Aldi Mobile has issued new user acceptable policies to its Telstra-based service, including a limitation on how much data each user can use per day. Use more than a 1GB in a day? Be ready to lose service, and quickly.
They’re exceptionally close to the kinds of acceptable use policies that the now defunct Kogan Mobile ended up implementing for its service. Specifically, the new acceptable use document (which you can read in full here) states that:
5.2. We will monitor your usage on a rolling 30 day basis. The following is deemed to be unacceptable use where your service is used to do any of the following over a 30 day period:
i) make more than 2,500 minutes of voice calls;
ii) send more than 2,000 SMS;
iii) send more than 500 MMS;
iiii) download or upload more than 400MB of data on your 2GB data bolt-on on a single day on three or more occasions.
We will attempt to contact you and give you warning notifications to let you know when you are close to breaching these limits.
If you’re a particularly heavy user, you could fall foul of the terms a little more quickly than that as well:
5.3. We will monitor your usage on a daily basis. The following is deemed to be unacceptable use and a severe breach of this Policy where your service is used to do any of the following per day:
i. make more than 480 minutes of voice calls;
ii. send more than 500 SMS;
iii. send more than 100 MMS;
iiii. download or upload more than 1000MB of data
Ouch. That’s eight hours of calls, which does feel pretty heavy to me, but if you were using the service for data, it would be fairly easy to chew through a gigabyte without too much fuss. Aldi Mobile managed to maintain continuity of service where Kogan Mobile folded following the collapse of ISPOne by coming to undisclosed terms with Telstra, and it would appear that those terms included far more severe limits on use of the service it offers, especially if you read the closing notes:
6. WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU BREACH THIS POLICY?
6.1. If we believe on reasonable grounds that you have breached this Policy, we may (but are not obliged to) take one or more of the following steps:
a) warn you that your usage of the service is in breach of this Policy;
b) remove your access to certain products, plans and bolt-ons;
c) suspend your access to the Service indefinitely or for a specific period;
d) terminate your access to the Service and refuse to provide the Service to you or your associates in the future.
6.2. If we consider that you are in breach of Section 4 of this Policy (Fraudulent and Infringing Use), we will immediately suspend your access to the Service after attempting to contact you. We may, in addition to other steps set out above, inform appropriate government and regulatory authorities of suspected illegal or infringing conduct.
6.3. If your service is suspended due to a breach of this Policy you will not be able to make or receive calls and you will only be able to dial 000 or 191 to contact emergency services. You will be able to port (transfer) your number to a different provider.
6.4. If your service is suspended in line with 6.1 or 6.2; by breaching this policy you will forfeit any remaining credit at the time when your service is suspended and no refund of credits will be supplied.
Source: Aldi Mobile via Twitter
I guess though, if you were willing to spend the money on such vast amounts of calls, sms and data that you may as well be using a premium provider rather than a budget provider.. it kind of is abusive of a budget provider if you think about it..
Unlimited is limited
Before you get an Aldi plan consider this. They charge data in minimum 1MB blocks with a nasty habit of connecting and disconnecting each time data is sent or received. So each time your phone does some background checks (ie. for updates, synchronizing, MMS, etc) it connects then disconnects and you are charged for at least 1MB each time, even though each one of these checks would be less than 15kb. So if you phone is on standby and you don’t use it, on average you will be charged around $1.50 per day ($45/month) for data, even though your phone has probably only metered around 1-3 MB of data traffic (this amount should only be worth 15 cents). Now that’s what I call a scam. You can of course disable data on your phone, but that comes with associated problems, ie. you won’t receive MMSs.
Poor show Aldi.