New International Pricing and EU Roaming Changes

[mark_a_e]

Hi all,

As promised last week, our International Calling price overhaul has launched this morning with over 220 price reductions and an average price reduction of two thirds. In addition, we have changed the price of sending an International text message to anywhere in the world to only 8p.

In our most recent Goodybag Community Consultation, many of you showed an interest in great value International calling and this morning’s changes are in response to this feedback - it also feels like the right move for giffgaff as a business. According to the latest UK census, 7.5 million of us who live in the UK were born in another country, that’s around 13% - and regardless of where we were born, many more of us are likely to plan holidays abroad, have friends who have emigrated or another reason to make International phone calls from the UK. The combined impact of this is that all of us in the UK spend over 2 billion minutes on our mobile phones to International destinations each year.

For those of you who are interested in great value International calling as well as UK calling, we hope that these improvements combined with our recent goodybag changes have created a great all round offer. If you have any friends or family who might be interested in our new International calling prices, then help us to spread the word and earn some payback on spread giffgaff, or let them know that they can order a free SIM here and join the community.

Whilst the vast majority of prices are being reduced, there are 7 International price increases (as shared in my previous blog post) which have also taken place - this is because for these 7 countries, it was actually costing giffgaff more to complete the call than the old price of the call. The cost to giffgaff of completing an International call varies between countries and can change from time to time. When they change, we may need to update our prices to some countries to reflect this, but to make sure that members are always informed about any International price changes, we will be creating a new International page and any affected members (i.e. those who call the relevant country) will also receive a text message about the change.

We also have some good news related to Roaming in the EU. As of Monday next week (1^st July), our EU roaming prices will also be updated as below:

• Making a call to anywhere in the EU will cost 24p/minute
• Receiving a call will cost 7p/minute
• Sending a text will cost 8p
• Data will cost 45p/MB
• Making a call whilst roaming in the EU to anywhere outside of the EU will cost £1/minute

So – that’s all the news for this instalment. Find all of our International pricing information here.

Mark.

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[philiplittle40]

[andreww]

Thanks Mark. Why did you choose to charge as much as the EU allows you to again when roaming? Couldn't you have come in cheaper and made giffgaff's offer even more attractive?

[shortylumber]

good news on all of that i could of sworn people wanted an international goodybag that worked abroad more than decreased international and now roaming rates but hey ho still very nice to see change

[pinkcalculator]

Complete seperate things though shorty and they might still do that too though considering changes due next year on the eu it's probably not worth it

[pinkcalculator]

Orange are charging more I've just been txted from them

[ken_peck]

Congratulations GG, I applaud you efforts to keep prices down. Many thanks from a satisfied customer.

[richardhughes]

I've been a giffgaff member from very early on, but it has always been my "spare" number. My Vodafone contract is about to run out and I've been wondering whether I can switch to using giffgaff as my main number. But unfortunately, international data prices remain a major obstacle.

I currently pay Vodafone £25.50 per month for 100 minutes and 1.25Gb data. I could get a similar package from giffgaff for less than half the price. But crucially, each day I am in Europe, I can pay Vodafone £3 and get to use my "home" allowance. 

So, for example, when I was on holiday in France earlier this year, I paid £3 per day for a week and could use my gigabyte data allowance. With the new giffgaff rates, that would have given me just 46Mb. It's true that I'd saving money all the time I wasn't away, so it's not a completely fair comparison. But the giffgaff rates still make international data roaming prohibitively expensive.

Can you find some way of making the price of international data roaming more sensible? If you did, I would abandon Vodafone and all the other forever. 

[stealthybigboss2]

thanks

[padath]

Roaming data rates are still disappointingly too expensive. I'm holidaying in France this year and will be using a local SIM whilst I am there. If GG had a reasonable roaming goodybag then I would be paying GG rather than a foreign operator.

I understand that roaming charges will be scrapped next year. Come on GG, what about scrapping them early - it might bring some new customers in.

[esoel_]

Thanks! You're the best!