Today's Service Outage

[gaffer]

As you very likely to be already aware, today we've suffered a major service outage - it was caused by major water damage to the computer network in a our data centre and it took nearly 8 hours fix.

Firstly I'd like to offer my apologies for the interruption in service and thank all of our members for their patience whilst we fixed the issue.

The service is largely back up and running now - the exception is new activations which are currently being queued and our service teams are working on a fix.

Some of you have asked about compensation - we're going to focus on fixing the issues we've had and make sure we have a stable service first - and then we'll sit down think of ways to make it up to you.

We'll continue to post updates on the support community so click here for the latest news.

Thanks once again for your patience.

Mike Fairman

CEO giffgaff

Update 21:15

Thanks for everyone's comments - especially those appreciating our way of keeping you up to date!

In response to a few of the issues raised...

Porting - those that were scheduled for today may have been delayed - we're continuing to work on these as fast as we can. 

Texts - we think that for most of the outage, inbound text messages should have been delivered. Whether those that failed initially will ultimately be delivered will be determined largely by the re-try policies of the network from which they were sent. In other words, you may or may not get them depending on which network sent them.

Root cause - we will of course investigate this and report on the conclusions. Our data centre does have an uninterruptable power supply and backup generators but its possible that even if these worked the water damage to the network gear was sufficient to bring the service down.

[petermecheng]

These things happen. It wasn't your fault the pipe burst. Don't worry about compensation. Just invest the money in ensuring that the network doesn't go down in the future. Thanks.

[gsenff266]

While it was a pain and a bit irritating not to have use of the phone today, these things happen.  Glad that I didn't have urgent need of the phone, and maybe I wouldn't be taking such a relaxed view of things if I had, but nonetheless you can't factor in things like burst water mains.

[ali_akcay]

Hi Mike,

I scheduled my number to be transferred today (16/3/2012) from tesco to giffgaff. The tesco sim card isn't working but the giffgaff simcard still has the temporary number. Can someone tell that my number will transferred to giffgaff today? I was reassured by other members that it would happen today but it looks doubtful. Ever since I joined giffgaff I experienced problem after problem and this is the final straw. My number is VERY important to me.

Can anyone please help me and give me DEFENATIVE answer?

Please

Ali

[kazeus]

get a life moaners. who can predict burst water main haha what a bunch of crap. glad it only took so long. plus i thought only outgoing calls/messages were affected not the incoming ones. isn`t that right?

[maddyloughran5]

Hi wow I'm fairly new to giffgaff but am sooo impressed at the way I've been kept informed today! Well done all involved these things happen you can forget my compensation not interested!!! Go giffgaff!!!

[zippygeorgebungle]

Giff should have insurance when something happens like this ie fire, water damages etc etc and obviously any impact or losses made to the company due to it.

[kazeus]

i am sure they are insured but was that an act of god ?

[evogizmo]

Thank you to everyone at giffgaff for keeping us informed during the day on your progress

yes this has been annoying, yes this has cost me money ( no calls = no sales) yes I have had trouble keeping in touch with my sick wife, but these things happen. Those that say it  is not acceptable and you should have a backup well yes but I am sure the lesson has no been learned if you are not happy there are other networks out there but you may find you spend a touch more so don't keep on at least all is back on now.

if it could have been fixed sooner i am sure it would have been after all if we cant call or text they cant earn money

in my book a apology from the boss goes a long way.

will still be using and recommending giffgaff

[castaway]

Sorry to labour the point again, but like Ali, I'm left between the devil and the deep blue sea with porting that didn't happen today.

So between all the patting of Giff Gaff on the back and the slagging, could someone, somewhere, just take a minute to let us folks left in limbo land between our old networks and Giff Gaff know what's happening - at least when we can expect to be ported over?

If someone could just SAY, I might be able to avoid going out and buying a PAYG phone in the morning that I don't want and won't otherwise need.  

[daldred]

And I've just had email from giffgaff apologising for the outage.   I don't think any previous supplier has ever done that: most of them seem to think email is something used only for selling people things (if they've actually heard of it).   

Incidentally, I'm a web manager for a large institution; we have backup plans, failover, redundancy and seperate data centres. We can still go down; contingency plans only deal with what your nightmares tell you might just happen - not with what Sod's Law  (if it can go wrong, it will) throws at you outside the nightmares!.