As an addendum to that last post I would like to express my emphatic agreement with the opinions of the wonderfully observant crew over at The Gruen Transfer. When they described Optus as “Telstra with a different name” they were bang on.
I just received my first bill from the lovely people at Optus. Oh what a joyous occasion.
- Expected bill: $49 + $7 (phone) + cost of special numbers and texts.
- Amount due: $104.70. O….K….
- I made $160.63 worth of calls. The plan includes $300 worth of calls/text.
- Instead the cap is listed as $149.56. Any way you look at it that number is not $300.
- Monthly Access fees of $68.97. What the?
- $6.97 worth of “Mobile Browsing Starter” fees. Riiiigght…
- $6.69 for 15 MB data is listed as “excluded from cap”. The plan includes 250 MB data… Obviously the word “include” has been erased from the dictionaries at Optus.
- Account period: 29 July to 21 August. My number was ported to Optus on 5th August. I’m not paying for any service before that date.
Now I finally understand the company slogan of “yes”.
“Yes! For your convenience, our billing system has been replaced with a giant random number generator.”
“Yes! Optus personally inspects every bill for mistakes and errors. This task is performed by our crack team of retarded zombie monkeys. We prefer to call them the Accounts department. It makes them feel like they’re an important part of our company.”
“Yes! Optus is an equal opportunity employer. That’s why our support phone number is answered by one of our many talented, yet hearing-impaired clones.”
I was going to ring up and abuse them tonight but I don’t have the energy right now for a good ear-bashing. They can wait a few days until I’m on holidays.
Bloody bastards.
You seem to be implying that Telstra do that kind of stuff too. (?) I wouldn’t know.
Yeah, it would seem that Optus are just as bad as Telstra in their general incompetence. Only as recently as this weekend I was speaking to relatives of mine who had to ring up Telstra to get over $300 worth of mistaken charges removed from their bill. At least after several phone calls and being handballed around 5 different departments, they were successful.
I think you’ll find that you have been charged for the month that you have already had the iPhone plus the next month in advance. I can’t really understand my bill either but I am assuming that it is a good approximation of what I should be billed.
It seems that a lot of phonebills are a nightmare to understand. When we switched our plan with optus from Cable+phone to a newer cable plan the next bill was impossible to work out due to different caps, free stuff etc. I think it was right…but I couldn’t be sure (and I supposedly love numbers). Same kind of thing when we cancelled iinet, working out all the different bills, refunds etc is next to impossible. Surely there is an easier system!
Thanks for all the input people. I found a couple of VERY interesting posts on Whirlpool forums.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1027543
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1021036
astephens you were right. This is what they’ve done.
Period 05 Aug – 21 Aug (0.548 months)
Billed pro-rata for 17 days with included credit REDUCED proportionately from $300 to $149.56.
Period 22 Aug – 21 Sep (1 month)
Billed full amount for 1 month ($49 + $7)
Call #1:
“I was NOT informed that the included value would be reduced to $150 at ANY stage during my application. So I have gone over the cap because I was using my phone thinking I have $300 worth of calls when I only had $150 worth of credit.” Repeated several times etc. etc.
Action: $14.16 charges above cap removed from bill. w00t.
Expected bill after call #1:
Pro-rata period: 49 * 0.548 = $26.85
Full-month: 49 + 7 = $56
Total expected: $82.85
Actual bill after call #1:
104.70 – 14.16 = $90.54
Call #2:
“Can you see these entries titled “MobileBrowsingStarter” on my bill? You are charging me extra for data access when the iPhone $49 plan has to include 250MB data access. You can NOT charge me extra for this, it MUST be included in the plan.”
Optus lady: “Oh yes, we’re sorry. It appears the MobileBrowsingStarter pack was added to your account in error. I have removed these charges.”
Action:
2.72 + 4.95 = $7.67 removed from bill
Expected bill after call #2:
90.54 – 7.67 = $82.87
Actual bill after call #2:
104.70 – 14.16 – 7.67 = $82.87
Happy.
Aaaaaand I just got my next bill. $55.99
My second bill was exactly as I expected it would be. Optus still suck, but at least I am being charged the agreed amount for the pleasure of having zero reception.
LOL