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From: SimonC on 18 Jan 2010 04:53
Just thought I'd share my experience so far of using giffgaff
(http://giffgaff.com), the new MVNO subsidiary of O2.

I got myself a giffgaff SIM shortly after their official launch at the end of
November, but only actually transferred my number to the SIM a couple of weeks
ago (I was waiting to reach the final month of my iPhone O2 contract), however
I am already very happy with things for a number of reasons...

First of all the tariff seemed to suit my usage perfectly (average 100 mins,
150 texts per month and about 200 MB of data) so the 8p calls, 4p texts and
free data (free till end of may anyway) worked out to be cheaper than most of
the other options I had seen - and so far that seems to have been born out (my
initial �10 balance is currently at about �5, which is in line with the
expected �10-14 I am anticipating to use each month). I have set myself up to
use the auto top-up facility which should seamlessly top up �10 when my credit
drops below �3. This can be tailored on their website (both the amount topped
up and how many times a month it will do so).

giffgaff has purely web-based support to keep costs down, and I was perfectly
happy with that as I don't often need to contact customer services anyway, and
having to do so via their forum and e-ticket system seemed perfectly adequate
to me - and in some ways preferable to waiting for ages listening to menu
options and on-hold tunes. So far I have raised two tickets - one to initiate
the port in, and this was processed within 24 hours and the port in occurred
as scheduled a couple of working days later. The second ticket was just to
follow up on the port in as my mobile number didn't seem to have been updated
on my online account management page (only an issue for when I needed to top
up as the SIM itself was working fine with the new number). Again this was
sorted within 24 hours.

I've raised a couple of other minor questions on the community forum (the idea
is that non-account specific enquiries are raised there so that other users
can try to solve them first - and only if they can't will it then get raised
to giffgaff's own support team, again to save on costs). Again these have
been dealt with very quickly and certainly in one case the answer had been in
the support knowledge base anyway had I thought to search on it (I couldn't
dial an 0800 number and hadn't realised that O2 requires you to drop the
initial 0 on such calls).

The big surprise for me however has been the payback system. The idea of
giffgaff is that it is "people powered", a large part of which is customers
helping each other with issues on the forums, as I mentioned above, and also
having existing customers helping with marketing by spreading the word. The
incentive to participate in this is that you get rewarded with payback points
for doing so. For example you get points for emailing people to tell them
about giffgaff (50 points), referring people to sign up (200 points per person
when they mention your username when they order a SIM), and for people
activating SIMs that you send them on their behalf (500 points for you plus a
bonus �5 for them when they activate the SIM with the first �10 topup), and
then there are points for forum participation. It is the last of these that
actually caught me by surprise. I had done a modest amount of helping out on
the forums during December (about 20 posts, 2 of which had been specifically
marked as helpful by other users) and yet I was rewarded with almost 4000
points as I was deemed to be in the top tier for forum participation (they
divided users into four tiers in order to dish out points - top contributors
who got about 4000 points, average contributors got 1000, low contributors got
250 and non-contributors obviously got 0). Basically 100 points = �1, so
effectively in December I netted myself over 4000 points, which when May comes
round (the first of the two payback dates in the year - the other being
November), I can convert to cold hard cash, add to my airtime credit, or
donate to charity. At this rate I will be spending about �10-�15 a month on
airtime credit, but earning around �40!

The points for forum pariticipation I believe will be a bit variable -
especially as they are keeping schtum on exactly how they are categorizing
people in terms of the tiers (to avoid people "gaming" the system), and I
believe the "pot" of points that will be awarded each month may not be fixed,
but for people who enjoy chatting on forums and helping out with other people
it seems that giffgaff is actually a pretty good network - perhaps even for
users who would find their tariff on the face of it to be more expensive than
alternatives (fortunately for me it seems actually to be one of the cheapest
anyway). After the end of May they may well be charging for data (they
currently haven't decided quite how to do so, which is part of the reason data
is free at the moment), but even if it is something like a �5 flat rate per
month for 1GB (which would seem to be inline with the competition), it will
still work out excellent value for me when the payback is taken into account.

So anyway, that's my review/plug over and done with ;) - if you fancy giving
them a go too then feel free to use my username (simon69c) as the referral
when you order a SIM, or alternatively send a PM to me on the giffgaff forums
and I can get a SIM sent out to you so that you get the �5 bonus credit when
you activate it (and you get that straight away rather than having to wait
till May/November as you do with the payback points).


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