i_am_sy
Data on/off
MMS on/off
Premium calls on/off
Premium texts on/off
International calls on/off
International texts on/off
UK calls on/off
UK texts on/off
I brought this up as "ringfencing" in Ash's online chat some time last year and intended to write it up in Labs, but it became clear that Labs was totally broken and pointless. And sadly, there's still nowhere useful to post things like this. You can post in Labs, but it will only be marked as being "looked into" and then ignored, no matter how sensible it is. You can post in Contribute and it will be discussed, and then it will be ignored.
It urgently needs doing, nevertheless. Indeed, unexpectedly losing credit like this is probably one of giffgaff's biggest user complaints and a trigger for threatening to leave and scattering abuse all over giffgaff and social media.
Anyway, back to the plot. There's at least one "off switch" of paramount importance, and that Charge to Bill (better known as payforit). Though we're seeing less payforit frauds, they're still happening and though PSA insists that networks can implement an option to block payforit-like charges, giffgaff has not implemented it and shows no sign of understanding why it's so important to be able to block such charges. But other networks have done so, and it's high time giffgaff implemented an off switch too.
benjamin567 these settings would still need to be set to ON
Most of these settings need to be OFF by default, at least for new users who begin service by buying a goodybag.
PAYG data should default to off, so that if a goodybag runs out of data, the service initially stops rather than starts using up credit. Then, the member gets the chance to start a new goodybag early, or (unlikely) to enable data from credit. The only sane alternative to that is to give the option to automatically start a goodybag early instead of it being a manual service as at present.
MMS would best default to off for new members, so that phones incorrectly set to send long messages as MMS can be corrected rather than wasting credit unnecessarily.
Premium calls and texts would best default to off. A new member unknowingly using a premium service would then be told "You need to enable the Premium Rate option". It's no great hardship to have to do that the first time, and more informative than the present "Sorry, you don't have credit" as currently happens for members who only have a goodybag. So, it needs to be off by default, especially for new members.
Payforit/charge to bill needs to be off by default for new members, otherwise it doesn't achieve its objective. And it should probably default to off for existing members too, unless they've used payforit/CTB services regularly without objection.
International calls and texts I would turn off for new members. leave on for existing members but make sure they know they can turn them off they wish. Its particularly important that Channel Islands/IOM be classed as international, because they can't easily be recognised by number alone.
