MSE News: Giffgaff starts selling mobile handsets – but are its deals any good?

Earthworm

kerri_gt wrote: »

I can't believe people pay for handsets full stop. At the end of the day, the majorly of phones across each tier, ie non smartphones, smartphones, etc all do much the same thing. If a network wants my custom is my money, they can darn well provide me with a phone too.

But you are paying for a phone whether you cough up a bit up front or not... The people who get their phone for "free" are often getting a raw deal and over the life of the minimum term tend to pay more than those who pay something up-front to keep their costs lower. The lowest costing option is usually buying the phone outright and going PAYG/SIM Only.

NFH

kerri_gt wrote: »

Separate phone purchase and sim contract would deff me more expensive for me.

Why is that? Have you compared the costs over two years for example?

kerri_gt

Sub £15 a month, all the data, texts and calls I require plus allocated EU texts and calls.

marks7389

kerri_gt wrote: »

Sub £15 a month, all the data, texts and calls I require plus allocated EU texts and calls.

Which of course doesn't answer the question, and without knowing how much data, calls and texts you use nor what handset you have, is impossible to gauge whether that is good value or not.

Personally giffgaff have paid me to be a customer over the past couple of years, subsidising the cost of my smartphone such that the effective cost to me over the past 30 months works out at around £6 per month including service.

But then I am an extremely light user, using the handset mostly on WiFi.

infiniti

joeluken wrote: »

Expansys may be another option to consider for those seeking to finance a sim free phone that offers better pricing and 0% finance over 10 months on some products.

Example Sony Xperia Z1 (sim free and unlocked from both) -

Giffgaff price £530 or over 12 months £50 upfront £43.03 pm total £566.36

Expansys price £450 over 10 months £45 upfront £40.50 pm total £450

watch out for expansys as they are real a-holes to deal with as I returned a pristine nexus 4 to them as they missold it to me as a UK model when it was not and they are claiming it was scratched when received at their warehouse.

absolutely terrible customer service as they don't answer emails and callcentre agents are only there to initially make the RMA process difficult and thereafter deny consumer rights legislation.

I believe they are attempting to defraud me. if you have to return anything to them take photos of the item with the date showing on it and the imei number on the screen of the device and on the box to protect yourselves

joeluken

infiniti wrote: »

watch out for expansys as they are real a-holes to deal with as I returned a pristine nexus 4 to them as they missold it to me as a UK model when it was not and they are claiming it was scratched when received at their warehouse.

absolutely terrible customer service as they don't answer emails and callcentre agents are only there to initially make the RMA process difficult and thereafter deny consumer rights legislation.

I believe they are attempting to defraud me. if you have to return anything to them take photos of the item with the date showing on it and the imei number on the screen of the device and on the box to protect yourselves

Good to know. That said I've also had issues with appalling customer service from giffgaff on the network side so I guess it may go with territory. Pays your money takes your chance....

draper29

One point to take on board if you use giffgaff is that their network is Not robust. My wife has been without service and intermittent service numerous times in a 9 month period. Do a search for giffgaff disgruntled customers and shocking customer service.

joeluken

draper29 wrote: »

One point to take on board if you use giffgaff is that their network is Not robust. My wife has been without service and intermittent service numerous times in a 9 month period. Do a search for giffgaff disgruntled customers and shocking customer service.

I also had issues with the network and even when it worked the data performance was pretty poor irrespective of location. That's before getting started on the appalling customer service if you require actual giffgaff staff, rather than community members, to do something.

After a few months I binned giffaff and moved to a new network offering better value, customer service and data performance for my needs. So I now spend less than I did with giffgaff and it just works.

Joe65_2

joeluken wrote: »

I also had issues with the network and even when it worked the data performance was pretty poor irrespective of location. That's before getting started on the appalling customer service if you require actual giffgaff staff, rather than community members, to do something.

After a few months I binned giffaff and moved to a new network offering better value, customer service and data performance for my needs. So I now spend less than I did with giffgaff and it just works.

Which Network may I ask ?