If anyone is considering switching to TPG mobile, I would urge you to strongly reconsider or make sure that you are absolutely clear on what you are getting into. TPG does have pretty good deals on mobile plans but you'll have to factor in:
- Slow customer service
- HIDDEN COSTS
- PORT OUT FEES ($11 PER PHONE NUMBER)
TLDR AT BOTTOM.
I was on a $35 monthly SIM only plan with no lock in contract for about a year or so. During my time using TPG, the data speed was decent and there wasn't much issues with the connection itself. Coverage was good enough if you were in the metro area most of the time, but can get quite spotty in the rural regions. Seems pretty typical since they use the Vodafone network (I think?).
This is basically how TPG works:
- Your billing cycle starts about 7 days before your usage cycle, which means that you pay your bill a week in advance.
- You need to have a prepaid balance in your account of at least $10 to ensure your service does not get blocked.
This prepaid balance is used to pay for any excess charges for example extra data packs ($10 for 1GB). However, if you happen to exceed your data and DO NOT have any prepaid balance in your account, your data service will automatically get blocked even if the new cycle has started. You will then have to call up customer service to have your service unblocked which can take up to 24 hours. There is also a minimum top up of $10 (it used to be $20 even), but the point is this balance is NON-REFUNDABLE. So you are essentially topping up money into the account which may or may not ever be used, but you will never get it back regardless.
This was one of the biggest issues I had with TPG since I exceeded my data a few times and I ended up losing about 2-3 days of data usage each time. Sure, that doesn't seem like much but adding it all up it's almost a week of no data. TPG did offer a refund for the days of lost service which ended up being a minuscule amount of money, AND they still did not follow through. I never received any compensation although they offered to.
I ended up porting my number out before my next cycle started but they have already charged my payment. They made the porting out process an absolute nightmare for me and it took me 2 DAYS to finally be able to port out. My new carrier sent out multiple requests to port the number out and TPG first off said that they did not receive any such requests. The new carrier told me that TPG refused every single request saying the information doesn't match. That seems reasonable, so I called TPG to confirm the information, they told me yes it's correct, and I asked for their help on how to get a port out request approved. And I gave the exact same information to my new carrier and it still keeps getting denied. Only after calling TPG for at least 3-4 times did they ever mention that an account number needs to be provided to the new carrier. That was probably a mistake on my end but TPG customer service could have provided that advice instead of having me go around in circles. What really is the point of being customer service if you can't even provide such basic information?
Right now I'm stuck in a limbo of trying to get my money back for the next cycle that TPG refused to refund, claiming that the new carrier has to send a cancellation request. TPG confirmed that my number is already inactive with them, so I am really confused as to why another cancellation request needs to be made? The information provided by TPG is extremely confusing and they then said they are unable to process a refund to my card (for some odd reason??). BUT they seem to have no trouble at all chasing me up for the $11 port out fee and charging that to my card. To make things even better, my prepaid balance is not going to be refunded, and they can't even use that to pay for my port out fee.
Seriously, what company charges customers for leaving? Apparently TPG does.
If you do find a good deal on TPG and end up porting a few numbers in, beware that you will need to pay $11 EACH to port them out when you end up finding a better deal. Basically you'd end up paying more just to port them out to be able to keep your number.
TLDR; Beware of TPG 'hidden costs' and port out fees, unless you intend to stick with them for a very very long time.
This:
Slow customer service
HIDDEN COSTS
PORT OUT FEES ($11 PER PHONE NUMBER)
Couldn't agree more.