Excellent Value - Pretty Reasonable Service - If a bit painful and cumbersome to activate – My family has 3 services with Coles Mobile since June 2018.

The first porting in 2018 was a nightmare to complete, but it taught me a few tricks, which made the other 2 a pain free transition. I've written these tricks further down in this review.

Apart from that initial nightmare, everything has been great. Decent coverage with the Optus network. 4G speeds are as expected. And when Coles put these cards on sale, they are an absolute bargain. The 3 of us purchased 365 day expiry packs for $130 (they are normally $180) in June this year. So we have unlimited calls, txt, mms and 48Gb for under $11 a month.

Their initial customer service was a joke, because they had this Coles only contact team. But it seems they have moved to using regular Optus prepaid customer service once you call the 1300 number, which is far better.

Now, for those of you who want to know how to smoothly port to Coles Mobile, here is how I did it.

1. Whoever your current carrier is (even Optus), make sure number is set as prepaid. If you are a post paid, call your carrier and change your SIM/account to prepaid. This may take a few days. And only once this move is complete try to port to Coles. It will add a week or more to the port if you are not already prepaid.

2. If you are with any other carrier than Telstra (yes EVEN Optus) go out and buy a $2 Telstra prepaid SIM. Jump on Telstra's site and activate this SIM by porting your number to Telstra. You don't need to buy any Telstra credit nor will it demand you do.

Once ported to Telstra (usually takes about 5 mins) call Optus and tell them you want to port your number from Telstra to Coles Mobile. They might say "do it online", but you tell them the online keeps failing and can they do it for you, which they will.

Once they do it, your number will be ported to Coles and the SIM activated within 5 mins... And your off and going.

3. If you are already with Telstra, simply call Optus and tell them you want to port your number from Telstra to Coles Mobile. They might say "do it online", but you tell them the online keeps failing and can they do it for you, which they will.

Once they do it, your number will be ported to Coles and the SIM activated within 5 mins... And your off and going.

I know the above seems stupid and painful, but it is the quickest and easiest way to do it.

I first moved Mum's post paid Optus number, and it was 10 days of stuffing around and about 10 calls to get it sorted out. But it was done in the end.

Then I did my number, which was an Optus prepaid, and I tried the porting to Telstra first trick. And I was setup and using my Coles service within 10 mins. By doing this I skipped that 24 to 48 hour port time.

Then I did Dad's post paid Optus, and I followed everything I wrote above. First made sure Optus changed his account to prepaid. This took 4 days from request to completion. Once that was done, using the Telstra trick we ported to Coles within 15 mins on a Saturday morning.

When the first year expired, it was simply a matter of asking Optus to do a SIM replacement with the new SIM packs and we were off and going within 2 mins.