Fair Use Policy

01 · Who this policy applies to

This policy applies to Pear Australia Pty Ltd (ABN 94 624 986 554) voice services sold on an unlimited basis — plans where calls are included rather than charged per call. In this policy, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Pear, and “you” and “your” mean the customer.

It does not apply to plans charged on a pay-as-you-go basis, and it does not cover mobile data inclusions, data banking or data pooling. Those are dealt with separately in the terms for your mobile plan.

This policy sits alongside our Acceptable Use Policy and our Standard Form of Agreement. Where this policy deals with how much you use an unlimited service, the Acceptable Use Policy deals with the purposes a service may be used for. Both apply.

02 · What “unlimited” means

Unlimited means unlimited ordinary voice calling by a person — the normal day-to-day calls of running a business or a household, made and answered by people. If that describes how you use your service, you will never have a problem with this policy, no matter how busy you are.

03 · What unlimited does not cover

Unlimited is for people making calls. It is not for machines making calls, and it is not for reselling the service to somebody else. The following are outside fair use on any unlimited plan:

• Machine-generated calling of any kind — auto-diallers, predictive or power diallers, robocalls, recorded-message broadcasting or bulk messaging.
• Telemarketing, or operating a call centre or outbound calling campaign, on a plan that is not specifically sold for that purpose.
• Reselling, resupplying or sharing the service with people outside your business or household, or charging others for its use.
• SIM boxing, or any device or arrangement that switches, routes or re-routes traffic to or from our network or a supplier's network.
• Using a residential plan to run a business.
• Any use that degrades the service other customers receive.

These are also dealt with in our Acceptable Use Policy, and we may act under either policy or both.

04 · Our fair use marker

We need an objective figure so that you can judge your own usage rather than guess at ours. Ours is 2,500 minutes per line per month.

Plenty of legitimate customers will pass it occasionally. A medical practice running a recall campaign, a business through its busiest trading month, an office covering for a closed branch — all of these can produce a heavy month, and none of them is a problem. When we review a line, we look at whether the calling looks like people making calls or a machine making calls, and at whether the pattern is sustained or a one-off.

The patterns that suggest use has gone beyond ordinary:

• Sustained high usage month after month, rather than an occasional busy period.
• Very high numbers of calls to unique numbers in a single day, which is the signature of a dialler rather than a person.
• Continuous back-to-back calling across the working day with little or no gap between calls.
• Very short average call durations across a very high call count.

05 · What happens if use goes beyond fair use

You will always hear from us before anything changes. There are no surprise charges under this policy and no silent disconnections.

06 · Our commitments to you

• We will never apply a fair use charge without telling you first.
• We will always contact you and give you a chance to explain before anything changes.
• We will apply this policy reasonably, and to the specific line concerned — not to your whole account.
• We will not use this policy to move you off a plan simply because it has become less profitable for us.
• If your usage returns to normal, so does your plan.
• If you disagree with a decision we make under this policy, you can raise it through our Complaint Handling Policy, and you can take the matter to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

07 · Questions and changes

If you are not sure whether your usage sits inside this policy, ask us before it becomes an issue. We would much rather have that conversation early and put you on the right plan.

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a change that disadvantages you, we will give you notice in line with your Standard Form of Agreement before it takes effect. The current version is always available on our website.