Reality check: Internode is not 'price gouging'

Renai LeMay
Monday, 18 July 2011 16:46

Your IT - Home IT

opinion The current round of complaints about Internode stem from a large round of price and quota changes to its broadband plans made last week. The ISP's always had a much more complicated plan structure than that of rivals like Telstra, Optus, TPG and iiNet, so it took customers a while to work through the changes and analyse what they meant.

But when they did, they found a lot that they didn't like.

Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the fact that a 150GB entry level Internode plan had been bumped down in quota to 30GB for the same price.

'I'm on Easy Naked S which has 150GB of data, now for the same price I can have Easy Naked 30 with 30GB?' wrote one user on broadband forum Whirlpool. 'Err, I think I'll stay where I am.' And another added: 'Umm $20 more for 50GB more, or 120GB less for the same price as I'm paying now'¦ yeah think I'll stay on my 150GB $59.95 a month naked plan, thanks :)'

However, others were also alarmed by the removal of a 600GB plan '” with there now being no option for customers who wanted a monthly quota somewhere between 300GB and 1TB. And some expressed their frustration at the fact that their current 'tier' of plan had been migrated upwards in both quota and price '” they didn't need more quota and didn't want to pay more for it.

Internode managing director Simon Hackett's attempts to explain the situation on the company's blog didn't seem to make anything better, due to his habit for blaming a number of the changes on Telstra's wholesale pricing.