I have been a big supporter of Aldi Mobile and have recommended it to many people. The service is Telstra 3G, so as long as you haven’t got a need for 4G support it seems to offer great value for money.
However, recent changes to Aldi plans and terms of services have shown another side to their business, which I for one do not like a bit.
Aldi Mobile Plans
Previously Aldi had an Unlimited plan which for $35 per month offered you unlimited call, texts and 5GB of data. This was great value, but in a recent change, they have slashed this to 2500 minutes of calls, 2000 SMS and 2.5GB of data.
To sweeten the deal, there was obviously a price reduction involved…actually not! They halved the data and restricted the call time but kept the price exactly the same.
On top of this, they have introduced a ‘fair use’ policy that, well… it’s hard to define it as being fair in any shape or form. This amongst other things adds that: –
- You can’t make more than 300 mins of calls, 300 SMS or download more than 400MB of data per day for 3 consecutive days
- You can’t make more than 480 mins of calls, 500 SMS or download more than 1000MB of data on any given day
These apply to any mobile plan or addons.
Comments
Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but if I buy a 2GB data pack for the month I expect to be able to use it as and when I like. Typically I use on average 50-80MB per day when not on wifi, so I then let my son use it to watch youtube videos while I was out at dinner. Guess what, that is apparently not fair use!
I should add that I got no warning that the usage was too high, until I got a email threatening to cut me off 24 hours later.
I should note again that I have paid for the data, and lets face it. If they have a number of customers, it shouldn’t matter to them if I use it on any one day or another as the affect would be spread out amongst their customers.
Summary
Aldi’s plans are still a great deal if you … don’t use your phone much and do that consistently. The previous unlimited plan is no longer the value it once was and data restrictions mean that the data packages have become next to useless too.
Probably my biggest complaint is the way Aldi’s have done this. They slashed the value of a previously good plan while maintaining the price and enforced new ‘fair usage’ policy that is anything but fair.
It is true that Telstra and others have similar policies on fair usage, but these tend to be far less restrictive, certainly on the data side where a monthly limit is what you tend to get. It’s almost funny that at the same time as pushing services like Foxtel Go, services such as Aldi’s don’t seem to understand that minutes of video streaming is a huge amount of data.
My advice, after being a huge advocate for them is to probably steer clear. Most of us with a smart phone will have times when we use data heavily and having Aldi come down and say a day after the event: –
If this is the second time you have breached section 5.3 of our Acceptable Use Policy, then your service will be suspended. We will attempt to contact you before we suspend your service to let you know when it is going to happen. This suspension will block both your incoming and outgoing calls, but you will still be able to make calls to 000 emergency services and the ALDImobile service centre on 2534. You will need to find a new provider and transfer your number to them.
Thankfully this was first time being caught by this but it is certainly not my idea of a great service!