Australian Consumer Watchdog WARNS iPhone users about SNEAKY billing practices.
The ACCC (Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) has urged new 3G iPhone adopters to keep a keen eye on their data allowance, and is also in communications with the major telco's in Australia - Optus, Vodafone and Telstra, to discuss their 'low usage' plans.
For good reason, too. The data allowance in Australia's iPhone plans are quite small, and with even a moderate use of the iTunes store or viewing YouTube videos, the allowance could easily be exceeded resulting in nasty 'excessive' data bills.
For example, Telstra's entry level iPhone plans come with a TINY 5MB of data - easily used up in 5 minutes of browsing the web. Use anything beyond that and it will cost you $1 per MEG. One 8 minute You Tube video is about 30Meg - thats $30!
Telstra are clearly setting out to make money from this scheme, as they have been known to do with their Broadband plans. It's not uncommon to hear of users of Bigpond, Telstras broadband and cable network being slugged with 'excess charges' generating bills of up to $10,000 dollars.
“Consumers can download greater amounts of information from the
Internet than ever before” said ACCC Chairman Graeme Samuel. “With this
comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur
considerable additional charges.”
“The ACCC is particularly
concerned that consumers may be misled if they are not made
sufficiently aware that their data allocations can be exceeded – at
significant cost” Samuel warned. “Not all carriers offer high volume
data plans, so we encourage consumers to compare the offers of each
carrier, taking particular note of the excess data usage fees.”
ACPmag has released a great tool to help you decide how much data you'll need, comparing different plans from every carrier.
One thing is for certain - if you decide to go on one of these 'low use' data plans, do yourself a favour and turn the 3G data service off.
