Last night I opened my mail to be met with my usual Optus Mobile bill which I have been responsibly and regularly paying for at least 12 years. And I mean a consecutive service, unblemished, excellent payment history, no complaints type of 12 years.
Rewind 3 weeks ago ago. My voicemail had stopped working (not sure why) and I thought it prudent to re-enter “leave a message with Colin” status with my friends, family & clients – hence a quick call to Optus Technical Support – and I mean quick. 3 minutes from call to resolution quick. It was so quick, I even Twittered it (April 13th) and bounced it around my Facebook, which got a raft of postivie (and disbelieving) comments around how damn lucky I was. Until last night.
I have a really cool Blackberry Curve – it delivers emails to me, is bulletproof, ultra reliable, great battery life and my connection to the ether. I love it. It’s on what Optus call a Blackberry Platinum $79 Cap, which really, to us mere mortals, means I get unlimited email. Suits me fine.
When I was chatting to Optus Tech Support, they swiftly reconnected my voice mail and asked – “was there anything else I would like assistance with?”. Enter Twitter. I mentioned this to the tech rep, who up until this point had been sensationally helpful and quizzed him around the “cost” incursion. Cost? None – because he would set me up to use the Blackberry Browser…. Okay, this means nothing to me, because the GPRS (yea not 3G) connection is so damned slow, it’s not worth it. Connect me up, so long as there isn’t an inconvenience (or cost) around this. Cool. Connected. Twittering.
So to last night. I’ve incurred data charges of $1617.13.
Huh? Is my first response. Confusion, as GPRS ain’t exactly, you know fast. Nor have I been perched on Twitter for endless hours. Most of the time my phone if not looking at the diary, or making a call, it’s locked. Further, I’ve configured my Blackberry to switch off each night at 11pm and awaken at 6am, so the window to download is even smaller. Annoyance, that no one has rung me about this. Double Annoyance that Optus have halted its 24 hour support to a piffling 8:30am to 6:00pm scenario. Triple annoyance when I relook at that bloody hefty bill which has occurred in less then a 2 week period
So. I’m sitting here on the phone, to Billing Support now, awaiting to see what Optus have to say for themselves. I’ve been with them a long time, paid my bills promptly and generally have been exceptionally pleased with both the service and quality of the products.
Let’s wait and see.
Update: May 7th 2009, Spoke to Optus, they have already auto processed the bill and rather go through the rigmarole of getting a refund, they have credited my account which means if I stay with my normal spend pattern, I won’t need to pay my bill for 4 months. Thanks Optus. Good result and pleased to see you saw reason AND common sense.
The Culture Mind 