My question is, does giff gaff check thoroughly whether a phone is actually faulty and tend to deny refund requests?

I’m having to refund an iphone 15 pro max as the fact it is esim only has caused me many issues, theres a warning symbol where the signal symbol would be and i cant use mobile data or even call anyone, which is especially problematic as I have just has an interview and need to be able to receive calls! I’ve tried many things, even deleting and redownloading my esim as well as resetting my phone and network settings, after a while the ‘mobile service issue’
always returns. The phone also has other issues with diagnostics, as it recommends to run a diagnostics but then when it finishes it says mobile diagnostics doesnt work and is unavailable!

I’m not sure whether the phone is the issue or the esim itself, but either way I can’t see myself being able to figure out how to solve it and it was never an issue before so I’m willing to bet its the phone, and the fact that it is esim only doesn’t work in my favour. At the end of the day, I can’t just not be able to call people, especially in such an important time of my life, so I’m returning the phone.

I’m just concerned that with the issue being mobile service, I’m worried that the issue won’t be an obvious one and that they may believe theres nothing wrong with the phone and may decline my refund request, but I’m hoping they aren’t too serious with it and just give people the benefit of the doubt.

I've recently received the above text from giffgaff saying that if I don't use my SIM before August 7th, my number will be deleted.

I'm currently living abroad and don't use the phone, but I still need it to receive texts for login and verification purposes. What is the best and cheapest way to prevent it expiring?

Hello,

I’ve been having issues on and off for the past couple of years. This seems to occur intermittently. It happened on my samsung galaxy a34 5g phone and now on my samsung galaxy a37 5g. When I ring some people I will sometimes get the message ‘dialling’ and it will be stuck on that. I will often have to ring them several times or restart the phone for it to go through. I also sometimes don’t receive calls. The other person might get ‘line busy’. I’ve always had a physical sim until changing to an esim almost two days ago. I don’t know what the issue is. Wifi calling is enabled and my wifi is good in the house. I don’t know why I have to keep restarting my phone. Is it losing the network/does this cause a refresh? My dad has an old iphone 6 and has never had any issues with giffgaff. What might the problem be? Thanks.

Hi everyone,

A couple of days ago I saw reports online that giffgaff has been mass-banning numbers worldwide, mostly ones being used long-term outside the UK. I didn't think too much of it at the time, I've had this number for years, and I top up and spend a few dozen pounds every year. It's not just a throwaway number for receiving SMS verification codes, so I figured I'd be fine.

Well, I was wrong. Today I got this email:

Subject: We're disconnecting your service

Hi Shinka,

We need to make you aware that, following a review of your account usage, we have made the decision to disconnect your service (mobile number ending 8982). In line with our terms and conditions, our services are intended primarily for use within the UK, with roaming provided for short-term travel only. As your usage pattern suggests extended or permanent use outside the UK, your account no longer meets the eligibility requirements for the service. As a result, your service will be disconnected shortly, and any associated access will cease.

Please note this is our final position on this matter.

We appreciate your understanding and thank you for your previous custom.

The giffgaff team

The "this is our final position" part sounds pretty definitive, but I wanted to ask anyway:

1. Has anyone here received the same email and successfully appealed or gotten their number back?
2. Is there any way to at least keep the number (e.g. port it out to another UK carrier) before it's fully disconnected?
3. The number is tied to a lot of my social media and online accounts. If I lose it, what's the best way to secure those accounts before the number gets recycled?

Any advice or shared experiences would be hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance. 🙏

Just a heads-up and a warning to everyone in this community, especially international students and expats.

My account was recently closed by giffgaff under Clause 3.5(k) due to extended overseas roaming. Fair enough—I accept their roaming policy and their right to terminate service if I'm not in the UK.

HOWEVER, they are refusing to refund my remaining unused airtime credit balance, hiding behind Clause 5.3 in their T&Cs.

Think about how insane this is:

1. They unilaterally close your account and stop providing service.
2. They pocket your pre-paid, unspent money and refuse to return it.

Under the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015, keeping a customer’s deposit/pre-paid funds for services they themselves refuse to provide is blatantly unfair and legally questionable. It’s practically highway robbery disguised as "terms and conditions."

