Thread: What’s your phone company like?

Yeah, I have optus land line so I can have dsl as no cable internet in my area... I long for cable as dsl is truly rubbish, especially running 2 computers.

They have turned into leeches (if they ever were not?) and over time they seem to constantly cost more even know phone usage has depleted. Btw, I have had 3 contract changes by optus in 12 months of living where I am. It seems because I'm not in a capital city they **** you around heaps more where as when I was in Sydney things were smooth as. So that gives me the real grumbles. AND it costs 40% more on monthly fees then in capital city.... Jeez it makes me angry.

Mobile is vodafone... I'm happy enough...sorta...with them.

Home phone on a Telstra Basic Plan - $19.95 p/m which is just to get ADSL, no cable in our area

Mobile on a $49 cap plan with Optus; $300 worth of calls. Optus have always been good to me but have noticed they are starting to charge more often for 'failure to pay'. I've been with them for over 10yrs now. To say thanks, they sent me a Nokia 6500 last week for free

Oh, and Optus for ADSL - touching lots of wood...don't have a problem, doesn't lock up etc

Telstra pre-paid has a time server so you don't have to set the clock and calendar on you mobile. Virgin and Optus don't.

Cheers
Simon

We use Telstra for home and ISP but use Optus for the wifes mobile, I wont own a mobile, hate them. Optus are ok, we were with Vodafone on the mobile and they were brilliant, fast service, efficient, never had a problem, Telstra is fastly becoming a joke, we have problems from time to time with our modem locking, usually the techs are good but if strike an Indian techy look out!, think most are the same nowadays, Telstra own all the lines, Optus and the other lease and charge you expensive other carriers rates which is the cost of renting the line from Telstra through them, its crazy.

I moved from telstra to Optus and went on the $99 cap for home phone and internet.
I also have both the wifes and my mobiles with them.

I was with telstra for over 10 years and I just got sick of the run around they gave me everytime I ask a question so I moved everything to optus.

Since doing that telstra ring me once a month trying to get me back

Telstra proved to be a real pain when I moved to the new house because I waited 4 weeks for them to connect a phone line so I could start using my optus plan (thats not the first time) they are just painful to deal with


Adam

i am all telstra now.

not my favourite people but there are some things the others simply cant do.

and they have better coverage in my area.

i deal direct with telstra country wide, and that has been a fairly positive relationship thus far.

i am treated much better now that they have after 4 or 5 years finally realised that i sold my ISP.

i now get things done much quicker than before...

i still get my .32c credit paperwork each month which costs much much more than that to print and send but they wont transfer it to another account nor nullify it, so, they get the pleasure of informing me that they still owe me big time . :P

I was with Optus for many years and then after re-locating about 3 years ago, they stuffed me around big time, so when the following offer came up about a year ago I went with it and have been happy so far.

I run my business from home and have 2 lines (voice and fax with DSL on the fax line). Prime Communications came up with an offer where I rent a big screen TV with DVD player and surround sound for $250/mth. The screen can be connected to the PC so the rental package is tax deductible. Then they give me a $250/mth credit against calls and a good call rate, so the net result is I pay significantly less than I used to and we get the TV setup thrown in. Only downside is I'm locked into a 5 year contract and pay $1 at the end for the TV. Been in place for over a year and very happy so far + we get some sort of credits accumulating against calls which is redeemable at the end of the term.

I've been with Optus DSL for yonks and recently decided to upgrade my plan. That involved transferring the fax line to Optus (surprisingly Prime didn't mind ... I guess they were happy to see it go as they made bugger all out of it due to the fact I rarely send faxes these days ... all email)

Anyway to cut a long storey short, Prime retain my voice and 2 mobiles, the fax line goes to Optus ... $18/mth line rental, 100 local calls/mth free, $1 cap to any phone in Aus for the 1st 10 mins, ADSL2 for $50/mth .. 20 Mps download speed +10 Gb download with every 4th mth free. This works out to be less than my previous plan with Optus and line rental to Prime, so I think I've done fairly well.

I also expect I'll be using the fax line for those 100 free calls, so my net cost to Prime should also decrease.

Cheers

We got rid of our Optus landline 6 months ago - they were charging close to $30 / month line rental.

We now use a VOIP service through Faktortel for our landline. $8 / month for the service, and 10 cent untimed calls to any national number (excluding mobiles). International calls are also cheap (we called the UK a few times, paid around 70cents for 15 minutes ). Calls to mobiles are charged at fairly normal rates I think.

If you have cable broadband access, I would definitely recommend giving VOIP a go for your landline service - Faktortel are just one provider, there's heaps of others, Engin probably being the best known (personally I would stay away from Engin though, my parents tried them and were very unhappy).

If you have ADSL broadband you won't save as much on your phone bill, as you will still need a normal land line for your ADSL connection. It still may be worth while if you have a high monthly bill though.

Oh, one other thing - when we told Optus we wanted to disconnect our land line as we were going VOIP, they offered to reduce our monthly line rental for 6 months (to $7 / month I think). So we accepted this offer and kept the Optus line for six months while we made sure we were happy with the reliability of the VOIP service. AT the end of the 6 months we rang them again and gave them the flick for good!

Cheers

Sean