Kiaora,

Excuse wall of text, TL;DR at the bottom.

Have just returned from the Inlaws after being summonsed (finally) to resolve an issue with the MIL's Skinny plan. My MIL is your typical retiree - expects things to just work, doesn't remember what she's told about specifics and doesn't want to make a fuss. A year or two ago I moved her from Spark where she was paying nearly $100 a month for her mobile to Skinny on the $26 plan. I set it up to auto topup when the balance got low ($5) as the plan should have covered all of her usage (she stopped using voicemail after the switch). Her main usage is calls, with a little data (iPhone courtsey of a family member) and a dozen or two texts a month. Voice was the big thing for her so the $26 plan should have had her covered. We had some teething problems getting the right auto-topup settings leading to it all working just right for the last year.

Today she finally told my wife about the texts she's been getting saying her account has been topped up $35 - five since the beginning of the year. Having looked into it it turns out that when she went to Aussie for Christmas she accepted some incoming calls which took her under the $26 balance so her Combo didn't renew. After a few more days she got a message saying she was out of credit so she topped up $20. She continued on her way, came home and ofcourse didn't appreciate that she was on Standard Rates. The auto-top up went through on return home, she read the text and assumed that she was now back on her Combo when ofcourse she was still on Standard as the Combo's don't auto renew if they fail. Queue a month of Standard Rates including a 53 minute call to Aussie which would normally have come out of her minutes but ended up costing her $73 - Skinny helpfully auto topped her up twice during the call to keep it going.

Having finally checked her credit card statement and seen all the transactions she decided to call Skinny (didn't want to bother us). The lady from Skinny told her she was on the 'wrong plan' (MIL's words) and topped up her account twice then renewed her Combo. On a walk this morning she let slip to my wife so this evening we went around, I checked her account history, showed them where it all went wrong and my wife got on the phone. Half an hour later and an escalation to a supervisor Skinny offered to refund the $73 call as a one off gesture.

This all leads on to the suggestion: @LivingSkinny, can you guys have a look at the texts you send out when an auto-topup goes through. The message was suitably ambigious that my techno illiterate MIL assumed that she was still on her Combo.

Text she recieved: "Your account has now been topped up with $35.00. Your new balance is $39.51. Nice, remember you can manage your Combo and Add-ons from the Skinny App."

Any chance @LivingSkinny that Skinny could make it more obvious when a Combo has recently failed and then an Auto-topup goes through that the user will still be on Standard Rates. MIL thought that when it said "Nice, remember you can manage your Combo and Add-ons from the Skinny App." that that meant that her Combo was renewed.

No excuses here, we've all taken it as a learning. I will keep a better eye on my MIL's account in the future and she's promised to let us know about any texts that she doesn't understand. Credit to Skinny (Supervisor was Jake) for offering a one-off credit, ideally we'd have like a bit more (over $170 in one month's a bit hard to stomach for a retiree) but we're happy with the Aussie call being refunded. 

TL;DR: MIL's Combo didn't renew due to incoming roaming calls depleting her balance, didn't realise was still on Standard Rates as was confused by the topup message, spent over $170 in a month on Standard Rates including a $73 call to Aus. Skinny have refunded the Aus call, would love to see them clarify their topup message in this situation to avoid confusion.

Thanks