Optus Monster Caps: Read the fine print

By Joseph Hanlon on 05 May 2009

(Credit: Optus)

In the everlasting war to win your dollar, Optus has again recalculated its capped contract plans, calling these new plans Monster Caps. But as with the announcement of its prepaid broadband plans late in 2008, the devil is in the details, or monster as the case may be.

Optus Cap plans now come in four flavours: $19, $49, $59 and $79, with the two more expensive plans offering free SMS and MMS. The plans all offer generous call allowances too; the $49 and $59 offer $680 worth of calls per month, but only half of this allowance can be used on local and national calling (what Optus calls Optus2Anyone). The other half of the allowance is dedicated to Optus2Optus calls for calling other Optus GSM mobile numbers and Optus fixed line phone numbers, and can only be spent after the first half of your spend has been reached.

This means that before you reach the first $330 of calling allowance each month your calls to other Optus customers are counted as Optus2Anyone, and after you've exceeded $330 you'll only be able to call Optus customers for the rest of the month, or be billed at the standard call rate for your plan — 80 cents per minute on the $49 and $59 plans.

In comparison, 3 Mobile offers $350 per month plus $240 worth of calls to other 3 customers for $49 per month. Vodafone customers are also allocated $350 worth of calls, plus 100 free SMS messages each month for the same money.

This is truly mind-boggling. Separating the call value of Optus2Optus calls from standard calls is a great idea for a capped plan, but not letting Optus customers spend Optus2Optus credit at the same time they spend Optus2Anyone credit is sneaky at best. As is advertising the not-factually-incorrect "$680 worth of calls".

Topics: bill, calls, caps, mobile phone, optus, sms

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Comments (11)

  • gemma atkinson commented on 10/06/2009 00:01

    Optus and their misleading ads. For these plans to work you must choose friends with other networks, as well as a few friends with optus. Ridiculous.

  • Nagastolemybike commented on 07/05/2009 11:34

    Yes but I get more call dropouts with 3 Mike. I've made the switch but I'm not happy. In the end I pay more just to call the person back.

  • Mike commented on 06/05/2009 17:01

    What crap plans ! They are also per min not per 30sec so for a 1 1/2 min call it will be $2.19 on the $19 plan with optus and $1.70 on the $19 with 3. (that about 23% more !) oh and 3 give you $140 with optus just $100 even if you managed to use that !

  • Tsville1974 commented on 06/05/2009 14:15

    We are on theo ld $79 cap and get $300 worth of local, national, sms and MMS - not a bad deal....Have just churned Optus ADSL and home phone away from Optus, as unable to get direct optus line into our house - spoke to me as though they didn't even want me to stay. Internet and home phone had become uncompetive and the optus service is just complete crap!

  • Michael commented on 06/05/2009 12:43

    Does anybody know if this was the same in the plans previous to these ones? I got on the 79 dollar cap about a fortnight ago and was curious as to if it had the same T&C's.

  • Myturn commented on 06/05/2009 11:26

    Yeah absolutely disgusting. I wonder what the ACCC thinks of this.

    If you want to vote on what you think of these plans, go to whirlpool http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1194830

  • takumaa commented on 06/05/2009 10:14

    optus is not bad actually, support many variety of new mobiles.But i would prefer three, cause all my friends use three.

  • forrest commented on 06/05/2009 08:50

    optus make pretty much rip off plans if u dont read the details.

  • Takaetun commented on 05/05/2009 21:59

    *cough* Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman *cough*

    I'm on $79 for my iPhone, getting the iPhone for $2 a month, didn't actually read the plan details, probably a bad idea. =/

  • rynobi commented on 05/05/2009 17:43

    if i have to read the fine print you are doing it all wrong.

    but just another very, very typical #optusfail. when will this company wake up to the fact that they represent everything that a telco of the future is not. are they not human too?

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