I jumped ship from o2 to giffgaff back in november - the telecoms infrastructure is o2's anyway. given i had no reason to speak to o2 customer service in the previous 3 years, i don't see the point in paying an extra £25 a month to o2 when a £10 goodbag is more than adequate for me.

issues - i've not been affected by any of the issues that have been reported by el reg or anywhere else. Some mornings, i lose signal, but that happened when i was paying o2 prices too.

yes, you may have enter mms settings etc manually (iphone, anyone?) but 2 minutes of your time, as the information is well publicised by giffgaff, unlike other providers who made it hard to get the information you need to have a working handset.

do it, you won't regret it.

The minimum on activating a SIM is £5, not £10, I got the new wife one a couple of weeks ago. Not only does that £5 give her free GG to GG calls, and an hour of calls to other networks, but when her friends call her from non GG phones, she gets an EXTRA minute for every minute the call lasts, she now has 81 minutes to use!!! The downsides are (for us) twofold, the £5 is only valid for 1 month, and overseas calls are not cheap; still, my home phone/BB package gives me cheap international calls, so she can call her mum without me getting too sweaty over the phone bill.

Who'd have thought it?

That ad has put me right off of GiffGaf. (Where is the vomiting smilie when you want one??!!)

That ad has put me right off of GiffGaf. (Where is the vomiting smilie when you want one??!!)

This one?

The minimum on activating a SIM is £5, not £10, I got the new wife one a couple of weeks ago. Not only does that £5 give her free GG to GG calls, and an hour of calls to other networks, but when her friends call her from non GG phones, she gets an EXTRA minute for every minute the call lasts, she now has 81 minutes to use!!! The downsides are (for us) twofold, the £5 is only valid for 1 month, and overseas calls are not cheap; still, my home phone/BB package gives me cheap international calls, so she can call her mum without me getting too sweaty over the phone bill.

I activated a GG sim with £10 credit last summer for my wife to use abroad but she didn't/couldn't use it. The credit was untouched at the time but it was still there when I tried the SIM at Xmas, didn't expire as I thought it would.

My foreign guests use the O2 international SIMs when they're here, penny a minute for them to call home. I don't mind the GG charges but I don't call abroad much.

Thanks for the smilie, I forgot I had disabled googleapi to get the page to load while in China. Blame the antibiotics and industrial strength painkillers for my lapse.

GG is NOT cheap for overseas calls, the sims are only really worth it for UK calls, and AFAIK, the Goodybags are only for UK calls, you have to add extra credit to cover other calls.

I forget the names, but there are several other sim companies offering international calls for 1-2p per minute to many countries

I will keep an eye on the wifes credit, the site blurb suggests it is only valid for 1 month, so it should expire on 22nd Feb.

Suffering my first giffgaff outage today.

Seems to have been some sort of problem at a 3rd party. The only thing I have working is incoming sms. Its not the end of the wrold.

What is funny is their forum/community thread about this loss of service.

I don't think the outages are going to be a problem for them but maybe ther pricing plan is. My wife just upgraded on Orange, she was going well over her 400mins so they given her 800mins over 24 months for £16.50 a month. They made her pay for a Desire S handset but it was only 40 quid. Even with the lack of a tie-in I don't think you can get anywhere near that sort of deal on giffgaff or other sim only arrangement.

For me its just too flakey given its essentially O2.

I don't see Tesco mobile and the others on O2 backend having these issues as often.

Every time someone calls you from a non GG phone, you get an extra minute to call non GG numbers; the wife ALWAYS ends up at the end of the month with more minutes than we paid for.

Down for about 8 hours. Warning of possible more interruptions.

Can't say I'm over reacting at the moment and looking to move on the back of one outage.

For me its just too flakey given its essentially O2.

I don't see Tesco mobile and the others on O2 backend having these issues as often.

I'm on Tesco (O2) and have had no problems recently, however my parents (both on GG) experienced the recent outage.

I'm on Tesco (O2) and have had no problems recently, however my parents (both on GG) experienced the recent outage.

Trouble is I wouldn't **** on Tesco if it were on fire. So horses for courses.

Even though I'm no longer with Giffgaff, they thought I should be updated with their problems!

You may have experienced loss of service today (Friday 16th March), we're sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you.

This was due to a burst water pipe which took out the power at one of our 3rd party suppliers. Engineers have been working on this and have put a fix in place which we are now monitoring for stability. During the period where service is restored you may notice that your service is intermittent.

We're continuing to work on this issue and regular updates will be provided in the community Noticeboard. Additional information is also available via our Blog where our CEO Mike Fairman has popped up a quick update.

Once we are sure that full and stable service has been restored for all members we will look at ways to make it up to you.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

I wonder how much longer this "experiment" by o2 will carry on for. I can see the plug getting pulled pretty soon.

All these people power business models eventually fail because of poor choice, customer service or higher pricing. Whatever happened to that supermarket?

I wonder how much longer this "experiment" by o2 will carry on for. I can see the plug getting pulled pretty soon.

All these people power business models eventually fail because of poor choice, customer service or higher pricing. Whatever happened to that supermarket?

I've been with Giffgaff since November,& have enjoyed not worrying about how much 3G I use whilst surfing or using Apps. Apart from 1 outage day,(whilst I was on away on Holiday),they've been great

Vowed to stay away from anymore 2 year contracts,where the moby is obsolete,if still working,& now pay only £10/mth for the minutes I actually need, instead of 1000s ,I don't!

As for big telecom company experiments,(giving cheaper deals to 3rd parties), its been working well for decades for Carphone Warehouse.

The Customer service run by the customers works really well,as there are plenty of Techno geeks/teenagers who are always keen to help you with the solution.