It’s not exactly news that mobile phone plans can be confusing. I certainly find it frustrating setting up a new mobile phone contract (part of the reason I’m now a pre-paid customer, although that’s not without its annoyances), but do the big three Aussie telcos really deliberately set out to bamboozle us?
Adam Turner at the Sydney Morning Herald reports on a research study from Deakin University which took 517 shoppers and tracked their quest to find the best mobile phone deals. The study certainly doesn’t mince words; Turner quotes it as concluding that
consumers consistently found it difficult to have a straight conversation with their telecommunications provider pre-sale (through marketing communications), at point of sale (with salespeople), and post-sale (with customer service representatives). Participants expressed a broad frustration and disappointment with the way in which the telco sector communicated to them. Some simply felt that the sector relied on “information overload” as part of its business model.
As Gus at Lifehacker notes, proposed new rules should eventually cut back on those problems, but there’s a lot of bad blood already. What have your mobile phone shopping experiences been like? Do telcos rely on shifty small print, or are consumers broadly just unaware of what’s on offer?[SMH]
image: Guy David
More: Mobile Plans: How Much Data And Calls Do You Really Get?
Blake
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:31 PMWalk into Optus store with new phone bought online.
Me: My contract is up and I want to get a new data plan.
Them: Sure we can help!
*paperwork for 10 mins*
Them: So what id do you have?
Me: Keypass Id, medicare card, bank statements, last Optus statement
Them: No license?
Me: Not currently no.
Them: Sorry we can’t give you a plan without a license, that other stuff should be fine if you call up another office though.
Me: Ummm so this ID is fine over the phone but not here when you can see me and confirm I match my photo?
Them: Nope, *points at phone*.
I then spend 10 mins in a phone queue a while talking to a machine, then repeat the conversation I had with someone earlier with the exception that my ID was valid.
Sam D
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:55 PMI probably would have turned around and walked out at that stage.
James Monteverdi
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 6:02 PMFor me:
“sorry we don’t except L’s as a license.” I had to go and get my passport :|
Then because they forgot to tick a box I was declined for insufficient credit but after the box I was approved up to a few thousand. Even the staff are confused by the system.
B3n
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 9:29 AMStores get audited and if they dont have the correct ID, there are massive fines to pay in excess of $1000. That may be a fair enough reason as to why.
Fraud happens. It only takes a few to ruin it for the masses.
stublu
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 2:00 PMI don’t think you quite read what he said. The ID was fine over the phone. Makes no sense.
Brendan
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 5:35 PMI used to run an optus store in the west of Sydney. Fraud was rampant.
Understandably frustrating though. I now have a business account and I’m the only authorised user but if I go in to a store with all the id you had AND my drivers licence they still won’t do anything without something written on a letterhead. (one day I hand drew a letterhead and hand wrote what I wanted – the manager was puzzled what to do)
Rossco
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:32 PMThe biggest problem I find is comparing a plan with a plan when one telco offers calls/text at one rate and another telco offers calls/text at another rate and then they both offer different levels of credit ($x of calls and text), then you have to translate that into actual dollars per call/text based on the monthly cost of the plan. Add in network based free calling, free sms with conditions and all the other fluff in the terms and conditions (which often don’t show the call costs as they are posted somewhere else), no wonder it is confusing. Data is easier as it is a 1:1 comparison until you go over your cap (this is when bill shock sets in).
B3n
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 9:43 AMI like the woolies system how each product is measure by its value in weight per Kilo etc.
It would be good if the telcos did something like this.
ATM all the providers have rates charged at either 30 second blocks or 1 minute blocks, making it hard to compare plans.
Curtis
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 2:16 PMI was under the impression that this was now Australian standard?
Nate
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 1:11 PMTelstra just recently changed their call per 30 sec block to per 60 sec block and gave us no choice as to what we wanted to do. When I rang and complained saying I didn’t want to be charged more for a contract I had already signed they recorded it down and did absolutly NOTHING about it. No phone call, no follow up, no offer of something else.. NOTHING.. to me thats BAD BAD BAD service by Smelstra
Drew
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:36 PMI just look at included std call/txt included and data cap and then work it out how many minutes and txts I get within that bundled amount and then compare on the price I actually pay.
Drew
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:38 PMComparing what ‘value’ you get for same network calls i.e. Vodafone to Vodafone etc is a waste of time as you can’t easily tell what network the other person is on anyway.
