Am I the only one around here that finds Telstra’s data pack pricing a bit misleading?
Here’s how it’s presented on their website:
Most people would struggle to interpret this. The packages are advertised as dollars per month, the included data is advertised in a mixture of megabytes per month and gigabytes per month, the excess charges are in dollars per megabyte, and the “Pay As You Go” plan is advertised in both dollars per megabyte and megabytes per dollar.
As a software engineer, I would never confuse a megabyte for a gigabyte. However, I’d imagine there are those who would struggle with the concept, and not realise the difference is a factor of 1000. What I also find misleading, is how the “Pay As You Go” plan is presented differently to the others, despite it essentially being a data pack with no included data.
I propose that everything be presented in a uniform manner. Once you present everything in dollars per gigabyte, it starts to make more sense.
Once you do this, you can quickly realise that by default, you’re paying $2,000 per gigabyte for something that can cost as little as $7.50 if you elect a different package. They also don’t mention that you need to elect the package in advance, before you know how much you’re going to use, with no recourse if you make a bad choice. It’s also been rigged so that no choice is almost always the worst choice. It’s like they’re counting on customers to not realise until it’s too late.
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