I have had a $80/month plan for about 12 months now and am going to try get out of it as cheaply as possible.
Just wondering if anyone has any tips about how to avoid cancelation fees? Should I just stick it out?
Reason for canceling is mainly trying to cut costs before moving into our new place with larger mortgage repayments per month.
talk to telstra and see what plan you can move to.
it maybe just cheaper to stick with it for 12 more months.
Its unlimited text and $500 worth of calls I think. 2.5GB data and my galaxy note 4 (?) Is included in the repayments too.
Make complains about how ur service is terrible, that the outages are in acceptable, write it to Andrew penn Ceo of Telstra. You might get some discounts in the cancellation
Hahahah now that's a good Sunday laugh. Nice try pumpkin.
You can leave your contract at any time, but the problem is that you will be liable to pay out the remaining months of your contract. Unless Telstra is directly at fault of their provision of service to you, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to renege on a contract that you previously agreed to.
Stick to it. You are really paying off your phone.
You mean keep the Galaxy Note 4 for free and drop the plan? If it was so easy then everybody would own the latest mobile phone from Telstra.
You could declare bankruptcy and cancel payments to Telstra as well as mortgage repayments.
Actually as an ex telstra sub contractor. If your service isnt good, and your getting low bars constantly, or poor speeds, you can argue the service you are receiving is not of a standard that should be expected by your contract. Not only are you required to pay your monthly under the contract, they are required to provide you with a service that is of a certain equitable quality. If they fail in that, you can ask them to cancel it without any cost to you. Its like returning a product that is not fit for use, except in this case its a service.
If there is a phone attached, then you pay out the cost of the phone remaining as specified in the contract, but you dont have to pay any cancellation fees or their contract specified charges for getting out of contract early. If they dont agree make a complaint with the communications ombudsmen, its up to telstra to prove they are providing a quality service, and after all the bad press with outages and whatnot, you have a right to cancel.
you can argue the service you are receiving is not of a standard that should be expected by your contract.
You'd also know that this isn't an easy route to game. Firstly you have to be in the same address that Telstra initially signed you up for. Secondly you'll have to explain why the service has been fine for the last 12 months and suddenly worth complaining about. Thirdly you'll have to walk through all of Telstras tests and troubleshooting, they'll possibly even get you to try multiple handsets over a period of time. Fourthly Telstra will know how far you are from towers, what other customers report back near you, and will use that to validate your claims. Fifthly Telstra have your call records, so if you say you have no service but they clearly see lots of calls and data whilst connected to your home tower/cell then they know you're lying.
In a nutshell, getting out of these contracts is hard. If it wasn't the telcos would be charging way more to cover their risk. Pretending you have bad service to get out of a contract will more than likely not work and will waste a heap of your time in the process.
(I've worked for all 3 major telcos in the analytics/data space, I saw the crackdown that both Voda and Optus did on exactly this scenario)
Just wondering if anyone has any tips about how to avoid cancelation fees? Should I just stick it out?
If this is purely a "change of mind" thing then you have exactly zero chance of getting out of your contract through Telstra. They won't do it, there's zero benefit to them.
You can try to hand your contract off to a friend or family member who is up for contract renewal. If someone is happy to take your contract/handset on for the remaining 12 months you can just change names on the contract. You could always offer to pay $20 per month to sweeten the deal (gets you out of $60per month and there's incentive for someone to take it on then).
Otherwise, contracts are contracts.
What do you get that's worth $80/month?