This was posted 8 years 8 months 18 days ago, and might be an out-dated deal.

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2x 100GB of 4G Telstra Mobile Data for $104 (Requires Sending SMSs)

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2x 100GB of 4G Telstra Mobile Data for $104 (Requires Sending SMSs)
Go to Deal
nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:31 whirlpool.net.au (4489 clicks)
Last edited 21/08/2015 - 10:35 by 1 other user

Edit: looks like transferring of credit from MBB using 1258888 has NOT been disabled but I am leaving the deal marked as expired as some people are reporting trouble.

Want to get some serious 4g data for use in your dual-sim chinese android devices? Want to stop paying landline fees for ADSL? Don't mind expending a bit of elbow grease? Well, this is for you.

Telstra has a very convoluted set of offers and they have made it hard for their customers to understand the best way of using their offers. I have selected just one specific scenario here. There is a lot more information around for other tricks, if this whets your appetite.

OK, here are the steps. This works at the moment, no idea how long it will last:

  1. Buy two telstra SIMs for $2 each and activate them as Mobile Broadband SIMs. (Alternatively, Telstra livechat can switch a starter pack across for you if you prefer, and you will keep the $30 credit I believe)

  2. Purchase a $50 recharge for each SIM. You now have 12 months' validity on 5Gb of data.

  3. Each day for the next four days, do the following ten times from each Mobile Broadband SIM. You can either put the SIMs in a normal phone, or your MBB device may let you send SMSs via its web interface.

- SMS 1258888 with the word 'transfer'
- enter the phone number of the other MBB SIM
- select $1
- press '1' to confirm

After this, you will have an additional 20Gb of data on each SIM, giving you a total of 25Gb on each. The $50 credit on each is now reduced to $40 (as the 40 transfers cost $0.25, or $10 in total, in each direction).

  1. Do the same as step 3, but as you have $40 instead of $50 credit, you will only get 32 transfers in each direction, yielding an additional 16Gb on each SIM, bringing the total to 5+20+16=41Gb.

  2. Rinse and repeat. Eventually you will run out of credit, and each SIM will have a touch over 100Gb credit.

Remember you will only have 12 months to use it up!

Variations:
- use $140 top-up instead of $50, which will give you 280Gb on each SIM, plus a 2 year expiry.
- if you don't need 100Gb on each SIM, use the 1258888 method to transfer excess funds back to your mobile prepaid account and spend the money on the android play store.
- use something like iMacro for Chrome to help automate the SMS sending
- use something like Tasker on android with this to automatically send SMSs back to the other device.

Mobile Mobile Broadband Plan Prepaid Mobile Plan SIM Card Telstra

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closed Comments

  • ozhunter on 08/08/2015 - 17:33

    Isn't it 2x85GB of data?

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:34

      No, each credit me2u costs $0.25 and gives you 500Mb, meaning the $50 on each SIM is (eventually) translated into 100Gb.

    • huntress_love on 08/08/2015 - 19:17

      I was looking at this loophole a while ago and was wondering what to do with the datapass credit. Thanks OP.

      I've never came across the transfer option so not sure of it's limitation? Is it the same as C2me?

      I was also reading another comment by someone with C2me, you can do $20 through dialing #100# and 'web portal' which I'm not sure about.

    • lgacb08 on 08/08/2015 - 20:48

      if you do this between one data pass sim and another non data pass sim, then you'd get 85.5gb on the datapass sim after 196 transfers, provided that you send the maximum amount of credit back to the datapass sim (transfer $1 to datapass sim until balance below $1.25 then transfer the credit back to datapass sim with maximum amount each to minimise loss credit, then repeat the process until both sims exhaust credit)

      • huntress_love on 08/08/2015 - 21:09

        Thanks igacb08, did found out you can only transfer $10 at a time!

  • kwchaz on 08/08/2015 - 17:37

    I thought you couldn't creditme2u on the new broadband data pass plans?

    EDIT: apparently I'm wrong… 'Also, currently a $1 CreditMe2U transfer will award the receiving Data Pass service an additional 500MB data allowance.'

    EDIT: how do you still have $40 left after 'sending' 40 transfers of $1?

    • lgacb08 on 08/08/2015 - 17:42

      this +1

      • kwchaz on 08/08/2015 - 17:43
        +4

        Wait I get it… the money gets sent back and forth…!

        A: $50
        B: $50

        A: $48.75
        B: $51
        ($0.25 is lost)

        A: $49.75
        B: $48.75

        And so on and so forth… :D

        • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:45

          Exactly. The $50 on SIM 1 is sent via 40 $1 transfers to SIM 2. And at the same time, SIM 2 it sending its credit to SIM 1.

          In fact it's more fluid that this, but for the purposes of giving a simple explanation above I kept them as discrete steps.