Lance
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 4:52 PMVHA provide an iPhone and Android app called “Who2Call” that will tell you, funnily enough, who to call for free. It works relatively well (if you have a connection that lasts long enough to have a conversation).
Mik
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 5:05 PMI hate to look like a Vodafone Symphathiser, but they are the one telco I know of that actually provide a phonebook app that tells you who in your contacts is also Voda.
Bill S. Preston Esq.
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:39 PMIt is a pain to work what a minute long call costs, and then how many of these you get under your cap. It is a pain, but not impossible. Nearly every telco lists the prices of their calls. Personally, I think the problem is the customer being lazy.
woodsdog
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 3:45 PMSad, but I had my iPhone 4 plan for a while before I realised all my Optus calls were FREE… free sms, mms, 1.5gb of data $550 worth of calls, I didn’t care, until the first time my bill went close to $550, then I was like… huh all calls to optus mobiles are free… sweet… wasn’t clear when I signed up for it…; but still.
TL
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 4:39 PMI don’t understand why Australia does not just use the same system as Canada, the U.S. & U.K.
EX: $40 a month = 1000 minutes of calling and 1 GB of data. Calls are billed in 1 min increments. Plus you get free calling on evenings and weekends.
You can check your remaining minutes any time on your phone or by calling an automated line.
Daemos
Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 12:07 AMWhy? Because imo being from canada, australia have some great plans. For $40 you can get unlimited plans with 3 GB from boost or with live connected also optus, get 4000min (which includes 13/1800) unlimited sms/mms local and international and 5GB data.
Nothing in Canada comes close.
Any heavy user should be on one of these plans or other unlimited plans. Now if only there are comparable $40 plans on the telstra next g network…
Lance
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 4:51 PMOne of the more confounding factors that gives an air of higher value is the included data allowance. Sure, a higher data plan will give you 5gb of data (or more), but that’s obscenely high for most people.
When you are just checking emails, web browsing and on social networking, you are lucky to use more than a couple of hundred mb. Particularly because most people hook in through faster (and cheaper) wifi at home.
lostincanberra
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 5:01 PMYes! Of course! It’s an important element of marketing: Make sure that YOUR product is ‘unique’ – and can’t be readily compared to another.
Ease of comparison leads to anarchy and rational customer choice. Can’t have that now.
[Psst! Like to buy some data - only 0.2 cents per kb - that's less than 0.0002 cents a byte!]
Michael
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 7:26 PMI honestly don’t find the plans that confusing. Biggest problem is people don’t research, they don’t ask questions, they just waltz into a store, find the shiny new phone and say “I’ll have that one”.
Yes Telco’s should be more forthcoming with the details, but seriously it’s not hard to open a site and find call costs, or flick through a brochure to find them.
Information isn’t that hard to come by. Same thing goes to all the people that signed up for Vodafone when all the trouble happened and then bitched about it, you only have yourselves to blame.
aj
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 7:51 PMI don’t think it’s too hard to understand pricing strutures if you care to go into the detail. Nevertheless it’s near impossible to compare two different plans.
But what really irks me is that I have a maths degree and I still can’t decode my Optus mobile bill.
Nathan
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 8:23 PMOf course they are deliberately confusing.
Its is impossible to compare plans.
The whole phone plan business is just a gigantic con job.
Dave
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 9:30 PMI find the handset payments in Telstra as confusing as hell… I shouldn’t need to try understand MRO
Elliot C
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 9:44 PMGet Amaysim simple to figure out 15c/min on All national calls. And their Unlimited plans cool $40 a month but I only use pay as you go,
I’d probably only call a number twice a day
lulz
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 10:14 PMIt’s annoying, but it just takes a small amount of brainpower to sit down with the relevant caps/plans for each telco and work out the actual cost per txt/call, and call-connection-fee (biggest joke of them all).
Ultimately people are lazy, they just want the shiny shiny and don’t realise they have to pay for it month after month.
Spun-out
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:22 PMConfusing? I have a PhD in mathematics, regularly read and write very technical articles and I say they are deliberately confusing. If I presented data in such a confusing convoluted way I’d be told to rewrite the damn thing so it made sense. Then we come to International roaming charges……….aaaaarrggh!!!
Brendan
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 5:38 PMyep i agree. it’s a lot of work. My parents just ring me and ask what plan they should be on. If my staff presented information like that they would be made to do it again.
