Wednesday 18 October 2017

AussieSim - BEWARE of this mob. Their service is woeful, and they'll take your money whilst knowing you can't activate your SIM(s) or even get customer service if you have a fault.

I received word lately of a complaint with AUSSIESIM and they have shown themselves to be some of the worst business people in Australia. At least in relation to customer service.

AussieSIM is a business offering overseas SIM cards that enables you to keep your current number overseas and they offer quite competitive rates for calls, SMS etc. That is if you can get your SIM cards to work, or even activate.

A quick Google search shows a woeful track record of unhappy customers, and virtually non existent customer service.

Before you jump the gun, and say "Well for every 1 disgruntled customer they had, the have 20 happy customers." That may be so, but I can personally vouch for their woeful service. Well actually no service at all, apart from taking your money whilst knowing full well that you can't validate or activate your SIM Cards. They are aware they have a problem with SIM activation, but are still happy to take your money. Is that fraud?

I know of a personally of a recent case where a person bought multiple SIM CARDS well ahead of going overseas, and to date, they've been unable to activate their SIM Cards for use. They are just about to go overseas, and AussieSim won't return phone calls, emails and are unreachable by phone. They have a recorded message that just runs you around in circles. They don't answer the phone, and instead have a message saying they are so busy they'll call you back within an hour. They don't. You press any option, SALES, SUPPORT or RETAIL, and it all leads to the same answering message. they are just too busy answering other calls to answer your particular call. Their phone number is 1300 333 440 or the international SUPPORT number being 61 (0)2 8076 2276, which gives you exactly the same message as if you phone the 1300 number. I personally rang them at 11:02 Adelaide time on Wednesday which is just after 8:30am Perth time. I left a support message. Lets see if they call back as the message said they would. Just out of curiosity, I decided to spend a bit of time calling AussieSim around 8-10 times today, I didn't leave any messages, just called to see if anyone actually answered. You think you're going to be lucky after you press the number for whatever service you need, it starts ringing, then the dreaded answering machine drops in saying 'Our staff are busy serving other people, for all support related issues, please go to aussiesim.com.au and lodge a support message'' ... where of course, they don't get back to you.

They are listed as being at Level 1, 91 Hay Street, Subiaco, WA, which according to Google is this place:

AussieSim office Subiaco, WA according to Google


11-20 of 43 replies
Whittlesea...
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11. Re: AUSSIE SIM Travel sim Experience
AussieSim, you should be ashamed of yourselves, worst organisation I have ever had to deal with, all you do is lie, I called you almost every day while I was in New Zealand regarding my Call Forwarding number which never worked for the entire 2 weeks all you kept saying was it will be rectified and we will call you back, not once did I receive a call from you. If you are travelling OS, purchase a local sim in the country you are in. For New Zealand, my wife purchased a 2Degrees sim for $20, 200 minutes to call Aus, unlimited SMS to Aus, 500meg data, for $10 more you can get an extra 1gig of data

The above complaint is from 2015, and it's plainly obvious that things haven't improved. 

Here's another complaint from 2014... you can see a pattern happening here I feel.

4. Re: AUSSIE SIM Travel sim Experience
Very similar experience recently on Trip to Canada and Alaska. Aussie Sim is a complete circus. Instructions given when purchasing conflict with written instructions that come with the sim, which then further conflict with instructions on their website. They don't have a clue what they're doing. The settings they instructed for use in Canada and USA were completely wrong (only got to the bottom of this after several lengthy online chat sessions with a girl in Australia who was really trying to be helpful). Then when finally got the settings sorted, found they no longer have "arrangements" with the nominated Canadian provider and had to go back to chat again to sort that out. Complete (and very frustrating) fiasco. These guys are driving without a license. Avoid at all costs
Melbourne, Australia
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24. Re: AUSSIE SIM Travel sim Experience
I had also had a recent bad experience. Found it exceptionally convoluted and user unfriendly. Was using it as an emergency back up and when my flight was delayed by 10hours requiring contacting home was unable to make a phone call. I was travelling with my disabled sister which added a difficulty factor and chatted online with AussieSim and could not resolve the problem. They kept instructing me to remove sim card - do this and that and reboot all of which was too difficult to do in the circumstances (mid car travel). Don't suppose I'll ever see the $25 credit (funny how topping up credit works smoothly). In the end they were rude and unhelpful. Will never use again and advise others to avoid it.
Sydney, Australia
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42. Re: AUSSIE SIM Travel sim Experience
DO NOT buy Aussie Sim Travel sim cards - their whole set up is a rip off! We bought 2 cards for our last o/s trip as their rates seemed a lot cheaper than getting roaming on our phones and we could forward numbers on our phones BUT the credits we had to repeatedly put on our phones ran out much faster than the calls we made and we were never able to contact anyone about this. My partner had put $50 dollars on his call forwarding and got an email 2 weeks later to say it had expired - without ever using it! AVOID!
Edited: 18 June 2017, 07:16

The above snippets are all from Trip Advisor. I didn't even bother to look at all the other sites with complaints. And, do you know what else, I didn't see one single post where people actually posted something good about AussieSim. In Google Reviews ... every single comment was to warn people to steer clear of them. In Trip Advisor, every single comment was a warning to other people to steer clear of them as well. Why isn't there any good comments?

It's now 4:58pm here in Adelaide and I left my message this morning at what, 11:02am, and so far, no call back, and I suspect, I won't get a call back.

I have no problems with a company if they're upfront and honest with people. If AussieSim are experiencing problems with SIM card validations/activations, state the problem on your website BEFORE people spend money to get a SIM card they invariably can't use. To take peoples money knowing you're unable to provide that service is tantamount to criminal activity.


The company has also had variations in the past, including AUSSIESIM, ZIPT, ROAMEASY, ROAMEZY, ROAMEZE and ZIPTEL.

Here is an extract from a website that gives free company information:

Aussiesim Pty Ltd is a limited by shares Australian proprietary company. Located at WA 6008 since 2015-12-02 the company is, as the updated on 2015-12-02 ABN database shows, registered. The company has been registered for Goods & Services Tax since 2012-08-07. Known company numbers for Aussiesim Pty Ltd are as follows: ACN - 147227683, Australian Business Number - 58147227683. Aussiesim Pty Ltd has been the company name since 2011-12-13. Roameze is an example of a business name Aussiesim Pty Ltd used. The complete list includes 5 business names. Roameze was the company's business name from 2014-03-19 until 2014-08-22. Other business names include Roameasy (from 2014-03-19 to 2014-08-25) and Ziptel (from 2014-03-19 to 2014-06-07). This Australian proprietary company was previously located in WA 6005 (from 2014-09-17 to 2015-12-02), WA 6005 (from 2012-07-01 to 2014-09-17). We found 7 trademarks that reference this company. 2012-06-19 is the date the documents needed to start the registration process of trademark no 1496224 were submitted. This trademark is categorised as "composite" and its application status is "never registered, live". Other company trademarks include trademark number 1499594, application status "never registered, live";trademark number 1546987, application status: "never registered, live".

As you can see they've jumped from business name to business name. Invariably companies do this because the business name ends up with such a bad reputation, it's time to shut it down and create a new one.

You've been warned. All the information I've reported is freely available on the internet for you to make your own decisions.

Oh, and by the way, it's now 8:51am Thursday 19th, and still no phone call back.

I know in future, that I'll be researching any Travel SIM Card companies properly. There's nothing to stop AussieSim closing it's doors and re-opening under a new business name, new website etc, and starting the whole thing off again.

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