== snip ==

Thank you for your email.

I have checked all information that is available to me on the iPhone plan you have connected to and I need to advise that any data usage in excess of the 250Mb is not included in the plan and you will be charged for this usage at the rate of 12c per MB, billed per KB with minimum session of 50KB.

I do apologise for the store giving you incorrect information and would suggest you returning to the store if you have any further queries.

I trust this has addressed your concern.

== snip ==

Well, at least in Victoria we have some protection under Fair Trading laws in regards to deceptive conduct, perhaps that will be my only remedy…

Or hopefully, this is just another example of the conflicting advice being dished out by Vodafone employees, because they assume that the new iPhone plans are the same as the old ones.

Still looking for the definitive answer!

i do not have a “data package”.

i can comfirm that on my plan i can connect browse, download and do *anything* on the internet with **NO** download volume limit.

its just expensive. $1 for 5 minutes… but its all part of my plan so if i made no calls, theoretically i could use the internet for 550*5 minutes (45 hours) inclusive of my plan.

“your milage may vary”

Basically, on Friday night I went into the store (a Vodafone reseller, secure in the knowledge that I could get the phone on a $29 cap. For various reasons the application didn’t end up going through, so I went back on Saturday morning, and spent 2 1/2 hours waiting while the sales person fought valiantly against Vodafone’s crappy backend system (she had to call their support people 4 times, including one time when she was hung up on by the support guy when she put him on hold to talk to me, after she had waited on hold for 15min before getting through).

When we finally got to the part where I chose what plan I wanted, they discovered they were unable to put me on the $29 cap. Knowing a bit about how truly bad their backend system is, we decided it was probably a glitch, and decided to sign up for the next plan up and then go talk to Vodafone in the morning.

Turns out that overnight, the $29 cap was pulled due to abuse – people were buying the plan, cancelling it and paying it out, and still paying less than what the phone is worth. So now I’m stuck with a plan with phone credit I’m never going to come close to using up, and there’s nothing I can do about it short of paying out (no thanks).