Phone Plan: Anyone Successfully Cancel Phone Plan For Lack Of Coverage?

[{sarah}]

We were with Optus since 1999 & started having coverage issues around a year or so ago & we managed to get out of two contracts a few months ago now. It is possible. I'll get DH to pop in & see if he can tell you how he went about it.

[The hawk]

I'll get DH to pop in & see if he can tell you how he went about it.

Hi!

As has been said the carrier is bound to cover you for the address your at when you sign up, what's crazy is that if two people sign up at different houses, they are bound to be covered at their own house, yet if they swap houses neither is guaranteed coverage anymore :P

I now make 100% sure when I sign a new contract that I get written confirmation for our house and my work (and Sarah's work), usually they just print out the coverage map for me, but it's dated and stapled to my contract so I can drag it out as proof I was guaranteed coverage at those locations. Normally not an issue since the in-store people are happy to say your covered if the computer says so.

Sarah was close, in our case we were with Optus since 1997 and had had no issues but over the years the coverage has gotten worse and worse. My train line which used to work the whole way to and from except for one small place was basically dead the whole way (1 hour travel) but worse yet the house was very hit and miss, sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't if you tried to make a call and if someone was trying to call you it would go to voice mail close to 80% of the time.

After getting no joy from Optus I called the TIO mainly for advice, they happily took my story and lodged a complaint which in turn meant Optus were bound to reply within xx days (don't recall how many). In their defence they contacted me within the time and the guy was fantastic. He asked me for my story, said "yep, that sounds fair" and waived the cancellation fees and then went even further and waived the last couple of handset payments that were due. I really couldn't have asked for a better outcome.

We are now with Telstra and I can tell you the difference is like night and day... like the ad says "it works it more places"... like my house

(That aside it all comes down to *your* area. We have friends in Melbourne who swear by Optus and it's fair to say they offer better $$ value than Telstra... if you get coverage)