Submit: Great giffgaff Ideas - The giffgaff community

"Posted from..." - Bring it back

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Hi
The observant among us will have noticed that the "Posted from..." that appeared at the bottom of a post made from a mobile device has now disappeared.
The not-so-observant will have missed it
This is actually quite annoying - and restrictive to the helper - when people had problems before and you could see if the message was posted from an iPhone or an Android etc it was much easier to suggest the solution in some cases. Now we have no idea what device unless they mention in the OP (which they rarely do!)- a real pain
And the dreaded multiple c&p settings for every phone under the sun have reappeared as a result

As an additional observation, I've also noticed that against my username and avatar on the full site, I had enabled my mobile phone info to be displayed on the forums by going to preferences>personal information >mobile phone and typing in LG Nexus 5 32gb -...

That's also disappeared - despite still being current in my preferences??

My suggestion is simply this :

Bring both back.... Please

Status:

We are looking into bringing this functionality back in some form, as long as we can guarantee that it is reliable, accurate and helpful to both the member posting and the member answering the question. (See more details in comments.)

Re-add Maestro Excluding Auto Payments

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As many of you know, Maestro was removed as a supported payment method for users of giffgaff.

This has created anger, hatred and headaches within the community, and has led to numerous amounts of users leaving giffgaff, requesting PAC codes, firing complaints, arguing and fighting.

giffgaff said they removed it because:

-Only around 1% of all transactions used Maestro

-It wasn't compatible with recurring payments

After consultation with an Educator, it was suggested we find a workaround, the workaround is to allow Maestro to be used for single top-ups, but not allow it for recurring payments, just disable it for recurring. That way people can still use it to add funds to their credit.

Also, you say because only 1% of transactions use it, how many transactions do you have? That 1% is probably pretty huge, and you've basically told us you don't care about that 1%.

Status:

This has now been implemented. Maestro access is back to normal and can be used to top up your account.

An Authenticator when logging in to the giffgaff website

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Hey there! I'm new here and thought of something I'd like to put across in hopes to benefit the community!

As we see all these security risks increasing, whether it be the NSA spying on us again or even new malware/viruses targetting us. I think it'd be great if giffgaff adopted an 'authenticator'.

What I mean by this is, is an app giving us a number that changes every so often or when we used the previous code or even a text for everytime we log in. This code is requested by giffgaff upon logging in to your account. What this does is that it gives it that extra layer of security incase your username and password is just not enough! (keyloggers I'm looking at you!).

I believe this would be quite useful as we have very important and sensitive information attached to our accounts such as our personal phone numbers and even ways to manage our loan repayments for phones (if you've opted to pay upfront then a monthly payment, to buy a phone from giffgaff).

Confirmation Before Premium Rate can Charge you

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Hi,

This is a pretty unique idea.

Have you ever seen those premium rate phone numbers, those subscription based text services? Some of them don't make their charges clear, and the ones who do charge over-the-odds.

Many people around the country enter into these premium rate services unknowingly, or don't know how often they would get charged, then get scared when theys ee a £10+ phone bill, extra, each week.

What I suggest is that, when phoning a premium rate number, you first get asked whether you are completely sure, giffgaff could easily do this by diverting calls to an automated system beforehand, if they get confirmation, it forwards the call back to the premium rate line, otherwise it ends the call.

If it is a text based service, when you text it, giffgaff texts you back first and requests confirmation, if you reply back with YES, it will proceed sending the original text, otherwise it will cancel the sending of the text.

Maybe also an online panel in My giffgaff where you can manage known subscriptions too.

Status:

Not for Us - We don't feel like giffgaff should step in to stop people from doing something they are signing up to do. However, this does raise a point that more education and information is never a bad thing: we will work on improving our Knowledge Base articles on these numbers and providing our members with the information to make the right decision for them.

500Mb then 1p per Mb tethering on unlimited internet goodybags

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OK another tethering idea but one that should now be possible due to the new tethering detection and the existing system that already monitors/handles data allowances and charging on the existing limited internet goodybags.

Problem

Many members are caught in the dilemma of wanting to mix some tethering and normal mobile internet but find the limited allowance tetherable goodybags (1Gb max) too restrictive.

Others are caught out by not understanding the restriction on tethering on the unlimited goodybags and simply can't use the internet in the way they expected.

This is losing giffgaff customers who would like to stay but need more flexibility.

