a network or activation failure. Support can't prevent those, but it decides how bad they get, and it fails mainly on reach and resolution. Fix those two and you improve the quarter of your worst reviews where support is part of the story.
Full data, per-brand tables and method: eSIM Customer Service Benchmark 2026
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