Our service outage on Friday.

[gaffer]

As you will be aware we had a full service outage on Friday.  This was due to a major water leak at one of our third party suppliers which knocked out both our primary and backup systems. The outage began at 10.10am and lasted until just after 6pm, when calls, texts and data were working again.

During the outage we worked with our supplier to fix the problem as quickly as possible and made it our priority ensure that all our members were kept up to date with the latest developments.  We are extremely upset to have this happen to our members and are committed to doing our utmost to prevent issues like this from happening again.

I’m pleased to report that things ran smoothly over the weekend and we used the time to fully repair everything and tidy up individual problems caused by the outage. For the more technically minded, Nigel, our CTO , has started a thread in the community which will go into the detail of the outage and what we have done, and will be doing to prevent it’s recurrence.

This year, as we grow as a company, we are committed to making substantial investments in our infrastructure. Due to Friday’s outage we will be reviewing these plans with the intent of bringing forward investment in capacity and resiliency. I’d also like to assure you of our commitment to making the giffgaff experience as good as possible.

It has been amazing to see the messages of support and the suggestions that we should make a charitable donation as a way of making up for Friday’s outage.  We therefore intend to make a £10,000 donation to a charity of your choice.  The charities are ones you nominated for Payback in December  -  to vote just use the polling buttons on the main blog page before the end of the week.  

[ssppyy21]

all this nonsense about missing calls as has been mentioned we all have landlines and email and other means of communication so please stop crying for nothing what compo do you want for 8 hours worth of lost service ok in all it costs about 33p a day on a £10 goody bag now divide that 33 p by 24 hours in a day and  its 1.37 pence an hour times by 8 is 10.96 pence and you lot are crying about that GET A GRIP and a life while your at it what are you lot like 

[eroomuk]

I'd prefer the charities to share the cash.

It seems a bit mean to pick one when something like Addison's disease affects so few people it has no chance of winning.

[smacha]

@ssppyy21

*sigh*

Firstly, my 'useless posting' is my opinion. I thought giffgaff (whose attack dog you seem to be) actually cared about the views of their customers? If not, my mistake. Even more reason to think twice about staying.

Secondly, you obviously didn't get my point. I was saying I'd rather they'd done that and ONLY that, instead of attempting to hoodwink their customers with such an insincere business move. Giving to charity is great, but don't whitewash it with some sentimental sap and try to make out that it's somehow 'making it up' to the customers. It's also quite telling that they've chosen £10,000; the amount that gives them the maximum tax break %. How about they take that 11p everyone seems to think they're entitled to, multiply it by the number of customers they have and give THAT sum to charity? Then maybe I'll take them seriously.

[ssppyy21]

smacha

seems to me and others your complaining for nothing so if they just give everyone 1 extra min on the talk time that should do theres your compo and im no one attack dog just amazed at how selfish others are for the sake of 11 pence they would see people and animals in need go without....................disgusting greed   

[bywaterwhite]

Do people honestly believe that gg sit on their profit stream and put nothing into improving their systems? Too many people go on about putting the money pledged to charity toward improving the infastructure, but more sensible people know that the network is run by a third party company......O2. This problem was unforseen and gg are to be commended for the work they did to resolve the issue and the work undertaken to keep everyone continuously informed of progress. Good luck to anyone thinking of migrating to one of the overpriced service providers in the hope that you get a better service. But don't hold your breath expecting the kind of dedication to information from the so called big boy's. I fully understand that the down time inconvenienced everyone, but if you are a business person or someone that relies solely on on your mobile, it is your responsibility to have another method of contact in case of loss of service. This happens to all networks during peak times, eg new year, and noone bats an eyelid, but as soon as there is a unforseen problem that is beyond anyones reasonable control, the pack mentallity kicks in. Makes me ashamed to be honest. Well done.

[smacha]

@ssppyy21

"Theres your compo"? I thought I made it abundantly clear in my first post that I didn't want any compensation, nor did I think it terribly unreasonable that giffgaff weren't offering any. Please read my posts before making accusations.

[cmb1960]

@smacha - of course you re entitled to your opinions. You are also obviously entitled to leave GG.

Seems to me that every network experiences times of outage yet most just say a hollow "sorry" and carry on. GG have done something more tangible and offered to donate some cash to charity. The detail is, I believe, less imprtant than the principle. Well done GiffGaff. As always, you have a listening ear and care whether you are dong things as well as you could.

[fezaroo1]

should this donation really go to a  worthwhile cause, i believe so these services need all our support .  fezaroo1

[craigyboy87]

charity starts at home what a skank this is I lost out on custom that day an people that say I should off had a back up well no I should be able to relay on my network am disgusted an as soon as my goody bag runs out I Will be searching for a new network may not find one as cheap but sure ill find one1 more reliable

[leightond]

Donation to charity is good but you did say that everyone would be compensated. .. !!!!!