How Telstra’s Customers Can Avoid Paying Overdue Fee Creep

Beware of Telstra’s Overdue Fee Creep and save on your phone and data bills.

Highfields / Queensland / Australia – WEBWIRE – Wednesday, July 15, 2015

While the big four banks raked in $12 billion in bank fees in 2014, up 2.8% on 2013, they are not the only big players who profit from fees.

“Telstra is currently flying under the radar by charging a $15 flat fee on all overdue bills,” said retired CEO and Engineer Mr Paul Maskell from Webpreneur’s Journey.

Bill due date creep applies when a bill is due on the 15th of one month and, then the next bill is dated the 13th of the next month, for instance.

“Let’s take an $80 bill, as soon as the clock strikes one minute past midnight of the due date a ‘flat fee’ of $15 applies,” Mr Maskell said.

“This amounts to the equivalent of 18.75% per month or 225% per annum at a time when current official interest rates are at 2% per annum.”

This is particularly problematic for Telstra’s country customers who prefer paper bills delivered via mail service providers.

“If only 1% of Telstra’s current customer base (272,000 people), are overdue in any given month, Telstra suddenly reaps a $4.08 million cash injection.”

This goes way beyond the cost of recovery of any outstanding amounts on customer bills.

“And over half of these customers will be blissfully unaware they are late paying their bills because of due date creep.”

Mr Maskell said this is not morally right and a blatant abuse of market power as in 2014 Telstra had:

16 million mobile [smart phone and tablet] customers
7.5 million landline customers
3.7 million Internet [fixed data] customers
These figures are for Australian customers only
And does not include their overseas operations

When Mr Maskell recently spoke to a staff member of Telstra’s Complaints Department about this, she revealed: “she couldn’t disagree.”

“So there is mounting evidence overdue fee costs and bill due by date creep is just another business model in order to profit company shareholders.”

Telstra customers should ask one very succinct question.

“What percentage of Telstra’s profits includes overdue fees?” Mr Maskell said.

“The message here is watch Telstra’s bill due dates and overdue fee creep carefully.”

Market power abuse should be called out and should not be tolerated.

More information about Mr Maskell is available on www.ThePaulMaskell.com/About/