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.  

[frjack]

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nathanbunn said:

If we should be getting compensation from giffgaff because of a fault with their provider (note: their provider), then I am going to sue my local corner shop because Warburtons didn't make a delivery of bread and because Unilever didn't deliver the PG Tips tea bags so I could have my breakfast this morning.  That's an entire meal gone to waste.  The shop isn't at fault, just as giffgaff isn't at fault, the suppliers didn't come through, the suppliers let my shop down and they let me down, giffgaff's suppliers let giffgaff down and they let us down.  But who cares who pays, right?  We want our pennies back!!!

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Take a moment to allow some oxygen to reach your braincells and consider this:

Don't you think there will be a claim for compensation from GG against the supplier? That's how business works, and you can bet it will be worth more than the donation and possibly more than compensating affected individuals.

If people are going to sound off, they need to understand that GG will not lose out, as the supplier is liable for not meeting their obligation and there will be some sort of compensation mechanism written into the contract.

Less friendly ( and less ethical?) companies have to compensate us, when they fail to provide the service we pay for - does being more friendly or ethical excuse a company from the basics of fulfilment of their contract and any penalties associated with failure?

And finally a note to the person who said the outage was 1/3 of a day (for calculation purposes):

Did you (or anyone else) notice the service getting increasingly flaky, during the 16 hours before the actual outage?

[dragon_eye]

Great as charities get help from private than government. However look at more backup in case of disruption next time. A resilient network is better for a good customer's satisfaction

[alexscourfield96]

macmillan cancer fund

[sim454]

After reading every ones responses........

How can you possibly decide in two days that you're going to pay £10,000 to charity!  I didn't have my say along with hundreds of other people.  I don't live on the internet or the GG community, so I would not see any posts on asking us for our opinions.  However, I read my emails.  It would have been polite to send us an email telling us you are running a poll asking if we want to be compensated or for the money to go to charity.  Not an email telling us it is going to charity and to vote for our chosen charity!!

This is part of my last email from GG before the big blow email:

'Once we are sure that full and stable service has been restored for all members we will look at ways to make it up to you.'

I read that with confidence that I would be compensated in some way, and I just had to wait for an email telling me what they’ve decided in how they will compensate me.  But no, next email was telling me some people have suggested give the money to charity, so they thought “within two days” they will do that.  I tell you why, because it's a cheaper option for them!

Where’s our rights!? We all deserve a say in this.  I think scrap the charity decision and run a poll for 7 days asking us if we want to be compensated or for the money to go to charity!  With an email sent out to every member.

SJD

[mgb2]

Personally I don't think we should donate to the same charity as last time... I have nothing against a charity donation, but, spread it about a bit.

[tlo]

I thought this would go down like a lead balloon lol while this day and age charities need all the help they can get  it was not the charities that lost out.While i am the first to admit it wasn`t that long but i did lose out on something because i didnt have my phone(they sold out) while being anoyed it is not the end  of  the world.There are others that use there mobile for work ect and i would think they will be pretty miffed and have a right to be.So giffgaff is this taking the easy way out and how much do you think after tax ect the charities will get?if you insist on going down this route to please both sides why not say spilt it between your users and which ever charities you choose.You can please some of the people some of the time

[brulaw]

Just caught up with this  ( 36 pages )

 I'm really surprised at the response to this ,  the most surprising thing is the amount of negative and selfish comments  ,only  the  selfish and greedy people would resent this offer by giffgaff, at the end of the day it was an outage that was fixed in a reasonable amount of time , the updates were kept going throughout the outage  and the staff did a good job under what must have been hectic conditions  ,  I personally don't think compensation was warranted , giffgaff didn't need to make this gesture  ( can anyone seriously say they think ANY other network would do the same ...... Don't think so ! )  , but to their credit they have . ...... and I applaud them for it . 

[paulcooke]

People should give GiffGaff a break, if this was other high street service providers we would have been told to like it and lump it! well done GiffGaff for a excellent donation to a great cause!

[transficks]

Outages can happen to the best and although the effect on me was minimal I have a slight problem with the affluent amongst us donating monies away that should be spent on infrastructure if not compensation ! ( No compensation required by me as long as the best is done for the service ! )

[yorkermiles]

£10,000 to a charity?...what a load of **bleep**.....bloddy cover up........share it with the customers!!!!!