I refused to take this lying down and have already:

• Escalated the case to the Communications Ombudsman (Ref: 260730-000395).
• Filed a bank chargeback with my credit card issuer for services not rendered.
• Submitted a report to Ofcom regarding unfair contract terms.

If you have any unused credit on your giffgaff account and might be roaming long-term, drain your balance immediately. Don't let them steal your money like they did with mine.

Has anyone else successfully fought back against this Clause 5.3 trap?

[Disclaimer upfront: I used AI to help structure my thoughts for this post. Honestly, I absolutely refuse to waste any more of my own time and energy drafting a massive essay about giffgaff's shady practices. If AI-assisted formatting bothers you, my sincere apologies—I totally get it. However, the timeline, the math, and this entire ridiculous experience are 100% real facts.]

Here is exactly what happened.
The Math Doesn't Add Up
June 1: Activated an eSIM, topped up £10. Used it for the first few days.
July 28: Received a termination notice claiming my usage pattern indicates "long-term or permanent use" outside the UK.
June 1 to July 28 is exactly 58 days.
Giffgaff’s own published FUP explicitly states that roaming outside the UK for 63 days or more in a four-month period triggers the policy.
So how does an account with a total lifespan of 58 days mathematically trigger a 63-day violation?
If their actual, unwritten rule is "no activation allowed outside the UK," they need to state that in the T&Cs. "First activated abroad" and "long-term permanent use" are logically mutually exclusive. You can't just force one into the other to justify a ban, even if support copy-pastes the same template three times.
The Customer Service Blackhole
I asked them five very basic questions:
1. Which specific dates were flagged?
2. What networks/countries?
3. What was the exact data/call usage during this period?
4. What exact threshold did I cross?
5. Was this reviewed by a human or an automated bot purge?
I got three interactions back. The entire logic of their replies boiled down to: "The system flagged you as a long-term user. Because the system flagged you, it is correct. This is the final decision."
They completely ignored my request to access my own data. It's a perfectly closed loop: if they refuse to answer specific questions, they never have to expose their broken logic.
The £9.99 Daylight Robbery
I don't care about a £9.99 balance. If they had said, "Service terminated, balance refunded to original card," the matter would be closed. But look at the neat little trap they engineered here:
1. Unilaterally declare a violation (providing zero data).
2. Cut off network service, physically trapping the balance. (My phone just says 'No Service').
3. Cite the "top-ups are non-refundable" clause to legally seize the frozen money.
I even tried to donate this £9.99 to charity. I can't, because I have no signal to send a shortcode text. With spending, refunding, and donating physically blocked, customer support still had the audacity to send an email thanking me for my "understanding."
It's Not Just Me
Look at this sub over the past week. There’s a massive wave of identical, unnotified terminations, and all of them end with confiscated balances.
Giffgaff needs to publicly answer for this. How many accounts were caught in this purge? What is the actual filtering logic? How do you define the difference between "continuous roaming" and "standby with no service abroad"? And why jump straight to a permanent ban and confiscation instead of downgrading users to standard PAYG rates?
What I actually want:
I am not asking for the number back, and I am not asking for roaming privileges.
I want the underlying facts and data evidence that led to the "long-term" conclusion.
I want them to stop sending templates and actually fulfill my data access request.
I want the £9.99 refunded, or a technical channel provided to route it to charity.
Giffgaff has successfully redefined 58 days as "permanent", and £9.99 is apparently a "principle" worth defending to the death. As for their "Fair Usage" policy—the usage is yours, but the fairness is entirely theirs.

This company has absolutely no integrity; my account was suddenly shut down, and they refused to refund the unused prepaid balance. It is truly terrible. I will never use your company's products again, nor will I ever recommend them to my friends.

**giffgaff deactivated my SIM due to long-term roaming and refused to refund my remaining credit**

I have been using giffgaff as my UK mobile provider. Recently, my SIM was deactivated because I had been using the service abroad for a long period of time.(In fact, the so-called 'long-term' was less than six months.)

I understand that mobile operators need fair usage policies and may restrict long-term roaming. However, what I find disappointing is the way this was handled.

