Mobile Network Comparison

Giffgaff have always earned our praise for their innovative payback system where they actually give cash out to their members for getting their friends to join or helping out on the forums. Many customers find themselves actually getting paid more by Giffgaff than they spend on their mobile phone bill! Following their most recent payout in June, they’ve released some statistics about their massive payback.

In total, Giffgaff paid out a gargantuan £250,000+ to their members. That’s enough to buy 3,125,000 talktime minutes! They paid this out to a total of 34,000 members which, on average, means that each member gets the equivalent of 184 text messages absolutely free. Even better, many members earned hundreds of pounds each through payback and, in fact, one lucky earner made over £3000 all to themselves.

Giffgaff customers can choose to either receive their payback as cash, put it toward their phone credit or give it to a charity nominated by the community. We can’t wait until November this year to hear the details of the next round of Giffgaff payback…

For-profit giving service JustGiving has redeemed itself a little by working with :Vodafone: to launch “the UK’s first free text donation service” called JustTextGiving. And about time too – in the past, mobile networks frequently scraped off huge percentages of donations to charity in service fees making the whole altruistic giving aspect a bit of a farce. Already, twenty one charities, including Cancer Research UK and the Anthony Nolan Trust, have signed up, but all of the Britain’s 184,000 charities can register to use their personalised six-character shortcodes or VICs (Vodafone Individual Code).

The service charges no set-up or running costs for charities, there are no network charges for people making donations. This means that and charities receive 100% of the amount donated (plus Gift Aid if applicable).

Vodafone is already supporting over 1,000 UK charities through its World of Difference programme. It is also investing £5 million to provide support for charities in publicising their new codes with an online pack offering free marketing materials and advice.

It’s just a shame that JustGiving make money off other people’s donations in their regular service while Vodafone make money off oppressive dictators and rip-off UK taxpayers.

Still, let’s hope that JustTextGiving takes off.

Giffgaff has finally made one of its most popular and certainly one of its best value “goodybags” permanent after trialling it for several months. The cutely-named Hokey Cokey costs only £5 a month and comes with a veritable truckload of benefits.

The Hokey Cokey has long been Giffgaff’s second most popular goodybag but they have delayed making it a permanent feature since it was first introduced in December 2010. Now they have made the Hokey Cokey into a full-time goodybag they’ve temporarily ceased the experimental “Giffagff Labs” goodybags while they work on bringing full Blackberry support. Hopefully new Labs goodybags will soon return to Giffgaff providing even better value.

In the meantime, customers can benefit from probably the best £5 monthly offer available in the UK. For just £5, Giffgaff users get 60 any-network UK minutes and 300 texts. This alone is worth £16.80 on Giffgaff or about £42 on most other PAYG networks.

But the special thing about the Hokey Cokey goodybag is that for every minute you get called, you get one extra minute absolutely free! This means that if your mates call you for a couple of hours during the month, you automatically get your allowance bumped up to 180 minutes of calls a month for just £5. And you still have the SMS allowance too.

We’re thrilled this incredible value deal is now always available with Giffgaff especially as we can offer Giffgaff SIMs with £5 free credit to get you started.