HOW TO: understand charges on your Telstra bill when you change plans or services
Filed under: billing, consumer, how to, my account
It sounds like a Latin superhero or an ancient curse, but pro-rata is something worth understanding. It’s how we calculate charges on your bill when you make a change to your Telstra services, and can seem a little confusing. Feel free to read this post in the voice of a Latin superhero if it helps.
Your Telstra products and services are charged in advance. This means that your monthly bill actually displays charges for next month’s usage.
If you decide to change a plan or service on your bill, there are a couple of things you’ll see on your next bill.
- You’ll be credited for the days of the previous month you didn’t use your old service.
- You’ll be charged for the days of the previous month you used your new service.
- You’ll be charged for next month’s service.
This makes much more sense when used as an example. Let’s say you decide to change from a $15 data pack to a $30 data pack. Your bill is normally issued on the 1st of each month, and you request this change on 10 July. Here’s what you’d see on your bill issued on 1 August:
- $10 credit for the days in July when you didn’t use the old $15 data pack (20 of 30 days during June)
- $20 charge for the days in July when you used your new $30 data pack (20 of 30 days during June)
- $30 charge for your new data usage in August, charged in advance.
These pro-rata charges often appear when you sign up for a new product or service or when upgrading to a new product. Because we charge in advance, your first bill will display the partial month you’ve already used as well as next month’s charges in advance. Unless, of course, you’re a Latin superhero; in which case you probably have psychic powers and don’t really need a mobile phone in the first place.
Maybe you should attach that blog post as a pamphlet when people change options to ease the confusion.
You should probably mention that if they change 10 days into their month they only get 20/21 days worth of what they are changing to in order to avoid excess usage/charges on top of their pro rata charges.
You may also want to mention that to avoid high pro rata and avoid excess usage to make the change the day BEFORE their bill cycle date (so they only need to wait one day to get their full month usage).
Good article and Emily’s suggestions would make it great. Simplicity is the key, which you’ve captured here, but Emily’s suggestions are important to understand the process fully.
Thanks for spending time explaining this confusing topic!
i’d like also to mention that the charges for the MRO also pro rated, now a credit for MRO is shown as well in combination of the the 2 MRO on top.
I think the explanation in the example doesn’t really make sense:
•You’ll be credited for the days of the previous month you didn’t use your old service.
•You’ll be charged for the days of the previous month you used your new service.
•You’ll be charged for next month’s service.
What do you mean I’ll be charged for ‘the days of the previous month you used your new service’ when I didn’t get the new service til now? I didn’t have the new service last month?
Hi Audie and Marcus,
It is a bit confusing! I’ll try and explain it using real dates…
It’s referring to the monthly billing period not the actual months of the year. For example if you took up your contract on the 29th of the month then the billing cycle would be 29th of that month until the 28th of the following month. For this example, if you started your new plan on the 19th of February then on your “February” bill (the bill for the period of January 29 to February 28) would be credited for the 10 days on your old plan that you didn’t use, charged for 10 days of the new plan that you used plus the next month’s service (February 29 – March 28).
Have a look at a bill you have with your previous plan to work out when your billing period is. Hope this makes more sense now