I joined the Live Connected service in October of 2011, nearly a year ago. The reasoning behind my switch from Optus prepaid was that I purchased an iPad and wanted to share my monthly budget across my mobile and iPad without increasing it too much. One way of doing this was to reduce my mobile phone bill and to put that money or savings as that is what it is into my prepaid Telstra sim for the iPad.
I was paying Optus $30 per month for my prepaid mobile plan, Turbo Cap Plus and decided that a move to $12 with Live Connected would then allow me to invest the $18 per month into a $150 prepaid iPad sim with Telstra for 12GB and a 365 expiry.
All was going well up until a few months ago when reception for my 3G phone started to fall away. The issue was I work in Melbourne CBD where reception with the Optus network is strong.
I tested my phone with another sim in the same area and it worked, whilst my Live Connected sim would not. I updated my APN and nothing helped.
Finally I decided to visit the Live Connected website and looked for answers to my problem. The self help service is pretty good, clear with lots of questions and answers. The problem with self help services is that you need to know what question to ask. If you don’t know what is causing the issue then you might not know that question.
I ended up emailing them via the website. It took 48 hours for them to respond which was annoying. Honestly if it was going to take a week I would have switched services. Thankfully it didn’t. Whilst I don’t think 48 hours is good enough, I didn’t expect them to provide an instant service either.
Live Connected does not provide phone support. It is all handled online via email or Facebook. I knew this upfront and it was the trade off I was prepared to have for the discounted price.
Once Live Connected responded they asked me to try their sim in another unlocked phone, which I did. Mixed results but it did work. I also retried another sim in my phone in the areas where i always had problems, and it also worked. They then agreed to swap my sim with another. This was all completed within 24 hours of their response, so in that regard the service was quick.
I received the replacement sim within 48 hours which was also good.
Overall, if I can have my phone working properly again with the new sim, the result is a happy customer. Live Connected have done whatever they can to assist me. Waiting 48 hours is annoying but at least i know that is how long I will need to wait in future.
