When Are Free Phone Calls Not So Free?

Ask yourself this question - When are free phone calls not so free? Answer - When your prepaid mobile phone company stuffs up and blows all your money on your calls.

I have an Optus prepaid mobile. Thirty dollars of credit is valid for 60 days. Apart from that I have 300 minutes of free calls to other Optus prepaid mobiles. With my mum, sister and Miky on Optus prepaids I have almost all the people I need to ring available for free.

My 60 days were up so I recharched my account and I had $12 remaining. Add the $30 and freetime and my balance should be $42 and 300 freetime minutes. This was done four and a half days ago. Yesterday I went to make a phone call and was warned that I had less than $2 credit. News to me. In that time I had sent two SMSs and not made any phone calls that I would had to have paid for.

So I rang Optus customer service to sort it out. Of course Optus' database was a bit slow and Eden, the customer service rep, couldn't access my details regarding phone calls too quickly. He finally came around and offered me $30 credit which "Should last you long enough." I politely informed him that that wasn't good enough and that I should have $42 credit and 200-250 free minutes. After speaking to his team leader it was decided that I should get $30 credit and 300 free minutes.

I guess that I can be happy with that although I'm still down about $12 more than I reasonably should be. This is the first major hassle I've had with them in six months of usage. They haven't been too bad up until now.

Gotta watch the bastards though.