Tips & Advice

[irfanali]

I'm in the exact same position I used the same card to top up my sons SIM but the system has declined me 4 times!!! when I try an activate a new SIM and top it up for myself. Its very frustrating and making me wonder that maybe paying extra with another provider may be better option for me in terms of efficient problem resolution.

[eskdale3]

I spent days going back and forth with giffgaff and the bank trying to find out who was rejecting it.  I eventually concluded that it is definately a GiffGaff problem.  The bank says they are using multiple providers for the Credit card processing and some work and others don't because they send different data.  But in the end I had to give up - Don't like giving up but GiffGaff blame the bank and the bank blame GiffGaff.  I spoke with a supervisor at the bank and she did do a full investigation and said it was GiffGaff but GiffGaff still insisted it was the Bank or I was supplying the wrong details - but my details were certainly correct.  Card works fine with other suppliers so it must be GiffGaff.

[rxheard]

Thanks guys, I'm sort of glad it's not just me!   This is definitely a GG problem as I have also checked with my credit card company and tried an alternative card aswell - completely different bank.  

What are GG doing about it?  Do they even look at the comments posted here?  It is ludicrous, I want to become a customer of there's but I am being prevented in doing so.  I work in the digital and customer experience space as a consultant and have often in the past used GG as a case study for all the right reasons but now I will have to use the GG experience as an example of what it look likes once you take your eye of the ball and believe your own hype!

Dear GG, please, please help me to become one of your customers - it really is not that difficult.

[rxheard]

argghhh! I've now had a response from someone in GG customer service.  They have not resolved the issue and suggest maybe I don't have enough funds in my account - hahahaha!!!  

And to top it off, when I try to submit a response, I get a 404 page error.......!    GG you are a joke.

[irfanali2304]

Definately a joke an I'm not laughing I can't even reply back to the agent as I get a 404 error trying 3 different browsers on 2 different PC's Forgive my ignorance major mobile operators I'm coming back to you, you were right and I should have believed you The grass is not greener in GiffGaffs pastures

[richardski guru]

Hi irfanali2304,

Its not all bad - we actually still have some grass here

The 404 error refers to the acknowledgement page and does not mean the message has not been sent - a fault giffgaff needs to fix.

Before you move back to the fat cats just do the sums and you will see there is scope for considerable savings and also you can publicly declare you dissatisfaction - try that with the fat cats

Some of the support thread I have seen on Voda by their paid "Technical" staff are woeful - think I will post in off topic as some of their answers are just ridiculas - some of the best were "polish" you SIM!!

Richard

[richardski guru]

An interesting problem with buying Goodybags with VISA debit card.  All went well till I got the the handoff to the  "Verified by Visa" page on the giffgaff web site.

It would appear that the password I was using was getting mangled in this process and what got  through to VISA was not recognised.  Eventually I had to go through the process of re-creating a password and then found that I could not create a password  containing an ASCII punctuation character.  Once I had edited my replacement password to be punctuation free it allowed the  purchase to be successfully concluded.

This password with its ASCII punctuation character has previously worked with all other online transactions. 

This is a giffgaff issue and it need to sort out the parameters that are passed on.

Richard

[bertiebat lives and breathes giffgaff]

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richardski wrote:

An interesting problem with buying Goodybags with VISA debit card.  All went well till I got the the handoff to the  "Verified by Visa" page on the giffgaff web site.

It would appear that the password I was using was getting mangled in this process and what got  through to VISA was not recognised.  Eventually I had to go through the process of re-creating a password and then found that I could not create a password  containing an ASCII punctuation character.  Once I had edited my replacement password to be punctuation free it allowed the  purchase to be successfully concluded.

This password with its ASCII punctuation character has previously worked with all other online transactions. 

This is a giffgaff issue and it need to sort out the parameters that are passed on.

Richard

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Thanks for that Richard as I suspect that might be one of the unexplained issues with cards and will add this information into the main post.  I'm also going to highlight this problem to giffgaff as the rejection of punctuation characters has been the cause of a few issues (including the fact that punctuation characters have to be removed from the credit card details address for it to work as has already been indentified).

[richardski guru]

Hi bertiebat,

I did raise this through the agent system but as yet no response.

Hopefully you may have more success in getting giffgaff to address this issue.  The ability to include ASCII punctuation codes in passwords does make them harder to brute force

It was just a pain having to edit my password to enable it to work through the giffgaff site.  Still it all helps in squishing the bugs in the giffgaff web site.

Richard

[bertiebat lives and breathes giffgaff]

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richardski wrote:

Hi bertiebat,

I did raise this through the agent system but as yet no response.

Hopefully you may have more success in getting giffgaff to address this issue.  The ability to include ASCII punctuation codes in passwords does make them harder to brute force

It was just a pain having to edit my password to enable it to work through the giffgaff site.  Still it all helps in squishing the bugs in the giffgaff web site.

Richard

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Hi Richard yes I've already had a response from Craig the community manager who has said they will pass it to the correct person to investigate.

I've also pointed out what I think is another problem with the Town bit of the credit card details, so hopefully we will get something done about those issues.   It might take a while for the changes to be done but at least it's a couple of steps further in sorting some people out and it is very helpful to know what issues are caused by what problems so your post was very helpful.