Telcos Bundle Me Up

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday November 26, 2008

Jeff Corbett

THE need to call a service provider for phone or internet gives me the heebie-jeebies. The mere thought of changing providers robs me of sleep.

But Sunday morning was very windy, as you know, and since the gale had blown me inside my wife asked me to go online and sign her up for a new mobile deal and phone. You know, one of those capped arrangements that shouts $250 worth of calls for $50 and whispers the call rate.

Anyway, I sorted that out, the only hiccup being the request by the call centre person that I fax a copy of my licence, which I refused to do. My licence goes a long way to establishing my identity so I refuse to give anyone a copy of it. I'm sure the back streets of Asia are full of people who can use such a copy to produce the real thing.

It was still howling outside so I steeled myself to phone our home phone and internet provider, iPrimus, to seek a better broadband speed. Its call centre person offered to increase the internet speed of our very old arrangement for less money, providing seven gigabytes of download at a speed of 1500 (kbps) instead of our current five gigabytes at 512 and retaining our unlimited local calls for a total price of $90 a month.

I phoned BigPond where an energetic call centre fellow made the following offer: the fastest broadband, ADSL2+, with unlimited downloads, a free wireless modem, $89.95 a month on a 24-month contract, half-price for the first nine months, and a contract-free $29.95-a-month home phone with 15-cent local calls, $1.50 cap for STD calls up to three hours, $1.50 cap for calls to mobiles up to 20 minutes, and $20 call credits each month. The complexity of these arrangements overloads my mind, which may be the purpose of it all.

The deals seem to be designed to deter assessment and comparison. Why offer nine months of a 24-month contract at half price instead of reducing the overall monthly cost?

The above is not from memory I took notes so I could work out the total cost over two years. BigPond came in at $2475, iPrimus at $2360 after adding $200 for a wireless modem I'd have to buy myself.

We chose Telstra's BigPond, so early yesterday morning I phoned to do the deal. But the offer recited by the call centre person had little in common with that of Sunday. There were no call credits, no free modem, and the call costs were higher.

When I protested he put me through to people he said specialised in bundling, and so I came to talk to Dave. No, he knew nothing of the Sunday offer. But he could offer the same broadband service with a 12-gigabyte limit, as opposed to Sunday's unlimited (for me 12 gigabyte is effectively unlimited), the same cost with half price for nine months, a wireless modem for $120 instead of free, and a totally unexpected $110 credit for transferring broadband and $70 for transferring home phone to Telstra.

But the home-phone deal was expensive, and he said he'd not heard of the $20 credit! Dave gave me the number for a firm, Telco, he said was authorised to offer better deals to entice people to switch to Telstra. But Telco said it did only cold calling and it couldn't accept my call. It suggested I call another firm that did the same work for Telstra, Sales Force, which told me it did no selling by phone.

I'd had enough. I phoned iPrimus, where the deal spelt out on Sunday was renewed with a little prodding. After talking to Tony and Josephine I found a Troy speed-reading aloud the terms of our new 24-month contract while, it seemed, he had a bite to eat. Somehow I caught the words "up to 1500", and when I asked, to his annoyance, if that meant I was committing myself to two years of fast broadband that might have a speed no faster than my current slow broadband, he explained that iPrimus could not be certain of the speed. Yes, he conceded, iPrimus would meet its commitment by providing a broadband service of any speed.

No deal, I said. Too easy buddy, he said with a full mouth.

I'll try BigPond again next Sunday.

Blog with Jeff@ www.theherald.com.au

Is it too much to ask for a simple, transparent and fair phone and internet deal? Have you dared to try to understand yours?

jcorbett@theherald.com.au

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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