Hi,
Yesterday suddenly my idea outgoing call and SMS are barred, where as balance was more then Rs 200, I contacted Idea and to my surprise customer care executive told me that my service is expired and I have to do a minimum recharge of 35 to continue with service.
When I said but the sim was given as life time validity on which he said it was given with lifetime validity but not with life time services. LOL I asked so what does that mean, if sim is not working for outgoing calls what is the meaning of life time validity on which he said all companies have changed the policy so you have to pay every month weather u use or no.
I said fine but why you did not sent message that of any notification on which he said we have sent you.(I never receive any msg from such changes).
Now to reactivate the services I had to recharge my account with 35 it is painful as I have already 230 Rs in balance which I feel is cheating to customer.
Smart move by company.
1) All Idea/Vodafone/Airtel customer are forced to pay minimum 35/- this mean if they have 10 Crore customer and all customer will recharged with minimum 35 then they will get Minimum 350 crore sure shot by the end of this month.
2) No intimation to customer and customer comes to know only after services are barred so there is no way customer can directly disconnect, every customer will have to recharge atleast once before porting or disconnecting.
3) Life time validity at the time of purchase has no meaning.
4) What balance is there will go away and that will be company earning without services.
5) if deactivated and your mobile is connected with banking/insurance, mean you would no more get chance to get OTP for any transaction and you are forced to pay activation charges plus recharge, this mean more money to company,
6) No complain they are registering against this, and hope from TRAI is hopeless so customers have no option except pay and restart services else in next 15 days incoming will stop.
7) All in all it is a win win situation for Idea, as customers who were holding connection but not generating any revenue to company will automatically eliminated from there services.
Now question is will this a really good move for IDEA/Airtel/Vodafone? -
Well time will tell, but short term it is good for company and bad for customers, but in long term there will be a different story. These companies are already impacted badly due to JIO and now with this move possibly a good percentage of customers would port to JIO.
Earlier there was a doubt on services of Reliance JIO but over the time JIO has proven, they are cheapest and JIO may not be best but not lesser in services in compare to other telecom companies.
At this moment I understand Idea is running with losses but if this move would have been properly informed customer I guess they would gain customer faith, but because of this sudden move of barring outgoing, customers like me who are doing regular recharge would felt cheated.