Problems with Giff Gaff website?

13 months ago, I bought a GiffGaff sim card on Ebay for a whole $1.37. It took 15 days to arrive, but it activated ok, and worked for a trip to Ireland. It still works, but GiffGaff is very particular about not roaming after 60 days without connecting to a U.K. cell tower.

I also bought a Three sim card at the same time, on Ebay also. It was $7.40. I think I specified the activation date. It also worked well, and continues to work here in the U.S. It's Pay As You Go, so I loaded $20 in it, and it's still active. Last month I used it in Ireland again, still worked ok.

There are some SIM cards available on ebay when I did a search. I'm not very tech savvy so I'm a bit leery of buying from someone other than the provider.

I see Vodaphone is having a sale at the moment. In the past, I did use their SIM cards and was very happy with them.

Holafly seems a bit expensive IMHO.

Unfortunately because people have been buying and reselling SIMs on third party sites, Giffgaff announced that it would "pause" international shipment apart from Australia, Japan and Spain:

https://community.giffgaff.com/d/22269542-changes-and-new-features-helpers-updates-thread?near=248

Simon, that makes sense--because those are the three places that showed up in the dropdown menu. I was really confused, and now I understand. Thanks for the update!

Interesting, Simon, thanks for the info. I just checked on Ebay, and there are still a whole lot of listings for GiffGaff sims. Pretty cheap prices. 20 Gb. for 10 pounds. Some of the sellers are located in the U.S., some are located in the U.K. I expect they all have inventory, so they may still sell them, but when their inventory is sold, they will be out of business, I suppose. They do make it clear that the buyer has to activate the sim through the seller, so now I understand why.

Have you tried the app? For iPhones I think that’s the suggested method of getting an e SIM.

I have an account with GiffGaff, so I just logged in with my laptop. I found no reference to esim anywhere. And one heading said "sim only". There was an option for "Buy a sim for your mates", and looks like I could order sims from them to be delivered to my account address or to a friend's address. And my account address is in the U.S. Curiously, it said "You could order 30 more sims this month".

The sims are free to order. You give them to a friend, and you and your friend each get a 10 pound credit when he activates it.

I guess that explains the Ebay resellers.

"I found no reference to esim anywhere"

As Rocket says they can be ordered via the app.

I started the app, logged into my GiffGaff account. Couldn't find any reference to esim. Then I used the "help" function, and found info about how to do it. Seems I can convert my sim to an esim. And if you create a new account, it looks like you are given an esim option. The sim then becomes non-functional. Your existing balance and everything stays the same.

I actually don't want an esim in this case, because I want to be able to easily and quickly move the sim from phone to phone. If a new iPhone with an esim dies, how do you get your account working on another phone?

I did not try the Giff Gaff app. For the record, I have an Android phone.

I ended up buying an ESIM from Vodaphone. It seemed like the best option.

Thanks!

"If a new iPhone with an esim dies, how do you get your account working on another phone?"

This is a good point - it is a bit of a hassle. They recommend contacting their customer service agent via chat to have it reprovisioned.

If you have a dual physical SIM/eSIM (in an Android phone for example), you can transfer back to a physical SIM to receive a code, and then reload the eSIM. So not easy.

For non-Americans, it's worth noting most iPhones sold in all but a handful of markets still support a physical SIM as well. So outside the US and a few other places it's really just the iPhone Air that is eSIM only.