Solution

Include a small amount of free tethering allowance (I suggest 500Mb) with all of the unlimited goodybags and then charge (I suggest 1p) for each tethered Mb over this allowance from airtime balance.

The price of the existing unlimited internet goodybags and other allowances to remain the same so this is just an additional benefit.

The system would need to warn the member they were using their tethering allowance at the start of the tethering internet session so instead of the existing detection system simply cutting off the internet with a warning, change to just a warning message. The warning message should include the remaining tethering allowance or the charge rate and remaining airtime credit if allowance has been exceeded.

Subsequent tethering data used will be deducted from the allowance (or charged from credit if allowance has been exceeded). Note: this is much the same process as for the limited internet goodybags so most of this has already been designed and implemented before.

Include a further tethering allowance indicator on the My giffgaff goodybag display.

Include a switch to allow members to opt out of tethering charges, this to be ON by default. (prompted by lnb1996's input).

Benefits

Provides tethering options for those wanting the benefits of both unlimited internet and tethering.

Small amounts of tethering would be allowed at no extra cost (great for checking emails etc on trains with laptops).

No need to worry about deciding on the need for tethering up front and so true flexibility. No add ons, no special tethering goodybags, no changing to an additional SIM, no need to regret not getting a different package.

Much of the processing logic is already there so this should be the simplest flexible method of including tethering on the unlimited internet goodybags and therefore I really do think it will be looked at seriously by giffgaff.

Attract new members and retain existing ones. I don't think any other providers offer anything like this

Make sense to me and hopefully to you but please do add your comments (and support as always welcomed )

Edit: apologies to those that have already voted but I have changed the OP to increase the initial allowance having done some further maths.

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Transferring a number, add a date picker.

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Hello, my mum got a new phone recently and I decided to get her on giffgaff. Part of the process is to transfer her number so that she doesn't have to send an annoying text telling everyone to change her number in their phones. After getting her PAC I went to https://giffgaff.com/support/transfer to transfer her number, this page asks us to select a date which we would like the transfer to take place. Currently this field contains some placeholder text telling the customer what format to put the date in, and since there is no real confirmation of the date selected, if you made a typo and put say 20/01/2014 instead of 10/01/2014 you could wait a week before you realise your number hasn't been transferred, and even when you realise this you won't know why as there is no confirmation that you have asked to port your number.

The current transfer number date field, showing the placeholder text.

So to reduce the chances of someone entering the wrong date, why not have a date picker instead of/ as well as a text form. Grey out unavailable dates like the current day and weekend/bank holidays, and if it's after 3PM grey out tomorrow. You could use a similar design to the event calendar.

I think allowing the customer to pick a date off a calendar is more user friendly than them figuring out when they could port their number, and then having to put it in using the date format, any mistakes could be problematic. With a properly made date picker it would be impossible for the user to make a mistake.

Status:

Official Update: Congratulations, we'll be looking into this idea. Mike and everyone in the top team agreed that this Idea was "Reasonable, Sensible and should be easy." As usual we'll update you as soon as we can, with regular updates now this Idea has gone into the meeting. Thanks everyone for voting and supporting this Idea.

4G at no extra cost

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Hello all,

As many of us are excited as 4G is finally rolling out in the uk. Has it not occured to you that it could cost extra, much like EE are charging loads more for the service.

Well as giffgaff is know as the 'affordable' network I belive that it should be implemented free or at very very little extra cost.

The network 3 (THREE) are not charging user anymore so it would be just like connecting to 3g everyday. This is a massive selling point and my friend has moved to three due to this news, so to stop users from moving we shouls annoce that there would be no major price differance if any on the new 4G network.

Thanks, please support me with a kudo if you feel its a good idea (only if you want to, Im not asking you to, but feel free to do so)

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Hey Folks, we have a consultation in January about 4G and pricing where we'll be talking to all our members about what they want - we don't want to yay or nah anything right now before everyone gets their say in 2 months time, but thank you for starting off the conversation, Kind regards, Hazel.

giffgaff bag for life drive

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I live in Wales and we've been subject to the 5p charge for carrier bags for a few years now, I understand that you Englanders are soon to join us in this environmental minefield. I have a suggestion for a campaign for giffgaff to sell bags for life for a couple of reasons.

What is a carrier bag?

It might be a simple question but the answer has hidden answers. The primary purpose is of course to carry things around but when you buy something from Tesco or Asda you're also exclaiming to the world that you shop at Tesco or Asda, kind of pledging alegiance and advertising on their behalf as you go about your Earthly chores. I feel that if we must advertise as part of our daily shopping commute then we might as well advertise something that we want to promote.

