Originally Posted by shamus

Hey guys and, no doubt guy'ettes

Optus has many flaws and many shortcomings as we are all aware. I mean doesn't everyone hate getting those emails to say your bill is now ready to view only to see the website is 'unavailable' or you have a billing problem and you go through to Ethiopia where the poor lady has no idea what you are talking about, "Optus!!! thats O for orange, P for Peter, T for ten U for umbrella and S for sally..." "Sorry who is Optus sir". And i do not even need to go into a winge about the service quality, although i will say that GPRS coverage is simply not acceptable in the CBD.

Any who, all that to say, all this i could handle. But this i cannot. I contacted Optus out of Africa last week to get my plan upgraded cos i was spending my credit too fast. (i.e pay them more money every month)

And they said there will be a fee of $161! i wonder what the outrageous cost is to them for that to be the cost of a plan transfer? And it made me want to throw my beautiful iPhone at a brick wall.

The annoying thing also is there is no mention of a fee in the contract, (i went through that with a magnifying glass before i signed it) it simply says their is the possibility to change your plan, which i thought was a good feature, until the fee was announced.

So this is my question... Has anyone else successfully changed their plan without such an excessive fee? i am on the $35 yes plan and want to change to the $49 cap...

I did exactly what you intend to do.. From the $39 "yes" plan to the $49 cap plan. No fees or surcharges or penalties whatsoever. According to the Optus rep who did the change over the phone, you will not be incurred any charges if you upgrade your plan.

BUT, do keep in mind that your monthly repayment for the phone remains the same, and that will NEVER change because it is stated in your contract that you pay $X for 24 months (or 12 months). In the contract, it says that you can always change your mobile phone plan, but may incur a fee depending on the situation.

I've made some similar enquiries and got the same answer as babypoppop - you can upgrade without charges, but your handset repayments don't go down to the lower level of the new plan.

Originally Posted by iMac

fucking hell. this is all making a fast case for me to purchase my iPhone from Telstra in the coming days.

That would be the best decision you could make.

I was going to get an iPhone with Optus on launch day, but as luck would have it, I was with Silverdreamer, and He talked me out of it, and I signed with Telstra.

I have had absolutely no problems with my iphone at all, and the bills are fine. The free wifi is everywhere here in Surfers and thats great too.

Thankyou Silverdreamer! Thankyou! thankyou! thankyou!

it is free to upgrade your plan.

Firstly I asked when I bought: Answer: "It's free to upgrade plans"

Secondly a friend recently upgraded to their "Timeless" unlimited plan. Again no upgrade fee.

i upgraded/downgraded (however you see it) from the first 1 year original iphone plan of 89 cap to a 1 year iphone 79 cap plan with unlimited sms for free. the only thing that was supposed to happen was that i was told on the phone that i needed to pay my next month upfront (paying 2 months in a month's bill) but then i never got charged for that. strange but i hope it stays like that.

hahahaha, oh funny, so i just rang them up and told them the story and the lady was like, "well i would like the mobile numbers of the people who claimed not to pay a fee." And i was like "lady, i am proposing paying more money every month, can i speak with your supervisor"

And the supervisor said the lady was wrong, Hallelujah, it is all changed!

Perhaps the first lady was sticking to her guns because i initially rang up asking for credit as well because i went over my plan excessively this month and, had i not had to pay a fee when i called up and enquired about upgrading my plan last month, and henceforth changed plans, i would not have one over my plan. I do know it is my own fault for going over, but i'm cheap. In the end though, i settled just to have it all worked out.

A new plan and a $115 bill!

Thanks guys!

usually its free to upgrade your plan, but costs to downgrade..

Originally Posted by gikku

before you rejoice to loud, you'll need to wait fort he next bill to confirm there was no fee charged

You raise a valid point sherlock. Oh the abuse if it is charged! the supervisors name was Raz... i wonder what i country i was routed to this time? haha, Telstra has its call centres in Australia. I think it just makes the business strategy more unified having telstra employees answering enquiries rather than just some call centre from some subset of singtel. Any who, who can change a company?

One of my mates works at a Telstra mobile support call centre on the Gold Coast and can verify that they're based in Australia...

I'd wish I knew about how bad Optus service was before I signed up with them. They're "trying" to help me out via email atm but I just can't believe how bad the service is... I get frustrated everytime they "e-bill" me because it simply isn't e-billing... it's a freaking email! "Log on to our difficult and website and try to download your PDF bill, we dare you." My last PDF bill was 300bytes long. Needless to say it's completely stuffed... not to mention they've over charged me on EVERY bill... phone calls don't work, my number can't always be dialed (people get random error messages) and the data is pathetic and works very randomly... and this happens everywhere.

I remember back to the days with 3 - hardly ever had an issue with them over my 2 year period with them...

I did this whole process 2 months ago, and had the same problem. After giving them a hard time, I finally got to speak to someone who actually knows how the optus system works. As we know optus have plans for iPhones. If you call up and say I want to change from a 59 cap to a 79 cap they will want to charge you $161. But if you ring up and say I want to change from a iPhone 59 cap to an iPhone 79 cap, and stress that you are talking about an iPhone plan, then there will be no fee. So if the rep is wanting to charge you to change plans, it is because they are putting you on a standard cap plan and not an iPhone cap plan in their system, thus the system wants to charge you the fee..... The pains of dealing with optus customer service..... Took me over 2hrs to figure that out

Originally Posted by Jazzdogg

One of my mates works at a Telstra mobile support call centre on the Gold Coast and can verify that they're based in Australia...

I'd wish I knew about how bad Optus service was before I signed up with them. They're "trying" to help me out via email atm but I just can't believe how bad the service is... I get frustrated everytime they "e-bill" me because it simply isn't e-billing... it's a freaking email! "Log on to our difficult and website and try to download your PDF bill, we dare you." My last PDF bill was 300bytes long. Needless to say it's completely stuffed... not to mention they've over charged me on EVERY bill... phone calls don't work, my number can't always be dialed (people get random error messages) and the data is pathetic and works very randomly... and this happens everywhere.

I remember back to the days with 3 - hardly ever had an issue with them over my 2 year period with them...

Yep my bro works for Bigpond. Also based in Australia. I understand that they are embarking on a million dollar update of their systems so that the website prob doesnt work for that reason, but Telstra just changed their bigpond systems flawlessly. Perhaps optus could learn a lesson.

In any case, an extra $20 a month or whatever through Telstra is well worth it for the reliability! We only have a little less than two years to go until we're free. Hold on to the hope fellow Optus iPhoners.