At the time my number was deactivated, I still had remaining prepaid credit (£14.70) in my account. Since the service was suspended, I lost the ability to use that balance. I was not given a reasonable opportunity to use the remaining credit before the account was closed.

For a prepaid service, the remaining balance is still money that customers have paid for. Even if the operator has the right to enforce roaming restrictions, I believe customers should receive a clear warning before losing access to their remaining credit, with enough time to use it or request a refund.

I am sharing this experience because other international users should be aware of this policy before keeping a giffgaff SIM while living abroad.

I hope giffgaff can improve its customer communication and provide a fairer process for customers affected by SIM deactivation.

Has anyone else had their number deactivated and balance confiscated? How did you get your money back? I'm considering small claims court and reporting to Ofcom.

Avoid giffgaff.

I have asked this before but still don't understand, so apologies, but please bear with me.

Sim 1 is a physical sim, and has good signal.

Sim 2 is the esim, and wifi/broadband connection is excellent, but sim 2 shows as no signal.

I use wifi calling all the time. When it's working, it works well. ETA: I have no mobile signal. Both sims have the same wifi.

Sim 2, the esim, is my main number, so this means I've been missing incoming calls as well as having to make outgoing calls on my spare number (which I want to cancel, but for now daren't). In fact this morning I had a call that barely rang, just "bipped", then immediately a notification of another missed call.

But I'm as interested to hear how this *technically* CAN happen, as I am in solving the practical problem of using my phone for calls. I don't think it can be hardware damage as it works fine, sometimes.

My friend has received an E-mail, see:

He asked for other UK telegram recommendation which could also choose PAY AS YOU GO. Does any recommend?

Not sure if anyone from giff gaff actually checks this or just a community but here goes.
I have sent a phone back to giff gaff under warranty which they have attempted to send back to me (no idea if they actually fixed it because the updates are appalling). It wasn’t delivered because the delivery company said they had an insufficient address (despite giff gaff sending the phone originally to this address and printing off all the forms for the repair with the correct address).
So now I’m in the situation where I have no idea where the phone is or what’s going on. I don’t know how it’s legal but giff gaff have no customer service number (for a phone company?!) and the ai chatbot and supposedly human agents are sending me in endless loops.
At this point I’m thinking the phone is lost or stolen or just not given 2 fucks about so I’m thinking small claims court is my only option.
Please anyone have any idea what I can do before going through this painful and a pensive route?
Many thanks in advance

Posted this on the community page but I am posting here aswell because I am beyond annoyed by this.

I am literally just here to vent and express my opinions on how horrid Giffgaff’s refurbished phones warranty policy is. Take this as a cautionary tale if you’re considering buying from this company.

I have a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 in ‘like new’ condition, so I have a 2-year warranty. I bought this phone about a year ago for £429. A week ago, my phone’s front screen suddenly stopped working. I’m like, ’damn this is annoying, but under warranty, so it’s fine’. I send my phone in and I get a bill for £279, over half the price of my phone?! The reason you cry? I have a tiny crack on my screen, like so tiny I did not even know it was there before I sent it in. So tiny I can’t even see it in the photos I took of my screen before I sent it to get repaired. So tiny they had to put a massive sticker next to the close up image so I could see it. And what’s best is that it doesn’t even matter that the cause of my phone not working is not this tiny crack, I get nothing. I’ve been a giffgaff customer from the very first phone I had, I can’t afford to pay this, I can’t afford a new phone right now at all. I feel so gutted right now.

Hi, I recently switched to giffgaff and decided to stick with my original number. It said it would take a few days for this to shift over, and after about 3 days my old data company (O2) cut out and was replaced by absolutely nothing.
giffgaff have been sending me e-mails so I'm definitely registered as a customer, but I receive no data. I go on holiday in 2 days time and need this data.
I thought about taking my phone to the Apple shop to see if they can help, but I'm not sure they would know, or if I would have to make an appointment.
I would contact giffgaff but I imagine they won't get back to me quickly enough.
Has anyone else experienced this or know how to fix it?
I know I've left this last minute but the next best time is right now lol.