      • lgacb08 on 08/08/2015 - 17:45

        sorry, I just tested on my ipad plan, it did give me extra 500mb

        OP should've summarised the deal as "Using credit me2u will give an extra 500mb to the receiving number", so this deal is effectively give you 500mb for each 25c in transfer fee.

  • khang on 08/08/2015 - 17:38
    +1

    Would the sims work on android tablets and ipads with the sim slots? Would be very handy if it did

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:44

      Yes, the SIM size does not matter. As long as it is set up as a mobile broadband SIM.

      You can send SMS to 125 8888 on the MBB plans, so certainly ipads etc would be fine.

  • Bellpop on 08/08/2015 - 17:41
    +6

    WOW, thanks for the effort man. Thanks for the heads up. Great work A+

  • Raynes on 08/08/2015 - 17:43
    +18

    +ve for being a strong lifehacker

  • aim54x on 08/08/2015 - 17:46
    +12

    Love it, this could be a solution for my lack of internet availability at home…

  • lgacb08 on 08/08/2015 - 17:46
    +9

    but I guess telstra will close this loophole very soon.

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:48
      +3

      This has been possible for months.

      Until July, it was actually 1Gb per $1 transfer.

      There has been some interesting speculation that Telstra are deliberating applying doublethink to bolster the number of SIM registrations, as well as offering extra value to the tech-savvy and more price-sensitive, without cannibalising their premium/corporate market too much.

      • djlee on 08/08/2015 - 18:04
        +39

        This is before it appeared on ozbargain.

        • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 22:23

          Sadly im OS and this will be closed in a week, OzBargain can blame me for my bad luck :(

        • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 22:44

          'ozbargained'.

          In this context: "…before it got ozbargained…"

  • JSQUARED on 08/08/2015 - 17:48
    +2

    $92 via Coles

    However, I thought you can't send credit from data pass SIMs to other sims though?
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/204192#comment-2925707

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:50

      Try it, I didn't think so either until a few days ago.

      • JSQUARED on 08/08/2015 - 18:18
        +2

        Texted "transfer" (from a data pass sim) to 125 8888 and received a message saying "This service is not available". Anyone else get the same?

        • Millikano on 08/08/2015 - 19:57
          +2

          Did you manage to get it working? Cheers.

        • JSQUARED on 08/08/2015 - 20:29

          @Millikano: Nope not yet.

        • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 20:36

          @JSQUARED:

          I think some old plans might not work..

        • JSQUARED on 08/08/2015 - 20:42

          @nicois: It's a new plan as I just activated my data SIM last week. Was using this method to get data.

          Maybe it's because I haven't loaded in the $50 voucher yet. I'm only planning to load the voucher to the data SIM once I've transferred all the credit from the $30 starter pack to the data SIM first.

        • sween64 on 09/08/2015 - 08:59

          @JSQUARED:

          I haven't recharged my Data Pass offer, I've only been CM2U in to it. This week though I was able to CM2U out using the SMS method.

        • JSQUARED on 09/08/2015 - 10:16

          @sween64: Hmm, when did you activate your data SIM? And going by some recent comments those who were able to use this texting method aren't able to transfer credit out of their data SIMs anymore. Does it still work for you?

        • sween64 on 09/08/2015 - 12:41

          @JSQUARED:

          It worked for me this morning at around 10am AEST. I can't try again until tomorrow as I've hit the $10 limit.

          I activated my Data Pass on the 21st May 2015.

        • kwchaz on 09/08/2015 - 13:08

          You were too slow. Make sure you type fast enough!

          Just activated two cards purchased today, activated today, and it had 'service is not available' whilst I was waiting for the second one to activate.
          Tried again, started typing faster (very hard on a t96!!) and it worked.

    • kwchaz on 08/08/2015 - 17:52

      Yeah that's my only concern - I was also of the understanding data pass sims can't do creditme2u away from it…

    • danyool on 08/08/2015 - 18:08

      +1 for the coles link.

      I just saw some this on WP yesterday that people were able to do it out of data pass via the SMS. I haven't tried it yet.

  • swiggity swag on 08/08/2015 - 17:50

    I don't get it. How are you getting extra data by transferring credit around?

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:50
      +6

      Every $1 transferred to a MBB SIM gives you a 500Mb credit bonus. In essence, it's like a $1 top-up.

    • lgacb08 on 08/08/2015 - 17:50

      each time you send credit, the receiver get an extra 500mb.

  • scheps on 08/08/2015 - 17:52
    +2

    this is cool

  • Food on 08/08/2015 - 17:53

    Vodafone favorites mark 2!

  • HardQuiz on 08/08/2015 - 17:57
    +3

    I reckon this loophole will be closed in no time.