The eco drive for reusable and charging for carrier bags has afforded us an excellent opportunity to escape from these clutches and not only do our part for the environment by reducing plastic waste but also, if we so wish, break free of our corporate sponsored walk around town and promote values that we would like to promote ourselves (I urge you to do so even if you don't support this idea incidentally).

I don't have any ideas on the design of the bag itself but I'd think it could be branded giffgaff in some way and emphasise the core values of the company in a nice graphical way.

How?

There is now an online buying portal on te site here that sells phones and there has long been a demand for giffgaff branded merchandise, offering this as a limited run of exclusives seems to me like the best option. I've taken the liberty of seeking out a few bag makers. Most products of this nature are manufactured overseas (China) and of course we'd all like to avoid that and have these made in the UK. BIDBI are based in Sheffield and seem to have a UK based production line but others are of course in existence in the country I'm sure.

http://www.bidbi.co.uk/

http://www.customprintedbags.co.uk/kraft-paper-bags/printed-paper-bags.php

http://buildabag.wbc.co.uk/

The design could be one of those community competition type things or maybe just hire someone or get the in house design guy. Up to whomever

Benefits and causes

There is the opportunity to make some sort of charity thing out of this but in my mind at least environmental responsibility is reward enough and there's the branding thing too. Can go under the giffgaff for good banner or something. An expanded info-sheet on the worth of reusing carrier bags and promoting things that you like raises the good cause factor. Alo an opprtunity for some giffgaff advertising in the physical world, something that has so far been extraordinarily challenging.

Cost

Money, GB £££. Cost will depend on the amount of bags and I've seen that a limited order of 500 is needed by some manufacturers. I'd hazard a guess and say that the cost will be less than the typical bag for life at under £3 per unit depending on the quality and materials; so I'd estimate the upfront cost to be in the range of £10,000 which will be recouped with the sale of the bags.

Bonus round

I have a slogan to help advertise these too. "Pledge allegience to the bag"

Status:

Official Update: After some consideration, Mike and our Marketing believe that because we don't usually sell or give away bags, if we started, we'd actually add to the amount of bags out there, which are more easily accessible at your local supermarket. We do occasionally do tote bags, and there might be a way we can use this as a giffgaff for good project to encourage members to reuse bags, have a think and anyone can submit a proposal to the thread here: http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/News-Announcements/giffgaff-for-good/td-p/7133320

Dedicated giffgaff 4G news page

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The idea:

A dedicated giffgaff 4G ‘news and updates’ page, perhaps www.giffgaff.com/4g similar to www.tescomobile.com/4g and the other networks who have had, for several months, a page dedicated to the benefits of 4G and details of a likely timeframe. A way of registering for e-mail updates would also be fantastic.

Why:

There is huge interest in 4G from quite a significant number of users, myself included, who would like reliable updates on the giffgaff 4G situation, yet there is no recent official communication regarding 4G from giffgaff. Searching the giffgaff website for this information yields a lot of member opinion/speculation. A wider Google-search just yields an article from November 2012 featuring Gregg Baker’s (of giffgaff) comments, but this is very out of date, and again contains no specifics.

This leaves those of us wanting 4G ASAP in a state of limbo. Should we continue to wait for official communication on likely timeframes, or should we defect to one of the mainstream networks? An official giffgaff 4G news/updates page would at least give some certainty to the situation.

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http://giffgaff.com/4g - thanks for the suggestion and congrats on being our 500th implemented idea. We will keep working on this page to add further functionality during the lead up to 4G next year.

EU Id to lift age restrictions

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Hi All
I think EU ID should be accepted as proof of your age to lift age restrictions.
If you can enter the country, open a UK bank account, vote in local UK and European elections. You can even open your own business but it is not accepted to proof your age. This can be for some Giff Gaff customers frustrating and they can't fully use service they are paying for. I hope you support this idea folks and Giff Gaff will consider EU Id's as a solution. Thanks

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Official Update: This is something we'd be happy to implement and it will go into our prioritisation meetings. We'll let you know any information about when we're able to start working on it. Thank you for keeping us 'run by you'.

None of the above.

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(Ok here goes I'm pretty sure this wont go anywhere like my other ideas but...)

I have a very simple idea about Ask an agent options which is encompassed in the title of this new idea^^.

