My elderly neighbour - who is not very well off and has little assistance - came to ask me about her mobile plan. Effectively, Optus have put her on a new prepaid plan (Flex Plus?) that seems like pretty terrible value. She's a bit stressed out about it, and needs help to save some money.
Her use case is dead simple, text and calls. She doesn't use data (though I expect every service now comes with some sort of data, and who knows, she may come to enjoy the internet). She would recharge whenever she ran out of minutes, with no expiry period. She purchased these at the shops and recharged over the phone - real old school stuff.
I haven't recharged a service since I was 17 years old, and have been fortunate to have my mobile service subsidised through work, so I'm a bit out of the loop.
To complicate things, she's paying $20 a month for a landline which I told her to get rid of, but she insists she can hear better with it (more on that below).
What is the absolute cheapest, no frills service that has no expiry (or a very long one). Can she port her existing number to a new prepaid SIM? Can we do something about forwarding her landline to her mobile and cancelling that? I was thinking about getting her a plug in headset for her mobile that should improve her ability to hear. Her phone is pretty damn old (fortunately supports 4G, so can keep on trucking), and I doubt takes eSIM, either.
It seems that Coles Mobile yearly SIM is a decent buy at $16.25 a month (and is Optus so I know it'll work here). They also have Australian support apparently (which is great for her as she was going on a slightly racist tirade about the Optus support reps being "too difficult to understand").
But how does it work when the data runs out? Is the whole thing cooked, or can she keep making calls and texts until it expires?
I'm even half tempted to recommend her a month to month cheap plan so she doesn't need to worry about recharging again. The less help she needs with this, the better!
Thanks OzBargainers!
Update: Sorry all for not updating sooner. She ended up getting the yearly Woolworths plan, and my brother had an old Google Pixel I setup for her.
Not out of the woods yet (struggling to get everything moved over to the new phone), but the mobile plan is sorted now.
Thanks again!
ozbargain's Latest Prepaid & Postpaid Mobile Plan Deals and Vouchers page