I signed my wife up to a Kogan Mobile long term (365 day) plan in May 2018 for $152.10, as she doesn’t use her phone a lot except when connected to the home WiFi.
On 21 December 2018, she received a text message from Kogan to say (quoted verbatim):
On 16 Jan 2019, selected parts of the network Kogan Mobile uses in your area is being upgraded, We noticed you?re using a phone which won?t be compatible after
I checked which networks and bands Kogan (Vodafone) uses, and could confirm that her phone supported all of them. There was nothing on either Kogan’s or Vodafone’s websites to indicate that she would lose access. Given the unprofessional nature of the text message, we assumed it was some sort of scam and ignored it.
On 24 December she received messages saying that she had used 50%, and then 85% later the same day, of her data. For some reason her phone had dropped off our WiFi network, and I had to do some setup changes.
In late January, she learned that she was not able to receive or make phone calls. She continued to receive SMS messages. After a lot of fiddling with phone settings, I could find absolutely nothing wrong and so rang Kogan Mobile. It seemed from the experience that their ‘help’ desk is located in Asia - while the person on the other end of the phone spoke English, she had a thick accent and had difficulty in understanding a lot of what I was saying… including my initial statement about that text message.
We had a fairly lengthy conversation in which she asked that the phone be rebooted (something we had done several times but I did again), and allegedly fiddled with some network settings. Then I restated what the text message had said, and she said “oh, it’s a problem with the phone then - you’ll have to replace it”. That was effectively the end of the call.
So Kogan Mobile does not necessarily recognise a phone that is top of the line and less than two years old! There was no offer or suggestion of a refund for the unused period, and I suspect that Kogan would try to claim that it’s not their problem. Checking network support indicates that both Kogan and Vodafone continue to provide bandwidths that are supported by the phone (which I bought from the US, new and unlocked).
This level of customer ‘service’ and ‘support’ is absolutely abominable! Very much buyer beware. Today my wife received her new Optus SIM, and she is all set up now with Optus.
