Eight days into the month of my mobile broadband 6 gig quota, and I’m down to 4 gig remaining from what I’d describe as normal usage – like keeping my Google Reader down from 1000+ posts to no unread. This also excludes any gaming, gaming patches, and excessive e-mail/file movements (it did include the iPod3.0 upgrade). I’ve cut back on my uploading to Flickr and can’t even consider any Youtube uploads either. I’m not entirely happy to be feeling so limited on a 6gig account either – there’s a sense that if I don’t ration, I’ll spend the Sydney tour scrounging for unlocked wireless signals.
I’m also extremely unimpressed with 3 Mobile’s account management for failing to warn that shifting my Mobile Broadband plan would result in an account cancellation fee. When you look at the site, you get offer the option to change plans, upgrade, and do all sorts of wonderful things – none of which mention that your previous plan was either not eligible or that shifting upwards to pay more for the month would result in canceling the long contract in favour of short term month-to-month. In fact, the only thing I could see during the process was a note telling me that I couldn’t shift plans more than once every thirty days, and that seemed most reasonable. The surprise came when I checked in on my data quota to see a $200+ bill waiting for me – which marks the second surprise triple figure bill from them this year (I had an excess usage charge over Christmas).
Spot the difference!
On the upside, I’d been debating whether or not to continue with 3 Mobile after the Roadshow. After the excess usage charge in January whereby they elected to cut me off at double my quota (I accidentally triggered Steam downloading a game when I meant to just accept a gift certificate). That was $300 and an obnoxious phone call where I kept having to say “I’m not disputing the charge, I just want you to explain how the charge was incurred” over and over again to a sales droid that was refusing to accept that anyone had legitimate reason to download 4gig, and that I wasn’t going to need a legal threat to pay my bill. Despite that experience, I decided to stay with 3, partly due to the contract buyout being a barrier to leaving, and the sort of security blanket of knowing it was there helped me stay with them. Now I’ve had the pleasure of upgrading via their internal account management system to a more expensive process, I’m more than happy to abandon them since they’ve managed to make me feel like I’m getting screwed around as I attempt to give them more money in my monthly fees. Thanks to 3’s loyalty disincentive scheme, I’m free to leave the moment the tour ends, and having dumped over $500 of unplanned payments on them, I’m gone the moment I land back in Canberra.
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Great post, hopefully someone at 3′s PR will pick up on this! I had a similar problem with Vodafone. To resolve I kept calling back and eventually found a sales rep that allowed me to cancel my contract with 13 monthes remaining…at no cost, and even gave me 7 days to do so by attaching a note to my account. I figure that these sales reps are so fed up with their jobs that if you keep calling you will eventually get an employee that a) is on their last days and could care less about their jobs; or b) is just as shitty as you are at telco’s; or c) makes a simple mistake.
Keep trying, hopefully you’ll have the same luck I did.