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.

[nathanbunn]

Until I tried making calls and sending texts, I didn't notice anything was wrong.  I used data as normal, kept getting updates and emails to my phone as though nothing was wrong and was getting my incoming text alerts as if it was any other day.  For compensation, just ensure that there is a stronger contingency and recovery plan in place.  I love giffgaff, but outages, even small ones, won't help your company grow.

Also, pizadave, if you make £10,000 in one day, why are you on giffgaff and not on a "more stable" network that won't fail in the ways that giffgaff has?  Or, how come you don't have a backup device?  It isn't just giffgaff's responsibility to ensure you don't lose business, if you have £10,000 as you claim at stake each day, you are responsible too.  Although, being so sucessful in business as you are, you know that already, don't you ...

Not one person complains when giffgaff is working, but the second there is a blip, a number of users cry that they want compensating for their loss or threaten to leave.  No company is perfect.  No company is immune from disasters.  If you want to jump ship because of one day, be my guest.  Just remember why you came here in the first place.

[misza222]

Thanks for the update.  S**t happens. Learn from it.

[dormouse]

Very disappointed with what happened today. I am self-employed and I have lost money today as people have been unable to call me.

[mattsai]

LOL why are some people complaining about today's issue, wanting to claim compensation, and want to switch to another network? Are you for real??? The Giffgaff team were very professional today by constantly updating us on the issue occurred today. They didn't really have to update all the time, but they wanted to because they care about their customers. Sorry to hear about the water damage. It must've been a blind panic when that happened. To people who are complaining right now - stop it. At least the Giffgaff team were doing their best and have now got it up and running again. If you're always concerned about service outage and you are expecting important calls, then have a backup phone! Why do you think I have 2 phones on 2 different networks? All networks face outages, and at least you wouldn't be stuck with an emergency handset. Well done Giffgaff for your professionalism, and many thanks for he updates. Infinite kudos for taking care of us customers

[penryn]

Thanks giff gaff TEAM for sorting things out & keeping us up too date with information I for one understand break downs can't be helped THANK YOU FOR SORTING ! 

[sosfox]

No Compensation for me thanx,it was nice to have a quiet day for a change,besides,GiffGaff SAVE me loads of money anyway,so thanks but no thanks to compo

[sssingletrack]

I feel the same as a guy who commented a while back. I don't want any compensation, give it to charity or share it between all the people who helped out today. Your all brilliant and you all require a bonus for the service given today.. Well done, kudos to you all.

[hal666]

I would just like voice my opinion - I have no doubt that for some of you, being without service has been a pain but reading all the negative comments really annoys me. To all the whingers & moaners out there, I don't think the rupture of a water pipe can be blamed on the network & given the severity of the problem, I actually think that managing to get the problem sorted in 8 hours is pretty **bleep** good! For those of you now who are about to spout off that it's affected your businesses, what kind of people run a business without having contingency plans? For instance, an emergency back up sim with another network - put minimum credit on it & at then you can at least contact other people to let them know there is a temporary problem with your usual number - not exactly rocket science is it?! For the rest of you who don't rely on their phones for business, what did you all do before you had mobiles? It's not exactly the end of the world being uncontactable for a mere 8 hours surely! When I heard what the problem was, I was anticipating that it would take at least a day to get it sorted. I would like to say a big thank you & well done to Giffgaff for fixing this in a comparatively short time, and an apology from the CEO shows great customer care. WELL DONE GIFFGAFF!

[bammbam]

Hiya Mike

At first i was annoyed and got told to leave the network by sum1 on here so i think that needs checking please as they also said that i wanted compo and sympathy..well how wrong were they.i dont appreciate been left a message like that for 1..can youy look into this please when you are up and running...ALSO...im not looking for compensation and the people that are i think its disgusting because mike and the team have kept us up to date all day..i dont think compo is needed really by any1..thanks again mike and team...hope u fix it thanks and gud luck xx

[r16pab]

Backup Servers would of been a good idea but thats life,  Problems happens, I have had worse issues with my home interent off for days. The updates today was fantasic about what was going on, Informed every hour a least. 15 years ago mobiles was not common, the world still carried on.  Nobody else offers the same value for money as giffgaff, if you want to complain then move on and pay a lot more and get less. I think this was solved partially very very quickly. Cant really ask for more. Giffgaff is growing and can only get better.