I was wondering how long it would take for wave to turn up and call the kettle black.
Thine Wonk at least doesn't mention things that are OT, only when relevant. I remember in a recent thread about giffgaff, wave himself was the first to bring up three (though not mention them by name) and bash them.
For the record, I have no bias to any network, I simply want to get what I want at the lowest prices I can. For me, other than giffgaff not allowing tethering, their package is ideal; I am a low minutes user, my texts have been replaced by whatsapping so I mainly want a low cost data plan with some minutes and text - the £10 goodybag is ideal for me. Thus I WANT giffgaff to be good so I can stick with them and I have praised them in the past for having personally received good customer service prompt port ins and port outs. But to be honest, having had good customer service means I've needed it, means there have been problems. Once my goodybag hadn't renewed on time (they had account problems) and so my payg credit started going down as my phone did things automatically. I then restricted use of my phone so I couldn't lose any more payg credit. They refunded me an amount so I could buy a goodybag but it shouldn't happen in the first place.
But the reality is they have not delivered for me. Frequently I can't get data to work even when I have good 3G or HSPA signal. The data speeds are slow. They had their outage. They've very regularly had problems with people's accounts, people's porting, billing etc. They began as "true" unlimited but now they're going down the same path as the rest with FUP, detrimental usage etc but still continuing to use the unlimited tagline that they use to lambast bigger networks for.
People like wave and giffgaff want to have their cake and eat it when it comes to the marketing: on the one hand promising that they are reliable as backed by a large international telecoms firm but then the other half of the time excusing giffgaff as a startup so we have to allow them their lack of backups, regular problems etc. You can't have it both ways. Especially when other MVNOs don't get these problems. Before being taken over by Virgin Media, Virgin Mobile used to win awards all the time for great customer service and reliability.
I have been on and off with giffgaff for the past two years and I'm still with them right now due to the price and it's convenient as I'll be travelling soon so I won't top up for those months. But once I'm more settled, something like the £12 sim-only plan from Three looks more appealing or if I start using less data perhaps the £8 from Talk Mobile or something.