The Land of Smeg
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 12:40 AMNeed to get rid for Flag Falls, and quote inclusions on minutes, rather than dollar amounts.
It is getting to the point where they are virtually offering $10,000,000 Caps with $100,000 per minute call rates for $1 a month. I dare a provider to do this to make a statement about how stupid this is (Looking at you, Exetel).
Caps are also unclear that it is not a ‘Cap’ on the customer’s maximum spend.
The lack of ability to add additional minutes onto a post-paid plan, rather than pay at the exorbitant excess usage rates.
Offering unlimited lines of credit.
Inaccurate or delayed usage reporting.
Charging exorbitant rates for 13, 1300 & 1800 numbers (which are usually un-timed local rate calls which should cost the same as a standard call to a local number. Premium/Reverse charge/Operater assisted calls are understandable to be charged at a higher rate.)
The industry has got a long way to go to fix these issues. Gerd Schenkel, I am now looking at you to do something!
Jb
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 2:45 AMI hate the crock over “Value!”… Take two providers on ~$50 actual plan. A has $400 Value!(tm) with calls at 45c, and B has $700 Value! But hides in $1 (!!!) Per minute calls. I am really surprised the ombudsman had not called them into line over such shady practices. I.e. you can’t advertise something as 50% etc “on sale” if it never was at full price.
The americans have something going with their system of “minutes” and a completely different idea of what “unlimited” actually is.
Trent
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 6:50 AMYes! This gives me the shits me the most.
Dave Lord
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 4:28 AMThe cap plans are just dishonest. I’m on a $69 plan. They tell me I get $700 value in calls.
That’s BS! If I’m paying $69 then I’m getting $69 value! To try to portray it any other way is simply a lie!
Splintex
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 8:58 PMThis.
This crap came in while I was living in england, on my return I was gobsmacked at the bollox I was being fed by phone company advertising.
Rowan
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 5:09 AMI had an optus contract a few years back when I used to have an iPhone 3G. Firstly it claimed that you got “$650 of included value each month”. Look a little closer and this was actually divided up into $350 of real credit and $300 of “optus 2 optus minutes”. Still i got the contract anyway because $350 was around the ball park of what i was looking for at that price anyway.
The real bull$ came though when I went over my cap really quickly on a month i’d made heaps of optus to optus calls which didn’t make sense. Turns out you can only use the $300 of optus minutes AFTER you’ve already used all your other credit and are already over your cap. How retarded is that? In order to actually make use of supposedly half the “value” of my contract i needed to go over my cap every single month and be cut off from all calls to any other carriers or face a huge bill. Just meant i never got to use those minutes because i never went over my cap again so that was essentially $7200 worth of “value” (by their own lights) that I got robbed of. Try telling that to their call centre staff “you could always go to Vodafone, but you know what their reception is like…”
Snapperhead
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 5:56 PMMate, if you’re to stupid to work out how mobile plans work what the fuck are you doing writing for a tech blog?
Splintex
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 9:01 PMThat point is that they are obfuscating the data they are presenting.
It’s like pharma companies cherry picking research participants and results to highlight the benefits of thier new (probably not new but just slightly altered) drug and hiding the fact it makes you grow a baboon arse on your forehead.
Benny
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 6:29 PM‘Snapperhead’ — More like ‘Knobhead’.
You’ve probably heard that one before.
Ruen
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 10:06 PMWell i just got my mobile bill, was expecting $39 bucks instead I’m charged for about $250. . .
So yeah I’m looking forward to the new rules coming in. . .
Daryl
Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 12:24 AMI paid Telstra $300 up front for the Ultimate dongle and then I was refunded this as credit on the next couple of bills and was put on a two year plan. So you can’t actually buy the dongle without a plan. If you don’t pay the $300, you just don’t get reimbursed and are on the same plan.
One blessing is that Australian telcos don’t charge for tethering. I’d hate to pay $20 per month for the privilege, like AT&T customers do.
Stan
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:27 PMI took a prepared set scenario to a couple of optus and telsra outlets about 3 weeks ago. The scenario were basically 400×10 minute calls per week at 12pm daily, 500mb of data usage to non social network sites. I asked what the cost of there various plans to achieve the scenario. NONE of them could (or would) give me a clear answer. I left the sheet with them for a week and still haven’t got a call back.
Stan
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:27 PMthat should have been 40, not “400″..doh!
Stan
Monday, September 12, 2011 at 10:30 PMAnd this should have been a reply (nested) to the comment above..double doh!