How prepaid mobile subscribers are being looted

avi

avi

Skilled
Both Vodafone and Idea use 28-day validity for all their prepaid mobile internet packs. So how much more it costs to the subscribers in terms of usage? When you use a validity of 30 days over a year, you may lose just five days (used for 30*12=360) in a year.

However, when you are forced to use 28 days validity, you end up losing almost a month (used for 28*12=336 days). This means instead of recharging for 12 times, prepaid subscribers are forced to recharge 13 times in a year, giving an extra income to service providers. This is nothing but daylight robbery of prepaid subscribers, which the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is supposed to stop.

http://www.moneylife.in/article/how-prepaid-mobile-subscribers-are-being-looted/39965.html
 
Isn't the lower validity pack also cheaper? I mean they can increase it to 30/31/60 days but they will also increase the cost proportionately. Maybe its the smart marketing to break the cost/validity into smaller chunks so that it does not seem expensive.
 
Renegade said:
Isn't the lower validity pack also cheaper? I mean they can increase it to 30/31/60 days but they will also increase the cost proportionately. Maybe its the smart marketing to break the cost/validity into smaller chunks so that it does not seem expensive.
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In all these packs the validity is decreased and not the amount.
Earlier I used to take 28 Days / 300 MB / 102 Rs and now this is 21 Days / 300 MB / 102 Rs.
Hence now I am using 28 Days / 500 MB / 147 Rs pack.
 
So figure out what your mobile usage will be and then optimise on it. How to think of it. Cost per MB or cost per day ?

if you need 500MB then thats the plan you have to go with but if you can get away with less. then 250MB works out cheaper in terms of cost per day vs cost per MB even though it has a validity of just 20 days.

I dislike expiring packs, but i think they have a problem with a congestion on 2g & 3g. It used to be 1 month, then it got reduced to 28 days. And when i did a recharge recently it reduced to 21 days. A 33% hike (!)

End of the day, companies like postpaid customers because that is a regular minimum amount coming in every month. Question is if your usage makes postpaid worthwhile or not. Otherwise prepaid or pay as you go is always cheaper.
 
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Well in that case they could have increased the price instead of reducing the validity and the monetary impact would have been the same.

Also TRAI cannot do anything about it. Pricing the products is upto the operators. TRAI stipulates that once offered to a subscriber they cannot change any pack offer or price before 6 months.
 
They won't increase price because it affects bottom lines. This is something i don't hear being mentioned in the OP's article that cries out for regulation. what happened to the market and competition. Why are people asking for price fixing. Damn straight TRAI won't do and should not do anything about it. This is a self regulating problem, too expensive, no customers.

Take the weight of a soap bar, given we had an inflation problem over the last couple of years, i noticed the price remained the same but the weight reduced.
 
I don't understand the logic being used here. Its seems me that its on the basis of a assumption that a customer would be using the same amount of data whether it is 28 days or 30 days.

For instance, if I consume a 300 MB pack with 28 day validity in 25 days and paying 150 Rs for it and a post paid customer customer consumes 360 MB per month and pays 200 Rs for it which would be better? Also, can anyone say that I am loosing money because of the 28 day validity in this case.

In most cases, no matter how packed a post paid plan (especially the corporate offers) looks on paper, they are usually worse than pre-paid in practicality. They usually bundle unnecessary stuff that people never get to use to make the plan look loaded.

When I was at my former company, many of the guys there had subscribed to a corporate post paid plan from Airtel which looked enticing to them on paper. I opted for prepaid plan instead. When one day a debate stated between a few of us on why I don't switch to the same post paid plan, a detailed comparison was made. The call charges were actually slightly lower in my prepaid plan and many of the important things were roughly the same. The difference was that post paid users have to pay Rs 150 extra as rental. What the post paid plan users had to show for it was some additional things that they never had any use for and it was still not worth it even including those benefits.

After some initial debates with Airtel and they not doing anything or caring, Some guys stated a signature campaign and collected signatures of about 400 odd Airtel post paid users from the company on a letter to Airtel saying that they all intend to disconnect and switch to different provider if the post paid plan is not made more reasonable compared to the pre paid that I was using. They ultimately relented and reduced the rental by half. and made some other changes. It was still a costlier plan compared to the prepaid.
 
I think corporate plans are pretty good if you use the entire minutes that you have.
I have the below plan Rs.249 CUG which offers 600 minutes Local+STD and 300 SMS (Local+National) a month.
So the billing is Rs.280 including tax.

If I am going for the same plan in prepaid then:
Call Booster ~ Rs.70
SMS Booster ~ Rs.20
Call Charges @ 35p per minute - 600*0.35 - Rs.210

So it is about Rs.290 and the calls that I make to my colleagues will also be charged.
I also have a Rs.100 - 300 MB 3G data pack. (Rs.112 after tax).
I don't have to keep worrying about whether my booster pack rate will change/call charges/data validity will change.

Before connecting the first call of the day airtel prepaid has a 20sec ad regarding their superb booster pack :mad: And its a nightmare to get connected to the customer service agent. But in postpaid I get directly connected to customer service within seconds.
 
^Using Docomo. I do recharge of 250, get 222 talktime plus 1GB of 3G data. Call charges 30ps/min, some 100 sms per month. K'taka circle.
 
@avi - Yeah, I agree Docomo/Aircel have cheaper options.
But I was comparing only Airtel postpaid to prepaid which has good data/call coverage pretty much everywhere. Docomo is not nearly as good. Have used it in Kerala, TN and Bangalore for nearly 4.5 years. Shifted back to Airtel after pathetic internet speed and network( once I could afford to pay more)
 
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This is a marketing tactic called 'grammage'.

Basically, the price of the product is kept the same but the quantity is reduced.

for e.g. have you noticed that Rs. 10 bag of chips getting smaller over the years? maggie noodles, coke/pepsi, biscuits and chocolates - look at their net weight. its all less than what it was when you were a kid. Remember pepsi/coke used to come in a 330 ml bottle - now its 200ml for the same 10 bucks.

The primary reason for this is so that a product can still be sold at a specific price point over a long period of time (especially fmcg's) but the reduction in weight is to compensate for rising costs and inflation.
So, companies can either increase the price or reduce the quantity.

A problem arises when this is done beyond a reasonable limit which depends on person to person.
 
avi said:
^Using Docomo. I do recharge of 250, get 222 talktime plus 1GB of 3G data. Call charges 30ps/min, some 100 sms per month. K'taka circle.
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if you get signal and performance where you are then great. Good if you are static. if you are moving then the company with the best coverage in the city wins out. a friend of mine ported out from vodafone to airtel because she could not get any signal where she lived.

mobile means coverage and if you want to get your calls then dependability of the network wins out.
 
avi said:
^Using Docomo. I do recharge of 250, get 222 talktime plus 1GB of 3G data. Call charges 30ps/min, some 100 sms per month. K'taka circle.
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i have a docomo sim, can you link me to the pack details page or activation page, how do you activate it?
 
Docomo has decent coverage in Mumbai - even where Airtel gets whacked. For this reason, have not ported from Docomo. However, net speed is nothing to talk about!

@RS4 - goto tata docomo online portal > online recharge > special recharge. Look for this specific plan there AND READ ENTIRE T&C before taking it.
 
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