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.  

[ravi_p]

gosh some people are really ungrateful and selfish. yes it was very annoying that the service was down for half a day but at the end of the day giffgaff saves me so much money and they got on the case straight away,im not going to start crying because i could not use my phone for 8 hours. and if that means some charity gets 10k now well..it was a small price to pay

[robert1961]

I think its a great idea for the money to go to a charitable donation, Im fed up with the me me me World, Nice one Giff gaff

[claireah]

My services are still off well iv not been able to text for over a week now but my Internet and calls are fine but I still think its great that they are giving to charity, well done giffgaff

[waynehiggins1]

Seen as it effected us the customers wdf has a charity got to do with it 

[waynehiggins1]

~ DONT GIFFGAFF KNOW CHARITY STARTS AT HOME ~ you mucked up my friday nite so wdf you giveing it charity ?

[korg7]

I agree that the customers should be compensated. On the of the outage, The train I take from college to home was canceled and as I have a broken leg the only alternative way was to get a Iift home. Because of the outage I  was unable to contact my mum so she could pick me from college. This meant that I had the only option of getting a taxi home which cost £20. I understand giving to a charity is good however the customers should be first. I don't have a job so every penny is really important. I would be happy if they extended my goodie bag for a week at max! . My previous phone company had a similar issue and they gave me 100 mins which I thought was a nice gesture of goodwill

[jellycatfish]

Well i like the charity idea, good going. It was my first week with giffgaff and yeah it was abit inconvieniant to have loss of service for those hours but stuff happens and im not leaving. I can understand some people are pissed about it but what they forget is that giffgaff isnt meant for business usage and ANY mobile network will tell you that you should NEVER solely rely on your mobile phone and always have some form of backup plan. So people should stop moaing and looking for a quick freebie.

Im always happy to donate to charity, and in honesty i'd be quite happily go another 8 hrs without a phone to see them get even more money lol. Think of it as a sponsodered event for charity

Also thanks to giffgaff staff for keeping customers upto date on the situation as it developed. Most companys would just of given you a load of crap and left you in the lurch as to what was happening.

[cvernon1988]

Help the people who has Hydrocephalus or who has Spina Bifida
Shine is a charity that helps people who has hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida I dont know much about  Spina Bifida  but i do know about hydrocephalus as i have got Chronic Hydrocephalus which i have to keep having Brain Surgerys for if my Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy Fails or have a shunt put in i am under at New Queen Elizbirth Birmingham Hosptail Under Mr Y C Gan Who is my Nerosurgeon who treats me as and when needed and also montiers my condtion as there is No Cure for Hydrocephalus just treatment off eather a Shunt or ETV Brain Surgerys 

Hydrocephalus is known as Water on the Brain 

I was dignosed last year with Hydrocephales which does have an inpact on people lifes who suffer with it as this condtion is rare and most people will be like what the hall is hydrocephalus 

Here are the symtoms people have with hydro 

go to http://www.medicinenet.com/hydrocephalus/article.htm for details as its a complex condtion to explai

website for further information on the Condtions and the charity that helps people who suffers with like myself 

http://www.shinecharity.org.uk/hydrocephalus 

[markjbailey2002]

It is all well and good giff gaff giving money to charity, but a lot of people rely on there mobile phone. It is the second time that I have experienced this sort of network outage with giffgaff. I have not experienced this sort of outage with any of the other networks I have used in the past. Reliability of the network, is something that giffgaff need to address.

[peterskelly]

CHARITY? Put the 10k towards a redundant server or pay a better plumber. My contract with you is for WORKING Network services. That does NOT include morality, good-will, warm happy cuddly feelings or any other sh*t3. Two weeks of no service is two weeks of no service, is very poor indeed. Get your house in order, give your customers compensation.