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 17:59

      That's what we all thought at the end of the financial year, but it kept going. They are fully aware of it, so either are happy with it, or are incapable of doing something about it.

      • ozfeed on 08/08/2015 - 18:03
        +9

        or they're within days of closing it…

        • voter1 on 08/08/2015 - 19:09
          +19

          they are waiting for 10,000 ozbargainers to buy the $50 recharge….. then ZOINK

        • bonz on 08/08/2015 - 21:03

          @voter1:
          2 x $50 x 10,000 = $1,000,000
          Some time next week Telstra will either disable the ability to send SMS from these data passes or close the $1 => 500MB "glitch" completely. Don't forget to exploit this as outlined people would need to drag it over 19 days because of the $10 per day limit

      • watwatwat on 08/08/2015 - 21:26
        +5

        Anyone remember that glitch from years ago where the last day of a billing month gave you unlimited quota on adsl (back in the day where data quotas were really low)? That lasted a good while before they closed it.

        • hotelcc on 09/08/2015 - 06:28
          +2

          and one day you didn't time it right and it was actually the first day of the next billing month? Happened to me hah

        • Japius on 09/08/2015 - 07:56

          Or when adsl first launched and they had no quota then they added quotas because you decided to download every MP3 you could find but you ignored the email then they sent you a huge bill for excess data that you eventually got waived via the TIO because they sent the 'you now have a quota' email to the Telstra email address but you claim you only use hotmail….that's what happened to me anyway lol

        • jrad1337 on 09/08/2015 - 11:09

          I remember this haha. That went on for ages too. Then they spent millions building a new billing system which fixed it haha.

          Occasionally you could go over quota mid month and it wouldn't cap you either. That was in the early days of 25GB plans

  • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 18:02

    So hang on a second, Telstra are unofficially awarding a bonus 500MB for every recharge (including me2u) even though they never promised that they would? I would expect this loophole to be closed quick now that it has been Ozbargain'd because this is an insane amount of 4g data for little coin

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 18:04

      Telstra intended the credit me2u to be equivalent to a top-up. When you do a $1 top-up you get 500mb, valid for 3 days.

      The problem (for telstra) is that they didn't think about how it would interact with their other offers.

      It's not that anything is being done 'by mistake' by telstra. They would not allow 1258888 transfers if they did not want their customers to use them.

      • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 18:08

        Sure I get that, but is $1=500mb spelled out in the CIS or Our Customer Terms or some other place, or are they just doing it anyway?

        • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 18:11

          Well, I concede the official minimum recharge to give you bonuses is $10. So there is something to what you say. But it's been there since at least May…

      • hihi on 08/08/2015 - 19:04
        +1

        i think this is a mistake by Telstra. A MBB sim doesn't allow you to transfer the credit on m.telstra.com or #100* method.

      • wangmiester on 08/08/2015 - 22:54

        So each day that you transfer over 5gb you have 3 days to use that 5gb? Recurring?

        • sween64 on 09/08/2015 - 09:02

          The data expiry can be extended by either a CM2U or a recharge.

  • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 18:15

    By the way, I am getting a bit of grief on Whirlpool by some irate people who don't like the idea of sharing this tip with the rest of the world.

    If you think I should have kept this to myself, or think they should be less selfish, feel free to wade in over there :-)

    • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 18:17
      +28

      Whingepool are a bunch of selfish (profanity) but this is an actual loophole contrary to the actual terms so I get a feeling that they are justified that posting the deal here will bring enough attention for them to close it for everyone

    • kudoz on 08/08/2015 - 18:18
      +28

      mmm, wonder how many of them are being hypocritical and wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of OZBargain posted deals and share them with WP people…

      • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 19:08
        +3

        This scenario happens all too often.
        All take and no give…

      • cim85 on 08/08/2015 - 19:15

        @kudoz83 I would put my money on MOST, lol

    • Donatello on 08/08/2015 - 19:10
      +2

      Ozbargain deals is okay to share with others, but Whirpool loophole deals aren't okay to share?

      Really?

    • payton on 08/08/2015 - 19:21

      http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1207893
      I've seen ozbargain deals get posted there a few times.

    • Diji1 on 08/08/2015 - 19:24
      +1

      some irate people who don't like the idea of sharing this tip with the rest of the world.

      Yeah I mean it's not like Whirlpool is one of AUs busiest websites or anything right. It's a site you probably haven't heard of like reddit right.

    • Xishnik on 08/08/2015 - 19:43
      -1

      Considering you knew about this for months, why did you decide to share it now instead of as soon as you yourself found out about it?

      • snvl on 08/08/2015 - 23:17

        It has been discussed in most Telstra prepaid deal posted in OZB.

