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hello – come in and make yourself at home

The Woodies have a blog. It’s a kind of collective. Not sure we’re about to start a revolution baby, but we might kindle a small debate or two and perhaps raise a smile. Anyway, rather than just blogging corporate Woodreed by fielding our top Woodie (as so many other companies seem to do in a thinly veiled attempt at impressing with their profundity), we wanted all our individual voices to be heard. An agency’s most valuable assets are its people after all. Everyone’s got something to say here and with us everyone’s ideas and opinions matter.

Each week someone different will be blogging. It's mostly about stuff that rocks our world as well as the flipside – the things that just don't cut it with us. We'll blog about inside and outside – inside this glorious industry where we work and outside in the real world.
It's a bit of an experiment, so go with us on this one.

Hope you enjoy.

Tuesday 21 October 2014

The network run by you

October signals for me a very special moment in modern 21st century life: the end of my phone contract.

I have been bombarded by companies alerting me that I can upgrade. Do I stay with my ‘friends’ at Orange? Do I go to android or IOS (never windows)? Do I get the most expensive gold phone on the planet with a 30inch screen?

My last upgrade 2 years ago from my trusty Blackberry to my current HTC was a quantum leap in technology: double the screen size, 4 times the megapixels and 10 times the power!

The demigod iphone 6 has just been released and for an eye watering 3 times my current contract price I can have a phone that has the same megapixels, less power and the same screen size as my 2 year old HTC.

I decided to stay with my current phone and ask Orange to have a contract just for minutes, SMS and data. After being offered 100mb of data a month by the terrifying sounding ‘retention team’ I put the phone down.

This led me to GiffGaff.

GiffGaff is a virtual network that offers a unique brand proposition that they are ’Run By You’. The members help each other out in forums, give ratings on the best sites to unlock your phone, take part in forums to update the sim plans to make sure they provide what customers want and much more.

This revolutionary and very disruptive business model means that they have no customer service department and can pass on these enormous savings to the user. This is why I have just been able to sign up to a rolling monthly contract that is 500 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited internet!

My sim arrived the next day with a beautiful packaging that you could fold into an origami heart (which makes a difference to my bill letters from Orange and their their retention team)

So my upgrade this year will not be to the iPhone 6 but an upgrade to the same phone for half the monthly cost than before. So thankyou GiffGaff.



PS Oh and I also now have signal in Tunbridge Wells!