Interesting to see the interest raised recently by website Vodafail.
A few years back I was working at a location where mobile phone reception was patchy with my Telstra service so I purchased an Optus and a Vodaphone pre-paid SIM to test their respective services.
I cannot remember the exact reason now but there was an issue with using the Vodaphone service so I called the Vodaphone customer support line using the Vodaphone SIM and the entire $25.00 credit on the SIM was consumed waiting on hold with Vodaphone lack of support. The Vodaphone SIM was thrown out and Vodaphone discarded as an option!
Vodaphone debiting the SIM to call them on their network is simply a joke.
Following this I went with a Telstra combined cap plan. This required calling Telstra billing every month to ask for credits to be applied to the account.
I have experienced this type of problem with Telstra billing previously where products are billed together and have always been invariably overcharged and spent hours phoning Telstra trying to get the overcharges removed.
One thing I have found extremely annoying with Telstra is that they will not accept an email request to fix something. They always reply to an email stating that you must phone them to resolve the issue. Each phonecall to Telstra billing usually consumes the best part of an hour or occasionally more.
As soon as I became aware of the eXeTeL HSPA plans using the Optus network a few years ago we switched immediately and have never looked back.
One of the best things about dealing with eXeTeL is that they dont want you to phone them if logging an online support ticket is possible. Any support tickets I have raised with eXeTeL have always been fixed quickly and even with an eXeTeL ADSL service there is an automated phone support to log a fault if the ADSL is down and you cannot get online.
The pricing of the eXeTeL HSPA mobile plans is excellent at basically $5.00 per month and simply pay for any useage. The call and data rates are competitive and the account comes with a VOIP account with a DID, a static IP, sending of SMS over data plus voicemail and call diversions as would be expected with any mobile plan. eXeTeL HSPA is well worth a look if a mobile plan including data is required.