Currently we have these options under Category on the first page:

- Mobile Services

- Goodybags and Payments

- Points and Payback

- Transfer you number

- Blackberry

The line above the options says this:

"Please give us as much information as possible. This will enable us to process your query quicker."

I've recently had two issues come up that aren't anything to do with those categories. For one i was forced to use one of the catergories and in the information field had to say to ignore the data I had put into the questions because it wasn't anything to do with my issue.

My solution is this:

- Mobile Services

- Goodybags and Payments

- Points and Payback

- Transfer you number

- Blackberry

- None of the above

The next page of the "None of the above" option could be a question box, an information box and 2 warnings. The first warning that this option is only for questions unrelated to the other categories. The second warning that choosing this option could mean the answer/solution takes longer as it would take longer to categorise the problem .

The question box is where you obviously put your question. This box could be linked to a search of the forums in much the same way as the search box on the ideas page has suggestions as you type.

If those suggestions don't answer your question then the information box below is for you to provide as much information as possible.

Thats it, what do you think?

EDITED due to suggestion.

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Online indicator

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When responding to help requests it would be good to have an indication to show if the member who posted the message was online.

Perhaps a simple red or green 'dot' by the posters name.

Priority could then be given to members who are 'waiting online' for an answer rather than those who post a question and come back some time later to check for responses.

If the forum app supports this it would 'help the helpers'.

Thanks for considering this and, if you think its worthy of consideration, please give it kudos.

Merry christmas one and all,

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Calls & texts from laptops & tablets: o2 Tu Go for giffgaff?

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Just came on here to search for & give Kudos to any suggestions for this - the only thread I found was back in March when the feature was unknown & wasn't picked up - currently only available to o2 pay monthly , but this feature would go down a storm with GG users.

I have been testing it today & have to say (in agreement with a very good Android app review) that it does seem to work better on higher end phones (could not call on my SG mini, but on the SG note it works perfectly). This may be the thing that brought me back to GG after the data charging fiasco.

link to o2 page for those interested:

http://www.o2.co.uk/tugo/want-it

A couple of media links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21623810

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/03/o2s-tu-go-app/

http://www.mobilemadesimple.co.uk/tugo-the-low-down-on-o2s-latest-app/

Vodafone users looking jealous!

http://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Chill-lounge/Tu-Go/td-p/1367196

Please can you seriously consider this one? This plus the improved £10 GB could make me consider trying GG again.

Status:

Official Update: After a recent idea on calls over wifi doing well, the Top Team now want to seriously pursue a Tu Go style app in 2014 - Kudos the Idea to receive personal updates for it and we'll let you know what's happening.

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Payback Band Alterations

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Current Payback Bands:

Band 1 - £30.00
Band 2 - £20.00
Band 3 - £10.00
Band 4 - £1.00
Band 5 - £0.10

I don't see the point of band 5, it is too little and doesn't encourage more people to help out in the community.

I suggest the folowing changes:

Band 1 - £30.00
Band 2 - £20.00
Band 3 - £10.00
Band 4 - £5.00
Band 5 - £1.00

This would entice people to give a little extra of their time to the community knowing they could make a few more pounds towards their phone.

Especially with the problems in the last week, more people helping would have kept more people happy and updated with the ongoing issues.

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Supporting the police

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Hi,

My partner works for the police. He told me that phone companies charge for them to ping (locate) phones at various levels. As a result often phones as located within a 5 mile radius whereas if there was no charge then they could locate someone exactly where they are and potentially save lives!

It seems a very sad state of affairs that someone may be at risk or danger and a phone company is charging the police to find them and therefore limiting how they do this best. Surely the law should override this but it doesn't. It seems that money takes precedence over the safety of the public whether they be at risk themselves or a criminal is potentially putting them at risk.

I think it would be great for Giffgaff to be a forerunner in saying to the police yes we can help and we won't charge you, it would give the company even greater kudos than I think it already has.

Let me know your thoughts!

Lisa

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Hey folks, it's not that we don't want to do this, it's that we have no control over it - this is something o2 do and unfortunately it can't be done, Sorry!

Implement HD Voice (wideband audio) and/or raise with O2

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HD Voice gives a much higher quality voice connection when making calls. Although some in the community doubt if this is desirable or necessary (see other posts on HD voice), I would urge you to listen to what it's like yourself. Indeed, when I spoke with people at Tandberg (a company that specialises in telepresence / videoconference services) they said that improvements in voice quality far outweighed improvements in video quality when participants evaluated the overall quality of a call.

