@TheBigM

Good post and balanced (rare on here). They are what they are, cheap. For me they have never faltered (except the long data down time last month) in two years.
I haven't paid them a single penny for 18 months as payback has covered usage. So for free, I can't complain. However, the forums have changed and just visiting to earn a bit of payback is painful so I hardly ever visit now.
I have about £80 of credit sitting there which I will use up as and when. Once that has gone I'll just let it wither on the vine.
The idea was great in the beginning, but like all companies, they have just reverted to type and no longer have a unique product.
As I've said before, anyone with a brand loyalty is a fool to themselves. Make hay while the sun shines and be ready to move on as required.
I don't suppose I'll find anyone that's any better at CS, but, that's a given and I can live with that.
My only advice to anyone concerning GG is give it a go, as it might be OK for you. Don't use it for business......

Day 4 and still waiting. I've now received a nonchalent response from an agent, stating how my number's got stuck in the system and that it may take another five working days to resolve. So realistically, I'll be languishing without a service I've paid for at least another week. This takes ineptness to new levels. No reputable firm would be this incompetent or amateurish.

Time to contact OFCOM methinks. This is just unbelievable.

I would suggest contacting them via Twitter as it seems they respond quicker: http://twitter.com/#!/giffgaff

Nice post, and I agree with the essence of it.

For the record, although I bang on about them in what I hope comes across in the objective manner it's intended to, I'd love to be on giffgaff - the £20/25 goody bags are perfect for my usage, and their out of bundle pricing is great too - 16p MMS, 12p a minute 08 calls and so on. As it's cheap I'd be OK with a lower level of service too, as I'm reasonably savvy, as long as the service is *usable* - payback and good intentions are no replacement for a working mobile service.

However, the recurring issues with their website that continue unresolved, the frankly odd data issue that they refused to investigate as "it was normal for an MVNO" and of course the biggy - coverage - meant I had to leave. I stuck it out for ~18 months hoping coverage and the data issue would improve, but neither of them did, and other things (most of which have been mentioned in this thread) started falling over as well. I accept that giffgaff aren't to blame for coverage as that's out of their hands, but the other bits - well, they are, the website in particular. I mean come on, an online only service should have a website that's *more* reliable than the competition (e.g. Tesco, Virgin) not less, surely? Or am I missing something? I don't know, I'm sure some people will resent me saying all this but there we are - that was my experience of them and I'd be lying if I said otherwise.

Overall though, all of us have an opinion on giffgaff - some positive, some negative, all valid. I'll end this mini essay on a relatively positive note:


Yep - just don't rely on it blind as should you have problems they could drag on... and on... and on. In short;
On the other hand, should you not have problems - then all well and good.

Using it for business is against T&C's anyway. I don't use it for business as I always have my work phone and a backup, just in case and I use that as a private phone also.
I don't consider it grown up enough for business use. I can't imagine going onto the forum with all the school children and asking questions relating to my business phone...

Oh, they've changed the T&Cs? Last time I looked they weren't bothered either way, and agents were apparently issuing VAT receipts and what not, but there was a discussion to "clarify giffgaff's position" about it going on. I didn't realise they'd actually changed anything though.

BiB - agree agree agree just the thought of it...

The T&C's are ambiguous at best with only a discussion that came to the conclusion it's OK. But, I note that the T&C's wording never changed.
Also the T&C's specifically state they are in no way responsible for any loss of business howsoever caused.
With them bailing on unlimited data I wouldn't exactly trust them to stick by anything they said.
As I said................I wouldn't use them for business. Anyone else is welcome to use them for whatever purpose they want.

Section 4.8 of the terms and conditions which are at the bottom of every Giffgaff page state the following:

4.8. All usage of your giffgaff SIM Card must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes.

Whether they choose to enforce it or not I don't know, they probably would do if you started sending lots of business SMS messages or trying to claim the service is vital to your business and claim losses due to service unavailability.

