Mobile phones

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I am now the owner of 4 SIM cards for my iPhone.

I have my Australian SIM.  But I am so peeved with the international roaming arrangements that telcos have that I have, over the last few months, got a New Zealand SIM, then an Indonesian SIM and finally a UK SIM.

Last year my then Australian telco tried to charge me $900 for 3 days roaming in Jakarta.  They then announced that I needed to reduce my account balance - or they would 'suspend' me.  I suspended them first.

At the same time I also cancelled the payment authority - so that we evened up the negotiating position a bit in relation to the $900.  In spite of acknowledging the suspension, the telco proceeded to deduct monies from my account for 3 more months.

Eventually I got the bank to accept that the authority had been properly withdrawn and the payments were reversed.  That was another story - and the banking bureaucracy was not much more cooperative and reasonable than the telco.

All I could get out of the telco (until I complained to the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman) was an automated response saying 'ring our call centre'.  I have a visceral dislike of call centres - so I said 'Either respond to my emails - or you call me'.  I'm not willing to waste my time with call centres - particularly 'off-shored' ones.

Eventually the TIO provoked a phone call from an Australian woman - clearly 'with a script'.  It was a script affected (I think) by her misplaced confidence that the bill had already been paid.  When I said I wasn't willing to pay for data services of no value to me - she decided she could tick the box 'refusal to negotiate' and said the conversation was at an end.

A further loop back to the TIO produced another telco representative who, for the first time (4 months after the original problem), read the email traffic and listened to what I had to say.  His response, after cordial discussion, was to credit the entire bill and allow me to keep the iPhone - notwithstanding that I was only 16 months into a 24 month contract.

In the end, this was a more generous resolution than I sought - but probably reasonable given the aggravation they had caused.  It seems a pity that they didn't 'talk sense' some 4 months earlier when they still had a customer.  Instead, they preferred to use their 'efficient' off-shored, customer handling system.

So I now have a different telco provider - and a prepaid SIM card.  The telcos may think of prepaid SIMs as a means of dealing with 'subprime' customers.  In fact they're a way of dealing with an industry that can't be trusted.

This way I can limit their capacity to gouge to $20 a time.  When $20 disappears too quickly - I can work out why and avoid it in future.

My international SIMs are my response to the most egregious of their misbehaviours.  I've found that within each country there are international call and data arrangements that are a tiny fraction of the cost of international roaming charges.  My SIM card shuffle prior to landing is a small price to pay.
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