XT billing questions: Postpaid and WAP

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Behodar

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#37346 11-Jul-2009 14:05

Hi everyone,

I received my first XT bill a couple of days ago and I'm a bit confused by it. I'm on One Rate 50 and have the $6 text and data extras.

First of all, in addition to this month's fees I've been charged $41.95 ($29.95 + $6 + $6) for next month. I signed up for postpaid, but when I emailed Telecom about I was told that "rental and activity" is charged one month in advance. That's hardly postpaid, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Furthermore that means I'm paying $6 for next month's texts, even though they're supposed to be 20c each for the first 30 (I sent 16 this month and was correctly charged $3.20, but have been charged the full $6 for next month). Obviously it's not possible to predict future usage, so this would need to be postpaid in order to work.

The other thing is WAP. I have $6 data (Mobile Broadband 20) but have $1.74 of "WAP Charge" entries on my bill. Telecom informs me that "The WAP charges are additional and not included in your data allowance". What constitutes a "WAP charge" and how can I make sure that my subsequent usage comes out of my included 20 MB?

Can anyone help to explain my bill?

Thanks :)

freitasm

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#234072 11-Jul-2009 14:14

I am told WAP charges comes out of your data allowance. Were you on CDMA before? If so, perhaps this WAP charge is from the previous billing month being charged now?

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corksta

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#234074 11-Jul-2009 14:15

It's standard practice to be billed a month in advance for your call plan. 'Postpaid' is just Telecom's term for being on account. I could be wrong on this but I think you'll also find that you are charged $6 for your text extra and whether you use any or none of them is irrelevant - you've paid for that monthly allowance.

Not too sure how to explain the WAP charge, this may be due to the APN being used in your phone.

Behodar

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#234081 11-Jul-2009 14:27

I switched from CDMA prepaid to XT... so come to think of it, I wonder what happened to my prepaid credit.

As for the text extra, the Telecom Mobile Plan Specific Terms and Conditions say that "you will be charged for the first set number of eligible TXT Extra messages per month you send at $0.20 per message and receive your other allocated eligible text messages free (at $0.00 per message). For example, if you've subscribed to 150TXT Extra you will be charged $0.20 per message for the first 30 text messages and the next 120 text messages are free" and this was confirmed by a Telecom employee (Neal, I think) in the "Am I missing something?" thread I started a few weeks ago.

nzbnw

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#234090 11-Jul-2009 14:47

AFAIK extra's (data and txt) are subscription based, i.e. you pay $6 per month if your use it or not. Can your provide a link to the T's & C's you are refering to?

Postpaid means via post (i.e. NZ Post). Get it?

nzbnw

Behodar

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#234095 11-Jul-2009 15:13

I'm looking at these terms. I haven't seen any others that mentioned the text extra.

As for postpaid meaning "by post", when it's referred to alongside prepaid it certainly gives the impression of "paid afterwards".

johnr

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#234105 11-Jul-2009 15:40

postpay is for the calls after you make them

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NonprayingMantis

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#234115 11-Jul-2009 16:08

I always thought any fixed charges (i.e. your plan charges) were billed in advance, but your usage (minutes used) was billed in arrears. could be wrong though.

this bit of your post sounds odd

but when I emailed Telecom about I was told that "rental [b]and activity[/b]" is charged one month in advance.

how can they possibly bill activity in advance. they don't know what you have used.

Behodar

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#234117 11-Jul-2009 16:12

Exactly, activity can't be billed in advance. I'm just quoting what they sent me!

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#234205 11-Jul-2009 20:22

I find it a real hoot that while the Telecos are gagging for more Postpaid customers, they do many annoying things that make it more worthwhile for a lot of us to stay or move to prepiad.

I'm looking at XT as a possible shift from Vodafone (yes Vodafone, your $1 charge for talking to someone is successfully moving your customers away from prepaid - well, Vodafone prepaid at least), but it would seem I am at least 10x better off on XT prepaid than postpaid. And I would be open to the idea of a plan!

Behodar

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#234730 13-Jul-2009 14:52

freitasm: I am told WAP charges comes out of your data allowance. Were you on CDMA before? If so, perhaps this WAP charge is from the previous billing month being charged now?

Something I've noticed is that the preconfigured APN settings on my phone don't match the ones in Neal's blog post. My "TelecomContent" option uses direct.telecom.co.nz, not wap.telecom.co.nz. "TelecomData" uses internet.telecom.co.nz. T-World still works, and I believe that it's using TelecomContent.

Does that make any sense? I thought T-World was only supposed to work via wap.telecom.co.nz but I don't even have that APN set up in the phone. More to the point, am I possibly being charged for use of the direct.telecom.co.nz APN?

NealR

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#234738 13-Jul-2009 14:59

Just to confirm. T'world is available using both the "internet" and "direct" APN's via http://pdaportal.telecom.co.nz . At the moment accessing this site is not free.

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Behodar

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#234749 13-Jul-2009 15:17

The T-World link that came preconfigured on my SE W705a is http://mobportal.telecom.co.nz/mobile/app/menu/index.xhtml. If it's not free then do I need to pay for it explicitly (the "WAP Charge" entries on my bill) or should it be included in my 20 MB data extra?