Hello everyone,
Our goodybag
Consultation ended on Sunday so based on your feedback I’d like to share with you next steps but before I do anything else, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to take part. Since the consultation went live we’ve had over 8,700 comments from 86,000 visitors, which is pretty amazing.
If you are new to the consultation here’s a very quick reminder. We are reviewing the prices of our unlimited data goodybags at £12 and above. The reason for this, as we have shared in previous
data management consultations, is that unlimited data goodybags attract a relatively small % of members who use a hugely disproportionate amount of network capacity. This excessive usage can then impact the experience of the majority which doesn’t seem fair. We want to give you a goodybag range that is great value and structured to limit this kind of excessive usage.
Your feedback
We’ve read every single comment and categorised them to help us pick out the main themes. It’s clear you value data over more minutes with Option 1 coming out with the most votes (89%) but we also recognise that many of you said none of the options on offer gave you what you were looking for. Specifically for those of you who feel you need unlimited data or just liked the peace of mind it gives you, £20 felt too high.
In order to keep unlimited at less than £20 you challenged us whether we could extend Traffic Flow (i.e. data management during peak hours) to help ensure a fairer distribution of access to the network.
Positive feedback came from people who liked the fact we plan to implement one of the Community’s most popular ideas to allow you to repurchase a goodybag early if you run out of data or minutes. Many also liked the idea that with new bigger bundles of data at 3GB and 5GB you could do more tethering.
To summarise what we originally proposed and what we plan to roll out from September 24th, see the table below:
* Terms and conditions apply, for more detailed information check out this
Knowledge Base article.
What next
A decision on pricing is about as big as it gets for giffgaff, as is a decision on how we protect the network experience which has been an area of concern for some of you over recent months. With both of these in mind we put forward some pricing options that we saw as the quickest way to protect the network experience whilst still delivering great value.
In your response you have challenged us to strike the right balance between the experience you receive and the price you want to pay.
So taking on board your feedback there are 3 specific changes to Option 1 that we want to make:
1. The current £20 goodybag will reduce to a discounted price of £18 for new and existing members. That’s for unlimited data, unlimited texts and 2000mins. The discounted price will be available from 24
th September until the end of March 2015.
2. For existing Members who joined giffgaff on or before 21
st August 2014 who want unlimited data but don’t need the minutes available on the £18 goodybag, we will keep the current £15 goodybag available. Following your feedback we have done this to reduce the impact on your monthly spend. To get this, you need to select this goodybag within 60 days of the price changes taking place and we would recommend ticking ‘recurring’.
Click here for more details on how this will work.
3. To protect your data experience, even during the busiest hours of the day, we will add the following Traffic Flow measures to all of our unlimited data goodybags:
a) Where members are using more than their fair share of network resource during the busiest hours, a 300 kilobits per second (kbps) restriction will be introduced for the remainder of the peak period. This speed will ensure that members are able to use the internet but with less impact on other members.
b) A peer to peer speed restriction of 100 kbps during peak hours will also be introduced for these members.
Any speed restriction will be removed at the end of the peak period.
In addition to these changes, we are also kicking off a project to improve our video optimisation capability. This will have two key benefits to your experience – it will reduce the amount of data which is used to stream a video on giffgaff, meaning that your data allowance goes even further. In addition, it will reduce the load on the network and protect the network experience.
In summary here’s what the new goodybag range will look like as of 24
th September:
We do understand that unlimited data is popular but it does create network problems that we are seeking to address with these changes. We want to keep the impact on our existing members to an absolute minimum. With this in mind when we look at usage, 79% of members on the £12 goodybag will be unaffected by the price change and as we now plan to keep the unlimited £15 goodybag, 100% of existing members on this plan will be unaffected.
We are really proud to say that our members take the time to help us make the big decisions and we are not aware of any other network who consults on pricing in this way. Above anything else we want to create a goodybag range that allows us to continue to deliver our members great service and value. With your help we hope we now have a plan to achieve this.
Ash
Marketing & Experience Chief
