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.

[benchmark51]

Regarding the vote to which charity you are donating £10000 to. I think you are wrong to give the whole amount to 1 charity.  Give an equal amount to each charity or a percentage of the amount according to the vote. 53% votes gets 53% of the money. That way all charities will get something and all voters are happy.

[rorypk]

Haters gon' hate. GiffGaffers gon' Giff.

[pat_1uk]

thankyou very much giffgaff for getting the problem sorted so quicky,i like many others were a bit annoyed at the situation but these things happen,but what annoys me more is the people on here telling other people to stop moaning,why?everyone has the god given rite to voice there own opinion,whether its moaning or praising,you that are all telling people to stop moaning so your saying it didnt bother you in the slightest that you lost a service your paying for,mmmmmmmmmmm sure you wasnt at the time,yes ok giffgaff is cheap and very very reasonable no one will get what giffgaff offers any where else,not entirley sure i agree with giving all that money to charity,and thats my opinion and i'm entitled to it,i dont want any compensation personally,but mayb as a gesture from giffgaff give peeps some points give some to charity and spend some on trying to make sure that it dosent happen again,and yes thats my opinion and i'm not moaning,i think giffgaffs brilliant value for money,and my last words are please let others have there say whether good or bad they are entiltled to do so if you dont like whats being said dont read it :smileyhappy:

[shirleyrose9]

I could have had a new wig at a bargin price they called 5 times then sold it to some one else ive now had to felt tip my head but i think people can tell its not real hair but what do you think

[shirleyrose9]

They didnt want to tell us friday what had happened but it leaked out.

[syorksdeano]

If giffgaff wanted to, they could have closed the community down and only had updates regarding service on.  Or they could have done what other networks do and just denied a problem at all.  The truth is they kept customers up to date with information as soon as they had it

[shirleyrose9]

I was driving home with mate friday afternoon drunk when i found out the police pulled me over i opened the car door my mate said to the police you dont want to upset him when hes drunk

[gothicfrog]

Hi Mike.....No need to worry, sometimes things happen which are just outside anyones control, and this was certainly one of those occasions..

Thanks to the way this network is run, updates were more forthcoming and support was widespread by staff and members alike

I have been on other networks when this has occured (the last was T-mobile) and they couldn't fix it more quickly...i was without service for nearly 2 days with barely any communication or apology was given afterwards.

The positives that GiffGaff can draw out of this are that they can learn and grow and put more contingency plans IF (and a BIG IF) this ever happened again...but a burst pipe in a dta centre is not exactly something that you would expect...you have to feel for other companies also using that data centre that were affected...bad day for them as well!

Thanks for everything...I will most certainly continue to support this most excellent network :smileyhappy:

[shirleyrose9]

What if u r robbing a bank and can not get hold of get away driver what a net work

[m4ckk]

Message to CEO GiffGaff:

Any compensation due to me - Please give it to Help for Heroes - Thanks

Rather have a day without a mobile than a hand to hold it with......