“I currently have an iPhone XS Max which I bought refurbished from giffgaff. It came immaculate and although the battery does go down much faster than it should, I have just put up with it for the past year or so and will shortly be replacing the battery.
However, I recently stupidly took a chance and bought a iPhone 13 Pro Max from giffgaff refurbished like new. Once again, immaculate but this time the battery ran hot straight away and it lost charge at an alarming rate (100% - 0 in 3 hours). I sent it back straight away and got a refund of £679. Although cheaper than new, I do not expect to pay that kind of money for a phone that clearly has a major fault.
I will avoid giffgaff in future.”
“Generally good service, until they don't charge your card even though auto top-ups is turned on...
Sometimes this is just inconvenient, other times it's annoying, but sometimes it's really *scary* when they block you from making calls, when it's really urgent that you have phone access...
GiffGaff say...
"You may be wondering, 'well, why if my balance is 3p right now, why would auto top-up not trigger as it's below £3?'. This is also saving you from unnecessary top-ups - the balance needs to actively fall below £3 in order to trigger (for example running low on credit whilst on a call with a premium number). If you start below £3 then auto top-up will simply not know to trigger on the system - in which case you would need to manually top-up first."
Because their auto top-up triggers only at the £3 account balance, but not at any account balances below £3... if auto top-up fails, there is no safety net. You will eventually experience a service interruption, until you are able to intervene, to top-up your credit manually yourself.
I've been scarily stranded once in Italy, once in the early hours of the morning on a night out in strange town, and yesterday on site at an intruder alarm activation (break-in) on a deserted industrial estate.
Through a logical error in Giffgaff’s programming, balances below £3 are ignored as a trigger to activate auto top-up. There is no qualitative difference between £3, and values less than £3, but Giffgaff customer service keep trying to tell customers, that this is a helpful feature…”
