[EDIT REQUIRED] "Why is my phone number deactivated"

figment_uk

https://www.giffgaff.com/help/articles/why-is-my-phone-number-deactivated

In the section headed “When is a SIM card considered inactive?” the paragraph:

These conditions are present to prevent the deactivation of members SIMs who have very little activity or who are active on the Community without using their SIM card much.

should be deleted as it has not been relevant since community activity was removed as a way of keeping a SIM active.

woodyuk

h_henna & figment_uk this has raised a point that I’ve noticed before but never got round to finding an answer to.

The T&Cs say:-

13.3. Your SIM Card will be disconnected unless, at least once every six months, your Account is used to:

a) make at least one call, SMS or MMS to another number (not including calls to emergency services or Member Services);
b) make at least one connection to the Internet;
c) make at least one airtime credit or Bundle purchase

Now as we know,access to the giffgaff main site and the community is free (or meant to be) from our giffgaff sims so if a member has zero credit or goodybags,and their only usage in a 6 month period are visits to the community,would this count as making a connection to the internet and so prevent their sim from being deactivated?

If it doesn’t,shouldn’t there be a section saying that it doesn’t count as an internet connection?

jaymailsays

figment_uk should be deleted as it has not been relevant since community activity was removed as a way of keeping a SIM active.

OK, let me be first to ask.
When was community activity removed as a way of keeping your SIM active?

And even if there was an Announcement to that effect, the current Terms & Conditions 13.3 (b) disagrees and does not refer to the community at all in s. 13.3

You could argue that without a goodybag or credit balance a visit to the free rated NHS website should also preserve your number for a further 6 months, when using the device with an active giffgaff SIM. However visiting your dashboard page for free, should also preserve your sim, even though it is not part of the mainstream community. In fact I’d go further, if you visit your account page from a third party computer, that too should preserve your sim.

When you look at it closely: b) make at least one connection to the Internet;
doesn’t specify whether the Internet connection is required to be a giffgaff mobile connection or a WiFi connection, as long as you log in as a member to giffgaff.com and do something significant, that should be enough to keep your number active.

h_henna

Hey @figment_uk

Thanks for tagging me.

That’s super interesting because I read it a little differently. I thought that the sentence ‘These conditions are present to prevent the deactivation of members SIMs who have very little activity or who are active on the Community without using their SIM card much.’ is using ‘community activity and no usage of a sim card’ as an example as to how a SIM may be deactivated as opposed to saying that ’a member should/shouldn’t remain active on the community to keep their SIM cards active’.

It would be great to see how other members read it too so we can decide too so we can go from there.

Hope you have a great evening.

Henna =] x

bill48er

h_henna or who are active on the Community without using their SIM card much.

This is the part of the sentence that may give rise to confusion and is probably surplus to the explanation.

woodyuk b) make at least one connection to the Internet;

As woodyuk says, clarification on this could be improved - to either explicitly say paid for data and that free data connections (eg to giffgaff) do not count if they have zero credit.

sloz

figment_uk
woodyuk
It was specifically..
Receiving payback points to your account that was counted as keeping your sim active
this was removed along with receiving calls around March 2015, or was it the year before, my memory is failing me

The date usage doesn’t need to be chargable
(a chargable call, text or data usage has never been stated in the terms)

So a connection to any web page that you’re able to achieve with no credit
(community pages, dashboard and account pages and PayPal.com)
Will prevent your number /sim from being deactivated

figment_uk

jaymailsays

Unless I’m much mistaken, community activity was deemed a way of keeping a SIM active around the same time that receiving at least 4 calls of 10 seconds duration was, and the statement I’ve proposed be deleted clarified (if that’s the correct term for such a confusing sentence) that being active on the community without using your SIM would keep your SIM/number active.

Irrespective of whether or not community activity is or was a qualifying action, I still feel that the statement I’ve proposed be deleted is not needed.

There are many things wrong with the Terms and Conditions which is something that has been discussed elsewhere. I am specifically referring to the wording of the above help page.

figment_uk

sloz

Thanks for reminding me. I’ve just checked the Ts&Cs that applied when I joined in 2012, which said:

which would be where I got the impression that community activity kept a SIM active (albeit not the community activity itself, buy the payback points awarded for it).

h_henna

Thanks for getting involved folks and I can now see why this is causing so much confusion.

I guess the first thing that we’ve got to get answered is whether ‘making at least one internet connection in a period of 6 months’ is still a valid way of keeping your SIM active. Then the follow on question to that would be whether the community falls under that bracket considering it is zero-rated.

As well as whether receiving payback points can still be used as a way to keep your SIM active.

I’ll fire these off to the teams that look after this so they can take a look into the technical bits behind it and get some more clarity on this.. and based on what they get back with we can request for this to be rephrased or removed.

figment_uk

h_henna

making at least one internet connection [using mobile data] in a period of 6 months’ is definitely still a valid way of keeping your SIM active and it doesn’t matter if the page you connect to is free-rated or charged.

Item (c) “At least 4 received calls of more than 10 seconds” and (e) “The receipt of Payback points” from the 2012 terms pictured at message #8 were both withdrawn as a valid way of keeping your SIM active sometime around March 2015 (both removed by stealth with no announcement).

Whilst considering rephrasing this clause, I think it should make clear that giffgaff’s services (i.e. the SIM card) must be used for the qualifying action because many people use their number for internet based call/messaging apps (e.g. Whatsapp), and mistakenly believe such use should keep their SIM active.

harrrrrry

figment_uk I think it should make clear that giffgaff’s services (i.e. the SIM card) must be used for the qualifying action because …

Actually the distinction should about using wifi, because it’s specifically when other services use wifi that those services will bypass giffgaff and not use mobile data, therefore not counting for keeping their number active.