Mobile phone pricing in Australia - what an absolute annoying rip off!

Ok I am not talking contract as that's another annoyingly expensive matter. We have just moved to Sydney and are in the process of setting up mobile phone usage for everyone.

 

Here's the thing. I have a large family - there are five of us and that means 5 pay as you go phones I have to pay for.

 

One provider - Optus, offers basically two pre-paid contracts - one is a $30 day and the other is $2 dollars per day.

 

So that means 5 times 30 = minimum $150! some of my family don't even use the mobile that much, just to do some texting and talking and the odd lookup online while travelling.

 

When I asked the helpful salesman about low usage prepaid he said I should give my kids the $2 sim. Hmm so what the catch, - he said oh if you don’t use the sim for a day its free, otherwise its $2 for the day(plus calls).  Now this sounds good but it isn't. What teen is not going to receive one text or one app update in a day? This then ends up as being $60 per month, not including actual costs of usage!

 

This is deceptive at the least!

 

In the UK you can get unlimited broadband, txts and 4 hours talk for 10 GBP per month! C’mon Australia!!!

 

The 30 day prepaid rollovers over (every 20 days) and you lose the remaining credit balances. Thus the mobile provider is effectively forcing you to spend $30 every month.

 

C’mon Australia - in the Philippines you can buy any denomination of mobile phone credit - from 2 cents load and up!!

 

Why is mobile phone usage cheaper in the Country(Philippines) that has the official worst infrastructure in ASIA?

 

Yep, unhappy with mobile phone providers in Sydney so far.

 

Data costs on sim - another huge rip off!

 

 

$50 for 4 gigs! This is so high! Why!

 

Another amazing piece of wierdness - all phones sold these days normally have 4G! - Great phones, but you can whip through data at an amazing rate!. So we get these highly equipped phones but little or no data to use them on. I looked through some of the contracts on offer in Sydney and they all seemed mighty proud that they were offering 500mb to 2Gb of data per month. REALLY! That’s so little – c’mon Optus/Telstra/Virgin etc make it happen!

 

Literally they must be licking their lips when providing a Samsung Note with 5oomb of data, as once you are over your limit you have to buy data - at high prices.... Cmon mobile providers - stop the rip off!

 

For me, it seems like Australia is heavily behind the times with regard to data/broadband on mobiles phones.

 

This is one of those hidden costs when immigrating to Sydney. As a large family we use a lot of broadband data. You will not immediately have access to internet via a provider so will be forced to buy a SIM wifi and will be hit with several hundred dollars of broadband costs. We used 8gig in about 7 days.

 

Just upgrading the operating system on an iphone is about 7 Gigs of data! Make sure all your devices have had their software needs attended to before you move to Australia as its gonna cost you if you have to do it once you land in Australia.

 

Have a good one peeps.