Mutter Bundle #37: Nothing Is a Family Except Your Family
30 Apr 2026 15:25
A Slice Mobile comunity post. A small suggestion. Separating account status from SIM status.
A quick suggestion, if I may. At the moment, it seems (please correct me if I'm wrong) that once you port your number out of Slice (which I just did), there is no straightforward way to rejoin using the same login, such as via a Google account as was the case for me. Once logged back in, all I see is that my account has been closed. To be fair, if I had to guess, I'd say that manually contacting the Support Team would probably allow me to reopen it and rejoin on a new plan on the same account. But in an ideal world, I shouldn't really have to do that. Honestly, a "Rejoin" button waiting for me when I log back into my Slice account, would, or at least might go a long way. At the end of the day, wouldn't that be one of the things that encourages customers to come back?
Essentially, I think that a disconnected SIM shouldn't = an account closed for good. Deleting an account for good should be a separate process. A customer should still be able to create or hold an active Slice account even without an active SIM, something that, in my opinion, networks such as giffgaff have got just right.
I apologise in advance if I am "bashing" Slice (well, it's never really bashing, always a friendly suggestion, but still) for the absence of something that isn't actually absent. In which case, sackcloth and ashes for me, I suppose.
30 Apr 2026 19:10
Pitlochry, Scotland.
30 Apr 2026 19:38
A giffgaff comunity post. Two and 1/2 pence of yours truly on Klarna Mobile and the like.
Ah, those Gigs-powered mobile plans, their name is legion. Revolut Mobile, Zable Mobile, Klarna Mobile...
I mean...
Personally, I probably wouldn't port my number to any of them, but I could see them working well as a combo alongside something like giffgaff. giffgaff for calls (since it's very much so-so for data) and Revolut/Klarna/Zable for data, as a SIM I wouldn't mind ditching at short notice without worrying about the porting-out malarkey.
If the Revolut Mobile experience is anything to go by, there was (last time I checked) an absence of any clear pricing structure (I mean, how much is roaming in... spins the Wheel of Randomness... the Philippines?), and an absence of a streamlined process for restoring a lost eSIM. And very much the feeling of a beta-stage product in general.
My understanding is that Gigs (MVNO enabler behind Revolut, Zable, Klarna and the like) is essentially a white-label MVNO solution designed to help virtually any business spin up their own mobile offering.
I'm not against it as such, it just seems like at the moment it is very much prone to the odd teething issue here and there.
But as a second, cheap(ish) data SIM on the Vodafone network... why not?
https://community.giffgaff.com/d/34570230-new-competition/11
01 May 2026 00:31
Queen Street Station. Glasgow, Scotland.
15 May 2026 06:37
My Slice Mobile community post about whether giving your time and brainstorming effort to businesses as a customer in return for a fake “family” feeling is worth it. Written after Slice restructured the community and removed many posts and categories.
It has become too corporate, hasn’t it?
But at the end of the day, they’re a business entity, not a family. It might make total sense for them to evolve the community away from what it once was (the thing that originally attracted us) even if that meant dropping some ballast (us).
And even if someone looks back at that initial buzzing phase (full of ideas, brainstorming, community spirit, cosy online home excitement, etc.) and sees the “founding slicers” being overly invested with their time and effort as a mistake… well, it wasn’t a mistake of the business. It was a mistake of those invested.
C’est la vie.
https://slicemobile.discourse.group/t/where-have-posts-gone/1246/5?u=fmr
24 May 2026 20:17
My giffgaff community reply arguing that their 5GB EU roaming allowance compares poorly to some other mainstream MVNOs, and is far below the maximum any network can realistically offer.
Not sure whether with most competing networks (those targeting the same kind of customer, i.e. an MVNO user who's after a cheaper, no-contract, no-credit-check option) you "pay a bit more for that data".
Just some like-for-like comparisons at the ubiquitous £10 price point:
- Lebara. 30GB domestic, 30GB EU roaming;
- SMARTY. 40GB domestic (their standard allowance, they frequently offer even better deals via their own promos or through third parties like Uswitch), 12GB EU roaming;
- 1pMobile. 50GB domestic, 14GB EU roaming, covering destinations giffgaff doesn't, such as Switzerland.
Of course, there are other networks like VOXI that offer no free roaming at all. Or TalkMobile and ASDA Mobile that match giffgaff's 5GB EU roaming allowance, though TalkMobile beats giffgaff hands down on domestic data at the budget end.
Either way, looking across the UK MVNO landscape, one could be forgiven for thinking that giffgaff's EU roaming allowance is far from being some carefully calibrated maximum any network can offer without putting their business at serious risk.
https://community.giffgaff.com/d/34579410-roaming/10
26 May 2026 06:17
Visual Voicemail & Call Catcher on giffgaff. Yet another workaround. My giffgaff community post.
Don't know about you, but a proper voicemail — call catcher and, as a bonus (though not a must), Visual Voicemail — are one of those features I truly miss on giffgaff.
If you're anything like me and running a second SIM just for data alongside your main giffgaff SIM, there's a bit of a workaround for this.
Here's the thing. My secondary data SIM is a 1pMobile SIM (runs on EE, in case you wondered), and 1pMobile supports all the voicemail bells and whistles, i.e. call catcher and Visual Voicemail are included. What I do is forward all calls on my 1pMobile SIM to 1pMobile voicemail, then set up conditional call forwarding on my giffgaff SIM to my 1pMobile number like so:
**61*[my 1pMobile number]*11*25# — when not answered within 25 seconds;
**67*[my 1pMobile number]# — when busy;
**62*[my 1pMobile number]# — when unreachable.
That way, any missed, unanswered, or unreachable calls get diverted to my 1pMobile SIM, which in turn forwards them to its voicemail.
Hope this helps someone!
