Re: I would look into this
Only my own opinion, but I can highly recommend giffgaff for the most part.
The good:
+ Great value: I have seen no other PAYG "bundles" which come close to matching giffgaff. You can match it on a SIM-only 30-day contract, but this doesn't give the same flexibility.
+ Flexibility: If I am skint one month, I can easily not buy a goodybag, use PAYG credit only, switch my data off on my phone and spend only a quid or 2 over a month, or until I have the money. Similarly if I am out of the country for most of the month, I don't have to buy the goodybag.
+ Payback: If you know your stuff and help out on the forums, you get paid for it. I generally get back most of what I have spent on goodybags over the month for a very small amount of work.
+ Community support: If you have an issue (which is not account related), the community will help you very quickly.
The bad:
- Account-related support: Giffgaff don't have call centres. The only way to get account related support is by an online ticket system. It can take days to get a response. I have found the forums good at speeding this along, but it is a major headache.
- Reliability: There have been more major outages on giffgaff since I have been with them than I have ever known from a mobile network.
So, you pay your money and take your choice. I am currently trying to decide whether to stay with them due to a degradation in signal quality at my home. It's been getting steadily worse for the past couple of years, starting with mobile internet dropping to Edge, then GPRS.This was not a major issue as I can use my Wifi at home, but now more than half the voice calls I make or receive from home have such bad audio quality I have to hang up and use the landline. This is an O2 network issue (SWMBO is on O2 and has the same trouble), but it means I can't use my mobile for voice calls at home (admittedly, this is now it's secondary purpose...)