iPhone bill shock hits Optus

Like Vodafone, Optus has started to receive complaints about iPhone billing problems relating to excess data charges.

Yesterday Vodafone revealed a number of customers had been hit with larger than expected bills after the carrier had not correctly transitioned them onto a new plan when they purchased an Apple iPhone.

Today one Optus customer told ZDNet.com.au that he had received a $693 bill with large data excess charges, despite the fact that he was on a $79 monthly iPhone plan with a 700MB allowance per month, of which he had used under 100MB.

The customer called the Optus call centre, where the operator tried to explain the extra charges away with pro-rata data limits. The theory was that because he had only been billed for part of the month he only had a portion of his 700MB allowance.

However, the bill covered around two thirds of the month, which meant that the under 100MB usage the customer had clocked up would have been within the allowed data usage.