This has been implemented on Three, Orange, EE, and T-Mobile.

For more info, try Wikipedia, Wired, and Gizmodo.

I understand this can't be implemented until O2 implements it, but can we at least make the request? I'd certainly like to know how many other GiffGaffers would be intersted in having this capability on GiffGaff.

Status:

Status change to 'Under Consideration'

Nigel raised this as a question and as suspected, we are tied to the O2/Telefonica strategy and roll-out around this: "it's something we have on our horizon, but it needs external work and is something that we will revisit later in the year as we have a number of improvements to architect the network to provide greater resilience and growth which are a higher priority than HD and would make it more expensive if we started this now."

after 1 hour of GG-GG calling, automatically cut off

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I don't know about you, but I have a partner who is also on GG. Great! we have practically unlimited calls and texts to each other. well it is until you realise that its 3 hours into a call and you have no minutes/credit left.

I petition GG to add an auto cut off to each call GG-GG of one hour as I have now wasted almost £100 on this.

EDIT:

giffgaff already have this implemented when one has no credit, so being cut off is something that happens as it is if you have no minutes/credit.

I also have decided to ask for it to be an opt in service due to the comments below thanks!

remember to get ideas noticed they need Kudos, to get them noticed give them kudos.

Thanks to the following so far for their support!

@suppers_ready

@william_knapman

@cim

@bmw4175

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Though we like the idea in principle, this would be extremely complex to implement and would require changes in the back-end systems to create new profiles for all members currently using giffgaff to giffgaff calls. It is additionally complex as free giffgaff to giffgaff is not calculated on a credit/balance system but rather on a time-frame. An 'opt-in' program would require even further work and add a layer of complexity to the system.

As this was quite a popular idea, we did some research and the average call-lengths is about 2 minutes and less than 0.2% of all calls last over an hour. On top of that, 0.36% of all calls are giffgaff to giffgaff. So, though this would be nice to have, the amount of work it would take to implement vs. the amount of people who would benefit is just not viable. If we do end up changing the backend systems in such a way that we can implement something like this, we will consider it but until that happens, unfortunately this idea is Not for Us.

(Note, there are a few alternate suggestions in the comments for external apps that simulate this functionality and can automatically drop calls after 60 minutes.)

No more SMS from giffgaff if you've ported out.

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After 2 years on giffgaff, I ported out to 3 (wow, 3G everywhere!). A few weeks later I got a text saying "your free giffgaff to giffgaff calls will expire in 7 days. Top up to keep them..."

Idea: If someone leaves giffgaff, they shuold not be contacted via SMS from giffgaff.

Status:

Hey folks, this is what we already do - ported out members are excluded from our comms. We had an error this month where a few ported out members were included, and we fixed this quickly. Hope this helps.

Publish the Data Usage Statistics by Goodybag.

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There's a massive debate, some public and obviously some behind GG closed doors about unlimited goodybags and data usage as it's so expensive.

So why not publish the data usage figures?

i.e. On the last day of every calendar month (or a couple of days after to allow the data to be collated and processed) publish the average data usage number for each goodybag type.

So for example...

Av Total Uage Av Daily Usage Top 10% Av Total Usage Top 10% Av Daily Usage

£12 Unlim Goodybag 3,000mb 100mb 12,000mb 400mb

£15 Unlim Goodybag 2,600mb 87mb 15,000mb 500mb

This will allow members to see where they sit in relation to their usage and what the top 10% of users are using on average. Most members want to have unlimited internet but really don't want to abuse it, I suspect they would support removing the top 5% of member who are the worst abusers of data usage as this, from the comments staff make, seems to form a disproportionately high part of the cost for the network and at the end of the day this gets passed on to us all.

Publishing statistics and giving members transparency on metrics allows the members to support management in the joint goal of an efficient network for the benefit of the members.

Also publishing Peak and Off Peak statistics could help move abusive users to Off Peak times and thereby reduce network strain.

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giffgaff email

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As many people might currently be considering alternatives to the traditional email providers, could giffgaff step up and offer private and ad free email services to its members?

User	Kudos Count
wjack2010	200
alicepowell	185
bmw4175	146
nfh	115
bethanaaay	115

Yes, I want to see how it turns out
No, that's just silly
Maybe, I could be persuaded