I have been an Optus customer for over 15 years now. Ever since I purchased my first brick mobile phone. I can’t say I have been their most profitable customer but I have certainly been loyal. My home phone and internet is also with them. Other than a mix up (which they caused and wouldn’t admit) earlier this year which cost me a $150 instead of $30, it has all been fine.
When you spend your days and evenings comparing prepaid and no contract mobile plans, you come across some great plans which you think could really save you and your readers some money. That is how I got started in fact. My wife needed a prepaid mobile plan and I didn’t know where to compare them.
After my 12 month contract plan with Optus expired earlier this year, I decided to move to an Optus Turbo Cap Plus. $30 recharge provided $300 in calls per month, 500MB data and free Facebook/Twitter (I don’t use Ebay nor MySpace and LinkedIn only via desktop). This was going on fine and really I was hardly eating into my credit (data nor calls). Credit lasts for 30 days and so each month came around and I recharged.
Reception was no problem (sometime along the Glen Waverley train line it can be ordinary), so I was reasonably happy. Then I purchased my iPad and decided that whilst the Wifi Hotspot that my mobile offered was great and worked fine to eat into the data allowance I wasn’t using, others around me could also potentially use it. Add to this the fact that security around what I was accessing could also be compromised, I decided to purchased a micro sim from Telstra with prepaid internet credit. You can access the whole story from here.
This set me back $30 initially (3GB) and a further $150 for 12 months shortly (unless Telstra would like to sponsor me for the free plug). Therefore my mobile/internet usage was now going to be a little more each month, when you factor in the iPad recharge.
I thought there had to be another way to restructure these plans and save a little. About a month ago, I was in contact with Live Connnected a small mobile phone plan provider out of Sydney. They have created a sizeable client base through their range of no contract BYO mobile plans. They have been featured on my site for a while now.
Their plans run off the Optus network and offer great value for both calls and internet. You can compare them on our site. The challenge with them is that support is online, no Call Centre.
Part of my strategy with PrepaidPlans.com.au is to expose to you all of the plans out there so that you do have real choice. There are cheaper providers outside of the big telcos (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, 3 Mobile). The value is better but the support sitting behind many of these services is also smaller. Therefore you don’t have a call center the size that Optus provides to answer the calls. In Live Connected’s case, they won’t answer your calls even if you tried calling them. It is all online.
I can live with the fact that Live Connected don’t have a call center. I live on a PC all day at work and so as long as they fix any issue promptly, I am fine. Based on this I decided to give them a go.
I have gone with the Live Connected Medium plan – $10.99 per month. The plan is no contract of course and provides $900 in call value ($450 to other Live Connected customers, which I don’t personally know any other than maybe the owner of the business), 1.5GB of data and unlimited Facebook/Twitter. 1300/1800 calls are included. Call rates are 90c/min, with a 35c flagfall. SMS is 25c and the credit lasts for 30 days.
Compared to the Optus Turbo Cap, I am receiving more call credit, three times the data and paying nearly one third of the monthly cost.
So I signed up on Monday night. My Optus Turbo Cap Plus credit was due to expire on Friday. The sign up process was really easy. Note that the sim pack costs a further once off $20. On the Wednesday, I received the sim card in the mail (express post, not sure if everyone gets this). It asked me to login and activate. The porting of my phone number across wasn’t scheduled to happen till the 31/10 which wasn’t ideal as I would have had to recharge with Optus again. I did however have the option to bring this forward, so I requested it online. They said that it would take 24 – 48 hours to happen.
Next day being Thursday, at around 2pm, I received some emails from Live Connected telling me that the porting was in the process of happening and that I should stay tuned for their next message. A little while later I had an email telling me that all was set and I should replace my old sim card with the new one. I followed the steps and all is working fine. No issues.
So far the experience has been great. I suppose the only confusing moment I have had so far was when I received the sim card, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. Was it live, did I simply activate it online, when would the porting happen. More of this info should be online or better still in the letter. Not a really big deal but that is my feedback.
So now my monthly phone bill should be under $15 per month, half of what I was paying before. Add to that my $150 recharge for my iPad data, and I should be paying under $30 per month for both. Great outcome.
