TokenBird's Musings

For all of my previous mobile phone ownership history I have had contracts of one kind or another. I have always believed that they offered better value as you had a subsidised phone and cheaper service costs. Unfortunately it looks as though times have changed in the last few years. Typical cost of ownership over the now 2 year contracts are generally into £400-£800 for many phones and plans with not that great features. 24 month contracts are just too long. Typically I have found most phones have become unreliable long before this and wouldn’t commit to anything longer than 18 months.

My contract was up with o2 recently. They have also changed their upgrade policy so you can no longer remain with your current tariff which is a pity. My current one offers unlimited internet (new ones don’t), include MMS in text allowances (new ones don’t), free voicemail (new ones don’t – minutes are used first then it is chargeable).  A similar tariff with inferior features would now be costing more than I pay now. Paying the same and not having a new phone seemed foolish in the extreme.

I had a look around the usual suspects but I have found o2 has the best coverage for me. I’ve tried t-mobile before and although their customer services people are quite good the reception is just so patchy it isn’t usable. Orange have awful CS now so I wouldn’t even consider them. Vodafone are just plain over priced. I even considered joining the dark side and going to three but previous experience of them would make that a leap too far.

Luckily these days there are plenty of virtual operators. I was almost ready to sign up to CPW’s own service when someone mentioned Giffgaff. I had never heard of them. They’re an online only operator with no call centre and community based first line support. Sounds flaky in the extreme but has actually been just as good, if not better, than a standard network service. If I kept the same number of minutes, texts and data etc I’d pay half what I was paying with O2. If I moved to a ‘goodybag’ which reflected my actual use then I’d save even more. £25 quid a month. Or £300 a year! MMS aren’t included but there are other ways of sending photos or sharing them onto facebook via email which would be included in the unlimited data allowance. Voicemail does come out of minutes or is charged at 8p a time. 0800 numbers are genuinely free to call too which is another bonus.

So I called up o2 and got my PAC so I could move. Unfortunately the operator proceeded to tell me some absolute whoppers about giffgaff. Including saying they charged for customer services – they don’t but O2 PAYG customers are! I was amazed at some of the rubbish the person came out with. What was worse it was so easy to check. Pop along to the community forums and ask. Within minutes there was a flurry of helpful replies. O2 by this point still hadn’t responded to the email I’d sent several days earlier asking for the PAC. I had to phone them and wait around on hold to get one. It used to be available from their website but it seems to have disappeared.

The strangest thing of all is that Giffgaff is actually a wholly owned subsidiary of O2. They’re being rude about their own offspring.

Giffgaff runs on the O2 network so I have exactly the same coverage and features as O2. All for a fraction of the price. They have had some glitches with goodybags and activations recently but I seem to have avoided most of the bother. You can queue up a goodybag to start when the current one ends so there is no need to scramble to buy another when one has nearly run out. I think doing this would avoid most of the trouble people have experienced. And you need to leave a bit of credit after buying a goodybag for features which aren’t inclusive eg MMS or calls if you’re text only etc. There is also an auto top up feature which will top up a preset amount if you reach £3 remaining. I have set it to do this once per month. I’m assuming I won’t need it very often. If you’re used to having a contract it is quite odd doing things such as topping up and checking credit balances and having to remember to make sure you have credit when you just get charged at the end of the month without having to think.

Number port also worked fine for me. Others have had problems but I was all up and working by mid afternoon with only a couple of hours spent in the twilight zone where neither old or new provider worked.

The best part of being PAYG is that there is no contract. If the service doesn’t live up to expectations then you can leave and go elsewhere without having to give much notice. This is maybe why PAYG customers actually receive better deals as operators know they can and will go elsewhere. Contract customers inside contract are captives. You can treat them like dirt and there is nothing they can do until the minimum term has passed.

We’ll see how this pans out. If they turn out to be useless then I’m off. Easy.