Prepaid plan recharge offers are growing
Around 45 per cent of all mobile connections in Australia are made through prepaid mobile plans. Prepaid plans have grown in popularity over the years, and the reasons for this are plenty.
Prepaid plans continue to grow in popularity amongst Australians.
For one, unlike postpaid plans, you don’t need to pass a credit check to purchase a prepaid SIM for your mobile. They also allow you avoid data overage charges because your plan inclusions simply disappear when exhausted. There are also a ton of prepaid plan offers on the market from Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO), and the increased competition translates into some great, value-driven recharge offers for consumers.
Recharge offers come in handy if you choose to hang on to a particular telco’s prepaid plan. Let’s say you buy a prepaid SIM starter pack from Telstra and it comes with some data, talk, and text inclusions. Your recharge offer is what you purchase at expiry of your initial SIM starter kit’s plan – that is, when the cycle is over – and telcos can offer even better deals for recharge, just to keep you on as a customer.
These days, you can find prepaid plans with recharge offers as low as $5, and you can find more expensive offers with tons of data and other inclusions. Some telcos even offer entertainment content, data rollover and data banks, and even data-free streaming. In other words, these value-driven prepaid recharge offers are just as good as their postpaid counterparts – if not altogether better.
How does recharge work
Recharging your prepaid plan is pretty straightforward. Most Australian telcos offer self-service apps or online self-service, where you can log on and recharge your prepaid plan with any of the recharge offers available.
You can also do this over the phone by giving your telco a call, or purchase recharge cards at a brick-and-mortar store, if your telco offers such physical transaction services.
Your SIM starter kit doesn’t really reflect the plan you recharge with upon expiry – you can typically choose any of the telco’s recharge offer you’d like and not face any penalties. This is one of the many advantage of prepaid plans – the freedom to switch plans and take advantage of any current recharge offer without being penalized for breaking a contract.
Available recharge offer in Australia
With the growing number of MVNOs in Australia offering prepaid plans, in addition to all three major networks offering the same, there’s a recharge offer for everyone’s needs.
We’ve dedicated a page to the best prepaid recharge offers in Australia, so make sure to check it out. But in the meantime, here’s a quick look at three solid MVNOs’ and their recharge offers:
- Amaysim recharge offers range from $10 to $50, but they currently have a starter SIM offer that cuts their $10 offer in half to $5. Recharging after that will cost the normal rate of $10. Their plans include anywhere from 2GB to 60GB of data, as well as unlimited standard national talk and text.
- Boost Mobile recharge offers range from $10 to $300, from 7-day expiry plans to 12-month expiry. Data inclusions range from 3GB to 240GB, and you get unlimited standard national voice and SMS, as well as unlimited international voice and SMS to select countries. Boost recharge offers also include data-free streaming of Apple Music, as well as data rollover – if you recharge on time, any unused data rolls over to your next recharge.
Why and when to recharge plan
You should only recharge your prepaid plan if you’re fine with the offer. Remember, with so many prepaid plans in Australia today, you should shop around for the best offer before recharging for another expiry period.
If you choose to remain with a particular telco, make sure to recharge before (or on the day of) your expiry. That’s because you might loose left over inclusions if you don’t recharge on time, and a lot of great offers only remain on subsequent recharges if you recharge on time.
Summing up
Recharge offers are a telco’s way of keeping customers on board. While your starter SIM plan might be great, a telco might offer you even better offers to recharge and stay on as a prepaid customer.
In some cases, recharge offers may also allow you keep inclusions that might be left over from a previous expiry if you recharge on time. An example of this is Telstra’s data banking, which allows you keep unused data from your previous expiry and hold on to it for as long as you keep recharging.