The telcos are out en force. Their prey? Your cash. In fact, Telstra want your business so much they are giving new pre-pay customers ‘bonus’ credit when they join. So, say you top up by $40, users can decide to opt for ‘talk + text’ or ‘weekend+’, ‘text & data’ or ‘longlife’ plan.
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This gives anything from 200 more minutes and 400 texts or else if you’re a Net addict, nab 800 more texts and 1.5 extra GB of data.
This is on top of the existing deal add-on’s and recharge amount. And the deals are incremental so the more you top up by, the greater the bonus. Top ups range from $30-$100.
Existing Telstra users can also get in on the act and change to one of the new deals.
However, all this additional data and texts can only be used in Australia, so forget using it abroad.
Also, the deal expires on October 31 or “unless withdrawn earlier or extended” according to Telstra. Whatever that means.
Over at Vodafone, a play is also being made for pre-payers.”Kill your credit demons with Vodafone All-time Prepaid,” cries the troubled telco.
So, what’s their deal? $5 off its $55 top up, which now becomes $50. This is what it was tweeting earlier today.
But Voda has added “selected infinite inclusions” to its All Time Prepaid offer, which basically means ‘infinite’ texting, calls (although this is top up dependent) and access to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and foursquare.
Voda’s prepaid ‘text & talk’ and ‘text & data’ packages are similar to Telstra’s. Top-up options are $35 with 500MB data or $50 deal with 1GB, as mentioned before.
Actually, Vodafone’s ‘text & talk’ deal gives a 60 day expiry instead of Telstra’s 30 day use period, which is handy. And that’s not all the news from Voda.
Earlier today we reported how the problem riddled carrier has lost 3750,000 customers in just 6 months. Little wonder they are upping their game.
The company is also said to have suffered losses of $96 million over the past year.