      • sween64 on 09/08/2015 - 09:04
        +1

        The ability to CM2U out of a Data Pass offer has only been discovered this week.

    • mirridon on 08/08/2015 - 20:10

      Like it's going to be kept a secret anyway forever…. who cares.

    • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 22:25
      -4

      Lol, Whirlpool vs Ozbargain, OzBargain will win

    • thecraw on 09/08/2015 - 08:22
      +2

      Reality is this is a loophole and the more people that know the more chance it will get shutdown. I wouldn't go for the OzB vs WP angle.

      Crossposting of deals happens all the time and no matter which way it goes I think its cool that more people know about it. Loopholes though are a slightly different scenario…

  • lgacb08 on 08/08/2015 - 18:17

    Anyone know what happen to the data and credit if we switch from data plan to a normal offer like simplicity? Will the data be forfeited?

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 18:21

      You will lose your bonuses. With simplicity this is not an issue, nor longlife, but it is on the others.

  • brentsbits on 08/08/2015 - 18:19
    +5

    OzBargain at its best

    • Mooncakes on 08/08/2015 - 19:04

      You mean whirlpool? haha

      • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 19:07
        +1

        More like Telstra at its best.

  • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 18:42

    Can u do this via the telstra app?

    • Lukian on 08/08/2015 - 18:58
      +1

      You can do this via m.telstra.com which the app links to. Or via a dial code or via livechat.

      • sween64 on 09/08/2015 - 09:05
        +1

        For all other offers CM2U is available by those means. For the Data Pass offer you can only CM2U via the SMS method outlined in the OP n

  • DEvok on 08/08/2015 - 18:57

    So this is better than Half price $15 for 3GB starter packs..?

    • Lukian on 08/08/2015 - 18:59

      Yes, if you need ongoing large amounts of data

  • cim85 on 08/08/2015 - 18:59

    Awesome job man, I have been doing something very similar to you with my prepaid MBB sims although not quite as good - so ta for the heads up and why I love OZB.

  • Phoebus on 08/08/2015 - 19:00

    this is very nice. Was wondering what to do with all that money on my mobile bb SIM.

  • DEvok on 08/08/2015 - 19:01
    -7

    Looks like a lot of work… Is this some glitch or promotion? If prom0, just ask the operator to do the work? They could process it all at once Easier… Let me get in the phone with them to try this now…

    • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 19:06
      +6

      How big's your phone DEvok? :-D

      • WhyAmICommenting on 08/08/2015 - 19:19

        Had to go back and reread it :P

      • bonz on 08/08/2015 - 21:21

        Honey i've just shrunk DEvok :P

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 19:19

      This is closer to a glitch than promotion. If you wanted to transfer $100 all in one go, maybe livechat would help you out there, but saying you want to do 100 $1 transfers to get the side-effects would not cut it.

      That said, the tasker setup I linked to works pretty well. If you have two (or more) android phones, load tasker and it will automatically transfer the data back and forth over the days until the credit is completely transferred to GB

      • WhyAmICommenting on 08/08/2015 - 19:20

        Wow, nice automation.

      • [Deactivated] on 08/08/2015 - 20:18

        mind sharing your script?

        • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 20:38

          I linked to it in the original post.

    • MickeyG on 08/08/2015 - 19:21

      Nice one. So using this method takes too long?
      Let's ask Telstra if there's an easier way to rip them off.
      Party's over!

      • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 19:23

        My tasker app doesn't do it any faster than you can do it yourself. It just takes the pain/monotony out of sitting down each day to do ten SMS interactions with telstra. It will still take a couple of weeks to execute this 200Gb recharge, it's just no manual effort each day.

        • MickeyG on 08/08/2015 - 19:33

          Yeah, that's cool. I was actually replying to someone wanting to call Telstra to make it easier/faster.

  • rapoot6 on 08/08/2015 - 19:06

    This is why I am on Ozbargain. Love it!

  • Mooncakes on 08/08/2015 - 19:15

    Is it possible to change a phone prepaid sim to MBB?

  • mirridon on 08/08/2015 - 19:23

    How long do you think this would last for :-/ this may be the solution to my current issues at home right now without having any internet.

    • nicois on 08/08/2015 - 19:25

      Telstra are offering 24 month recharges, so whatever you earn should remain for 24 months. They can't really take away what they have already given out.

      They could decide to instantly stop applying the 500Mb credit to each $1 recharge at any time however. People have been talking about this happening since May, so it could be tomorrow or it could be the end of the year…

      • mirridon on 08/08/2015 - 19:29

        Wouldn't it be nice if they just gave their customers 100X2 for $104? (starts laughing as it would never happen).

        I'm banking on the next few months but I might try stock up the GB's before this deal ends. On a dual sim, can you SMS between the two sim cards?

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