Kogan Mobile has stirred up controversy in its first few months of service, with several customers complaining that they have been forced off the network for violating its fair use policy in relation to data usage without understanding how it worked in the first place.
This has prompted an amendment to the terms of service. The addition of a new Critical Information Summary now clearly outlines what Kogan Mobile considers unfair use.
Fair's fair?
As reported by Whistleout, the ToS say that a customer using 400MB of data a day for three consecutive days, or 1GB of data in a single day will be pushed, or churned, off the network. This level of use would suggest that the service is being used for a commercial purpose, or to replace a fixed line broadband service, in the eyes of the telco.
In regards to calls and text messages, customers will face the same fate if "...calls or texts within a single 30 day period exceeds the volume of calls or texts made by 99% of users of the same type of Service."
A fair use policy make sense for the calling and messages portion of the Kogan Mobile service, as these are the parts labelled Unlimited and open to abuse..
But, the data element in the plans is capped at 6GB per month, and it doesn't seem right that Kogan Mobile should be creating obstacles to how a customer chooses to use the data that they pay for upfront each month. In fact, this should be seen as a opportunity for the company to sell these power users more data when they reach their 6GB limit.
Customers who have come forward with complaints about Kogan Mobile have spoken about being churned off the network without warning.An Adelaide man told News.com.au that he had been refused a recharge of his service without notice, after using over 8GB of data in 21 days. Kogan Mobile told him that it suspected his account was being used for a business purpose.
