I had a very interesting conversation with Rachel Osborn, Contact Centre Manager, Orcon Internet Limited, this afternoon.

I was actually ringing her to express my thanks as my wife and I have just switched back to DSL after a disastris 6 months on wireless (which is a whole other topic!).

The issue of their new $19.95 plan was talked about on here earlier this week. Bill shock was also talked about as being the only potential down side. I expressed a number of personal views which have now been backed up.

Should a user go over the 200mb limit then a quick call to the help desk to get them selves bumped to a more apropriate plan is all that is required. She expressed she would have no hesitation in bumping a customer to an appropriate plan over seeing them upset by imposing a $149.00 bill.

She also expressed that all their sales team were ensuring that they talked with the customer about this issue up front to make sure that the 200mb plan was the right choice. My personal experience talking to a CSR was that the CSR expressed that in most cases she hadn't been selling the plan anyway.

I have followed this issue up because I've seen instances of customers in Australia being charged ~$10,000.00 by Telstra for accounts they weren't controlling properly and I agree with everyone that it is an issue that we as a tech community need to stay on top of. In Telstra's case this type of action did more harm to their business than any amount of profit they might collect by over charging. It causes people to stick with dialup and away from the internet.

Cheers Don