Business services usually have stricter SLAs in place, but are usually more expensive. There is usually recourse for outages over 4 hours or a set time in business contracts because communications can have a massive productivity hit, or cause your business to fail to serve it's customers eg: engineers on call etc

Thanks for the reminder.

http://giffgaff.com/orders/

5 days and counting, with no service at all. It's likely to be another week. This degree of ineptitude is fast becoming the stuff of legend.

My experience too, but I'm a very light user (less than 30 mins a month) so it would make no difference to me if it had taken a month; if I was a heavy/business user though I'd be mighty miffed if it took days to transfer my number. The only mobile signals near me are O2 and Vodaphone so my choice is limited.

Six days and counting. This company will flatline at this rate.

They really do need to be re-branded Toytown Telecom.

GiffGaff's owned by O2 as well, so people should be expecting a little better in terms of network quality, but it's not the case. I know people that joined them because of the truly unlimited data plan then left because the network wasn't up to scratch - it's almost like O2's really not arsed about it.

I'm sticking to Yodafone for the time being, at least I know I'll get good network coverage.

The move to advertising tv programmes and going 'public' really was a terrible decision, they should have kept small and kept to hearsay and their members spreading the word (hence network run by you).

I think you should go on o2, and consider this a lesson learnt. I don't tell people about giffgaff now because i know they will just run into problems, and then come to me with their problems!

Only in my 2nd month of giffgaff, haven't ported my number yet, had no problems apart from The Outage last month. Wasn't using it today.
but

I hadn't noticed the "not for business" use clause. My bad. Why? Does anyone know the why, please?
Not that I can see how it matters but I use my phone for work purposes - but it doesn't generate income; I ring and make appointments, check in on people and so on. So far, actually, Not my giffgaff phone, I'm squeezing the last month out of the Virgin contract for work use but had planned to swap over.
Ta.

It's simply so that those using GiffGaff for business don't have a leg to stand on in terms of compensation should the service go down.

Ah. That makes sense.

I've had a hunt round, and can't find any other deals as good at my usage levee - a £10 goody bag: the minutes allowance is fine, I rarely text, and the internet access I need for the iPhone.
However, always glad to hear if anyone knows of an equal or better deal.

I quite agree on all points. As for the T&Cs not changing, well, according to the website the T&Cs in place have applied since 24th November 2009... but as it's bank holiday I'm so not going to go there

I think the basis behind it all is that terrible word "support"; giffgaff aren't going to support business use (as they'd need to provide 'business level' compensation should things go wrong if they did) but just because they don't support it doesn't mean it won't work - you just won't get business level service should anything go wrong due to the T&Cs saying they don't support business use.

I think the other thing is when they say unlimited texts or a certain amount (very high) they mean for personal use, not some business sending SMS to all their clients etc...

They quite rightly will ban you from the network if you start sending bulk / automated texts.

What I've seen as the biggest issue in the last 6 months or so is definitely starting up and porting numbers. The outages to me don't seem to have been very frequent. Worst for me was last month with the burst water pipe.

In all two years of using them, the worst thing that's happened to me was that outage last month. Other than that, it's been pretty smooth. However what do I know? Since I have no issues and my experience has been generally positive, I must be a simple fanboy. :/

It's clearly advertised as a CONSUMER product for personal use and the same applies to the use of domestic equipment for commercial purposes.

If folks want to use mobile communications for business there are plenty of offerings in the market catering for commercial purposes.

I never claimed otherwise.

Indeed so no further comment or clarification needed. One could easily get the impression that the above is encitement to generate pointless argument.

Since you quoted me directly I thought that you had misunderstood. No worries if this isn't the case.

Yes that's right.

IMO though the sending of bulk/automated texts is more 'commercial' use - i.e. using the giffgaff service itself to make money - which is expressly not allowed under 4.8 and will rightly get you a ban if you do it, as opposed to 'business' use - i.e. using the giffgaff service to help you make money doing something else (e.g. calling a client to say you're on your way) - which the T&Cs are ambiguous about, if you follow my train of thought there, which would probably explain any difference in the enforcement of the T&Cs.