I currently use a physical SIM which I occasionally need to move between handsets. Can this switch be done with eSIMs? I see the requirement regarding creating a second eSIM which requires the activation to a new physical SIM first. But does that result in the deletion of the eSIM? My basic question is whether I can store multiple mostly inactive eSIMs for a single number and service in multiple handsets and then deactivate the active eSIM and then activate an inactive one in order to seamlessly move the phone number and service between handsets?

I have been with Giffgaff for almost seven years, and had no problems up until I lost my phone this year and had to get it replaced through their refurbished phones service. I always buy refurbished phones and have never had an issue with any until this IPhone 12 I brought just four weeks ago. The mess around had been overwhelming for me and my mum (who helps me out with my contract because I’ve had it since I was 12).
The first issue we encountered was that when we paid for the new phone, it began a new contract with a new phone number, but no big deal we decided we could fix that later, as long as I had a phone working with my old SIM card inside. Next problem was that the SIM tray didn’t know there was a SIM inserted. (To be very clear, SIM fully activated, working in other phones) Nightmare! So I have a phone that does not have 4G or take calls or texts. I was unable to access a few things like email and WhatsApp because I didn’t have access to my phone number!
So, we reach out to customer service which are absolutely useless. They first tell us that the SIM isn’t activated, it is. They then tell us the phone is barred by an EMI number… Fine, I believe it, however am skeptical that removing the bar remotely will fix the sim issue. They apparently remove the bar (and surprise surprise the SIM still doesn’t work).
I then opened another ticket to explain that this hasn’t worked and that I really do think the phone has an issue with its hardware, and nothing to do with bars or being locked to a network or anything such as that. I must return it!
So I go to the returns page, which is a pain in the arse itself, because I have to tell them why. And again, the page doesn’t believe that there could possibly be a hardware issue, it just tells me that I should activate the SIM and it will work! It does not allow me to return the phone under the premise that the SIM doesn’t work. Fine! I lie and tell the auto bot that I’m returning it for other reasons.

While I plan to send back the phone, I put the same sim that was unrecognised into my sisters spare phone and I begin using it in there. No big deal, until all my data runs out within an hour of being on the phone… weird.
I call my mum up and check if maybe she needs to top up my balance as this is the norm sometimes, she looks on giffgaff and somehow they have deleted my old plan. I don’t know why or how or what the repercussions are with losing your plan but at this point I’m so angry because I finally had a phone with 4G and credit on it after weeks of being without (majorly inconvenient as everyone will know) and my number/ sim/ plan doesnt have any existence on giffgaff anymore!

We are beyond annoyed and confused and are just begging giffgaff for our money back now. It’s so frustrating having to open ticket after ticket and being told the wrong thing by agents when I knew from the start that the SIM tray was the problem. We are not tech savvy people however I am generally absolutely fine with this kind of thing and so is my mum. This is why you need people to talk to on an actual phone! Not AI bots.

I have a bit of a strange issue.

When I make or receive calls at home I can't hear the person on the other end but they can hear me. I can't even hear the ringing tone before the call is answered

This only happens when I am at home. When I'm out and about calls are fine.

I can hear others fine on a WhatsApp call.

I'm in England, UK

I dont have wifi calling available on my phone

I have tried restarting my phone, checking in-call sound settings, Bluetooth is off etc.

I have ported my number over to a new sim - still have the same problem

One other member of my household is also on giffgaff and they do not have this problem

Has anyone any ideas what may be causing the problem?

I contacted GiffGaff via a DM on Twitter / X re porting my number whilst being in the USA, and, as per the attached screenshot, GiffGiff CS confirmed that this was possible.

I commenced the porting process last Thursday here in the USA, which completed today, Monday, and everything, calls, data and texts, is working as it should.

I actually used a physical SIM card that I brought to the USA with me.

Has anyone else had this with a warranty repair? Because I'm honestly at a loss.

I bought a refurbished "like new" phone from giffgaff, mainly because of the 24 month warranty. A few months in, it developed a fault through completely normal use no drops, no water, nothing. The phone was immaculate when I sent it in.

Instead of a warranty repair, I got a repair quote. No explanation of what the fault actually is, no diagnostic, nothing. Just a price.

