Amaysim lifts it’s “Unlimited” price by $5 per month

How do you reduce the impact of a 13% price hike? Add 25% more data.  That’s the challenge facing Amaysim who as of September 1 are putting up the price of their (currently) $39.90 “Unlimited” plan to $44.90.  Meanwhile, Aussies are still wasting $400 million a year on bill-shock.  It’s a fine line people.

Since their launch, Amaysim have been the champions for clear value, easy to understand plans, and a willingness to try to explain to Australian mobile users that “cap plans” may not offer all the value you might hope.

51% of “bill shock” – according to Amaysim’s research – comes from excess data usage – and that’s happening on average as often as once every three months.  A quarter are copping extra charges of $20 on average.  Over the course of 12 months that’s adding up to a staggering $400 million.

Amaysim is a pretty decent success story – you’ve got to give them that.  The Kantar Worldpanel ComTech market share data has them as the number 5 telco overall, and in the prepaid market – they are 4th with a decent 7.3% of the market.

They’ve recently announced they’ve hit the 600,000 customer mark – a pretty decent milestone by any measure, but with revenue’s of $130,000,000 per year – that’s an ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of just $18.  Well below where the market almost “needs” to be.

Amaysim Managing Director Julian Ogrin told EFTM their customer’s data usage in the last 12 month had grown by a staggering 85%, so is it any wonder they’ve had to look at increasing the data allowance in the Unlimited plan.  In reality though, they’ve had to do that for two reasons.

Firstly, to offset the negativity of a price rise.  Secondly, they’ve withdrawn the “free Social” inclusion – instead, Social media access is included in normal data counting.

Julian Ogrin tells EFTM that Amaysim customers use around 200MB on average for “Social” applications, so in theory the extra 1GB is more than enough to cover that change.

Sugarcoat it how you like, it’s a price hike, and customers will worry.

What Amaysim has on its side is market competitiveness.  Compare that plan across the Big 3 and you will still see great value.  While the Amaysim network is still “only” 3G – my guess is that Amaysim’s 600,000 customers don’t really care too much for speed – they want value.