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We want to clear up any confusion around the term Pro Rata. When you sign up with us, you’re billed your monthly access fee (plan and handset costs, if that applies) in advance. Any usage charges, be it calls, texts, data or value-added services i.e. travel packs are billed in arrears.
Pro rata means proportional, and in the Optus sense of the word, Pro Rata is a charge incurred for a product/service over a particular time-period, which practically means a charge for a part of a month, depending on when you signed up for a new service and your assigned bill cycle date.
We often get questions here on Yes Crowd like:
“Why has my bill come so soon?” or “Why are there repeated recurring charges with different invoice periods?”
In short, you’re being charged for a proportion of the month and for the first month in advance, and you can expect your next bill to be less. We’ll be using our new simplified mobile bills for our examples, so if your account number still starts with an 8, 9 or 10 you can find some handy tips here.
Click on a link below to learn how pro rata and month in advance charges affect the way that you're billed by Optus:
If you’re a brand-new customer to Optus with no existing services (welcome!), the day you go active is your bill cycle date. You can expect to receive your first bill within the following days after signing up. That’ll be a month in advance charge from the day you’ve become active on the Optus Network.
If you added an additional service to an existing Optus account, the gap between your service activation and your existing billing cycle is your pro rata billing period. You’re charged a portion of your plan fee & the full cost of your plan in advance.
If you've changed plans or re-contracted part way through the month, the bill you’ll receive after the change will include usage and charges leftover from your old plan as well as usage and charges from the date that your new plan took over.
It’s rare that we’ll see a customer cancel their service on the day of their billing cycle. There’s often the misunderstanding that you’ll receive a credit back for the initial month-in-advance payment they’d made when signing up or changing their rate plan.This isn’t necessarily the case. You’ll only receive a credit for the unused portion of your plan.
A: You’ll be charged pro rata for any usage incurred between your bill cycle and your disconnection. If you cancelled the service on the 17th of July. You’ll be charged for three days of usage and receive a credit for remaining unused days.
A: Yes, we’ll always attempt to process your refund through your existing payment means i.e. Direct Debit. If that’s not possible, we’ll issue your refund as a cheque. It’s always a good idea to make sure that we have your most current address (in case a cheque needs to be issued).
Note for new account holders: You’ll want to register your service for My Account. Here you can manage your services and accounts. You’ll be able to check data usage, roaming settings, set up call diversion, change your address, set up electronic billing and much more!
If you have any questions, please comment below.
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