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4 min readPrice matching from physical retailers is a pretty common gambit, but it’s far less prevalent for telcos – and especially premium-priced telcos such as Telstra.
Telstra does offer what it calls the “7 Day Price Match” guarantee for smartphones, tablets and hotspots purchased through them… with some conditions. Here’s what you need to know.
If you purchase a phone, tablet or hotspot through Telstra and then find it at a better price within 7 days of receiving your device, Telstra will price match to that new price for you. It largely does do what it says it will do… with some rules in place.
In order to use Telstra’s 7 Day Price Match, you have to be a Telstra personal or small business customer with an active account who has purchased an eligible phone, tablet or hotspot device and received it within a 7 day span of seeing a better price with an eligible competitor. You’re also limited to a maximum of 5 price match claims, and can only do so for a single item at a time.
The big catch here is that you have to be a Telstra postpaid customer, not prepaid. If you’re a prepaid customer or you’re talking about a prepaid device, then the 7 Day Price Match does not apply.
It should go without saying that only devices that Telstra sells are eligible, because that feels rather obvious – but just in case you were thinking of trying to get Telstra to price match a Lamborghini, forget it.
There’s more to it than this, however. Devices must be those that are either provided by Telstra on monthly contract terms, or via using trade-in, outright purchased or purchased using Telstra’s points plus pay system.
Here’s a range of popular phones available on Telstra monthly payment terms that would qualify for this deal:
You’ve also got to be able to match the phone precisely like for like with the competing retailer, which means it has to be the same colour and the same storage size as the phone provided to you by Telstra.
Just as pre-paid customers cannot use the 7 Day Price Match system, so too you can’t use it for any Pre-Paid phones purchased through Telstra.
No, Telstra won’t match competitor deals – although to make it a like-for-like deal, they would have to be selling Telstra’s own plans as Telstra plans, at which point… you’re buying a Telstra plan from Telstra. If it’s a plan on the competing Optus or Vodafone/TPG networks, it’s not eligible for 7 day price match.
As per Telstra’s terms and conditions around the 7 Day Price Match, it will offer the deal with an “eligible” retailer. So what makes a retailer “eligible”?
In this case it’s largely by having an Australian physical presence – that is, a brick and mortar store or stores – and not being actively engaged purely in warehouse clearance sales. So a regular phone store would qualify, but a discount warehouse doing bulk sales wouldn’t. If the retailer in question has retail stores in London, Paris and New York but not yet Sydney or Melbourne, they also wouldn’t qualify.
What that also specifically excludes are online-only retailers. If you see a deal on the likes of Amazon or eBay at a better price than you got from Telstra for your phone, you’re out of luck.
It depends, with Telstra having a little wriggle room here when it comes time to determine if you’re eligible for a discount. Telstra’s terms and conditions state that it will price match from approved retailers, but not if the item is cheaper due to cashback, coupon offers or gift cards, if it’s a corporate price only, or if it’s secondhand or refurbished. Pricing is also inclusive of any shipping costs, so just seeing a cheaper price isn’t enough – it would have to be cheaper with postage also factored into the equation.
Telstra will price match sale items sold on contract terms, but only if the sale price discount applies purely to the device itself, not the ongoing phone service plan. If it’s a mix of both, it would fail to qualify – and it won’t price match just on plans alone.
Moreover, Telstra retains the right to decline price matching if it determines that the device is being sold “with pricing set significantly lower than the RRP or Market Value”.
Yes. Telstra will not offer a 7 Day Price Match for devices that are not in stock at the time the claim is made – and the unit in question has to be identical to the device provided to you by Telstra in all aspects.
If you qualify as a Telstra Postpaid customer and see a lower price within 7 days of receiving your device (including if Telstra itself drops the price), you can submit a claim to Telstra using its online portal. You cannot make a price match claim in a Telstra store, only online.
Telstra will then assess your claim and let you know within 14 business days if your claim has been approved. If it is approved, you will receive the price difference as a lump sum credit on your first or second bill following your claim approval. Given you have only 7 days to see a cheaper price, that’s likely to be the first or second bill you get after getting your new device.
Vodafone doesn’t, but Optus has a very slender set of devices that it will offer a price match on, specifically 5G phones.
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