The straw that broke the camel's back

Published by gordon in Telstra - but not Bigpond · Friday 23 Jan 2015
Tags: data, usage, mobile, coverage, mobile, plans, tpg, aldi

TPG uses the Optus network

2 days before Christmas Fred got an SMS from TPG advising that he had used all data for the month, and it was just 3 days into the monthly allowance. On investigation it was found that they claimed Fred had used in excess of 900meg in the space of 10 minutes whilst driving from Woolamai to Corinella. Whilst Fred disputed that this was possible, the real concern was no data until January 16th (no-one could afford the excessive charge per megabyte they put on for excess usage). After much arguing, asking and pleading Fred still had no data whilst interstate over Chistmas.

Fred's account had 2 other phone accounts attached to it, so sadly he could not simply go to another provider without destroying the ability to manage and/or pay both his wife's and mother's phone account - so for the time being Fred had to suck it up.

On return to the mainland it was of course, still holiday season. Almost every call to Fred's mobile went straight to message bank, 2/3 of the time he could not get a line out, down in Corinella there was absolutely no coverage and the straw that broke the camel's back was an SMS from Fred's wife that took over one and a half hours to be delivered resulting in her being left standing in a downpour for well over half an hour. It was finally obvious that the Optus network was well overloaded and not capable of meeting basic requirements, it was time for a change.

ALDI offer a number of phone plans and they use the Telstra 3G network.

Fred's mother is now on a plan which costs $15.00 per YEAR and lets her talk for up to approximately 2 hours!

Fred's wife is on a plan that costs $20 per month and includes 300 minutes (5 hours) of call time plus 400mb of data.

Fred is now on a plan that costs $30 per month and includes 650 minutes of talk time (over 10 hours) plus 1.25gig of data.

Both Fred and his wife now pay a little more than before, but hopefully the mobile coverage will be better through Telstra than it was through Optus - so far so good, Fred can now make phone calls no matter which side of the house he stands on.

UPDATE!

An unexpected upside to moving to ALDI is extended battery life!

It would appear it is a lot easier to maintain a connection or re-eastablish a connection using the Telstra network than the OPTUS network, as a result Fred's phone now easily lasts into the small hours whereas when on OPTUS the phone was generally flat by 9:00pm