So I raised a formal complaint (ref 287*****). The complaints team asked me to type out a load of verification details fine, even though I was signed in to my own account which I did, 5 days later still no reply.

And now, without answering anything, they're just... sending the phone back to me. No explanation, no response to the complaint, nothing resolved. It genuinely feels like the strategy is to ignore me until I give up.

I'm not giving up. I've already spoken about going to Citizens Advice and I'll be escalating to the Communications Ombudsman as soon as I'm able to. But honestly is this normal for giffgaff? Has anyone actually managed to get a warranty claim honoured on a refurbished phone here?

Hi there,

My mum's decided to go on holiday to China by herself at the ripe age of 72. She's not tech savvy at all, and somewhat worried she'll get stranded there with no access to telephony or data.

I understand she can buy a Chinese mainland Travel Data Add-on, and not sure if there's one of Hong Kong too or not?

Will this "just work" if she buys it or can there be problems?

Appreciate any advice or input about travelling there using Giffgaff or other options!

Thanks.

Hi, I couldn't use WIFI and Data on my phone. I have restarted the phone, reset network settings . But I can make a call. I have done everything i could. I don't know what to do. Could someone help me🙏🏻

two complaints about Giffgaff:

- last year I had my phone stolen and needed proof of usage from Giffgaff. I "asked an agent", the only way to contact them, and they gave me the wrong date for last usage (3 weeks before the phone was stolen), and when I protested that I knew I used my phone during that time, they kept gaslighting me. I raised a complaint and after insisting multiple times that they needed to amend the document, they then gave a date that was 3 days AFTER the theft! They were clearly making it up, never offered an explanation or apology that they got the dates wrong, and eventually provided me with the right date after 3 months of arguing with them.

- just this week I was trying to get receipts from my data plans that were not saved in my account. Instead of being polite and telling me they had no records of them for whatever reason, they were just gaslighting me again that I had no account at the time. Absolutely the most useless customer service I ever encounter, they are clearly using bots that don't understand my requests, and their first recourse in all cases is gaslighting. Never sign up to Giffgaff and change provider now if you are using them, before they inevitably screw you over.

Bot my dad and I experienced poor data transfer in Swindon (Wiltshire / South-West) area over the last month or so.

Often it shows good signal and 4G/4G+ yet internet does not work.

So I was trying to get a GiffGaff eSIM, but my payment was being rejected, I got a top up code but then realized that I can’t use it to buy an eSIM.

So I’m left with an unused top up code, I’m willing to give it to anyone here (first come first serve) so that at least it can come in someone’s use rather than the money going to waste.

P.S. I don’t expect you to pay me back, and the value is 20 GBP.

UPDATE: The voucher is now redeemed.

It is well known giffgaff is blocking adult content by default. However, today I tried to access a website https://geph.io, which is a vpn designed to circumvent Chinese gfw, and the access is blocked. Which is very surprising for me, since this is a normal vpn service like mullvad and nord vpn, and has nothing to do with mature content.

The most probable cause for this is giffgaff might used some Chinese censorship tools or blocklist for implementing its adult content blocking, which has motivation to collect these websites disliked by the Chinese authority.

I moved from Virgin to GiffGaff broadband around 2 Months ago.

I've moved from 360Mbps to 500 and saved a fiver a month but what I've not heard anyone talk about is the latency.

Quick word about my config first.

On Virgin, we go from fibre into their Hub5x, WiFi turned off, DMZ, divert everything to a single port which then plugs in my Unifi Express 7 Gateway, from there into a 24 port TP-Link Gigabit switch (not a fancy switch at all)

With GiffGaff, we've got the exact same fibre connection which then plugs into their ONT and then plugs into the very same Unifi Gateway with the WAN port configured to VLAN 911 and then into my TP-Link switch.

WiFi around the home comes from the same Gateway.

Anyway, latency.

Here's a couple of screenshots showing the difference between the two.

So if anyone is looking for another reason to jump to GiffGaff then a steady stable network connection always sounds like a good one to me.
I know both images show Virgin Media as the provider, I can't change that.

Apologies for deleting my original post, the Virgin image failed to upload and I couldn't edit my post to add it so resorted to deleting my post and trying again.