Giffgaff goody-baddy-bag billing faff: Ofcom fines operator £1.4m for overcharging folks by almost £3m UK comms watchdog Ofcom fined Brit MVNO Giffgaff £1.4m today for overcharging around 2.6 million users to the tune of around £2.8m. An error in the Telefónica UK-owned firm's billing system – as we reported at the time – led to the screwup which meant anyone who bought the budget firm's "goodybag" bundles of calls, messages …
Refunded most of their customers?
I, my wife and two children used to be with GiffGaff but left when they reduced our data allowance as they now did 4G.
Their 4G speeds were far lower than 3G speeds so I moved us all to providers who were cheaper and provided decent data speeds.
GiffGaff have made no attempt to contact us and I am sure there are plenty like us. So they’ve made a donation to charity for us? Aren’t we the lucky ones...
I looked at them, but Tescomobile were cheaper and still run on O2
My grandads PAYG mobile is on O2 as they charge 3p per minute vs 8 on tesco and 45ppm (!!!) on Virgin mobile, no wonder he thought mobiles were expensive to run, virgin made a killing out of him before he finally after years asked me to find something cheaper and only as his 18 year old mobile battery burst....
For my use pattern, GG is cheaper than TescoMobile.
My problem with giffgaff and any MVNO is busy cell areas. For instance if you are at a gig, major sporting event or very busy urban centre, the network cells have a finite capacity and priority for GG is last in the queue. So at a recent stadium gig my phone had no network access at all, no data. Sometime even voice wouldn't work. But my friends O2 business continued to work fine. Sometimes going in and out of aircraft mode would get me in for a few seconds, but nothing useful.
However, in normal day to day situations GG works just fine.
I use quite a bit of data, tesco wanted £15 a month for 12GB with 5000 mins and 5000 texts, at the time giff gaff were more money so hence I went with Tesco.
Only left O2 due to the price differential, otherwise was generally happy with O2, they made a mistake a couple of years ago and their support staff weren't much help, so I complained and as an apology they said "oh we'll give you 50% off your contract till it ends as an apology as checking the transcripts the serice was severely below our expectations of staff performance"
I was chuffed, even more so when I realised the contract still had 18 months to run.......
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So...they fessed up about the error, refunded people wherever possible..offering to give the offset to charity for people who haven't replied...
...and OFCOM STILL fine them, even though they did the right thing?
...yet the likes of Vodafone still swindle millions from the taxpayer every year and are never challenged?
Something is very wrong with OFCOM...
Hang on, whilst i give them credit for fessing up, i dont recall them fessing uo to overcharging me TWICE what i used for six years. My refund came to about £8. I was using a goodybag worth each mon, and often topping up by a tenner when i exceeded voice mins or data. Over 6 years thats a f@@k load more than eight quid.
Been a customer for years, will continue to do so as im happy, but that leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
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