Much has been said about the Reliance Mobile Offer. There have been jokes/wise comments about how long one has to wait to get
the phone after handing over the Prepaid cheques, there has been sniggering that this offer is a con job and that the rates
are too good to be true. There has also been mass mailing by the rival GSM service providers masquerading as someone spreading good advise to prevent people from going to Reliance(’’the truth behind the reliance Offer’’). What I will try to give is my experience of the same and then its up to the rest of you guys to make your own decision.
Starting with the wait... I gave the agents my cheques on the 22nd of Feb. They told me that if I gave them a draft or a pay order then the processing period for my phone would be shorter. I took their advise and had a pay order made for the front-up payment. My agent informed me that they would not courier the cheques as the usual procedure is(as then we would have to wait for 15-20 working days for Reliance to process the cheques and courier me the handset thus maybe taking about a month or so), instead they will wait for Reliance to open a ’’Counter’’ where they will process such pay orders on the spot.
Reliance opened this so called ’’Counter’’ in Mumbai on the 10th and I picked up my handset from my agents on the 11th of March. So basically I got my handset in approx 16-17 days totally.
Much has been said about how much the Reliance Offer is better than those given by the other service providers. So I shall compare it with Orange. The following is the last offer by Orange it was declared on the 9th of Feb. There have been no further updates to the same.
For an Apple to Apple comparison we shall compare the Orange offer that matches the monthly commitment to Reliance the closest, the ’’Talk 599’’ Offer.
Talk 599
-----------
One Time Costs:-
Membership fees/Deposit-1000
STD Deposit-2000
SIM Card- 500
Total=3500
Monthly Charges:-
Rental-599
CLIP- 75
Itemised Billing-75
Voice mail-75
400 mins @ 50P per call-200
TOTAL=1024
-----------------------------------------
Reliance 400
-----------
One Time Costs:-
Membership fees/Deposit-3000
STD Deposit-2000
Total=5000
Monthly Charges:-
Rental-600
CLIP, Itemised Billing, Voice mail- Free
400 mins - Free
TOTAL=600
--------------------------------------------
So in the first Year if you only spend 400 minutes outgoing every month(since incoming is free for both offers) you will pay
Orange = 3500 + (1024 X 12) + 599 = 16, 387 (Extra 599 as you will pay 13 rentals in the first year, its a stupid policy).
And you will pay Reliance = 5000 + (600 X 12) = 12, 200 which is 4187 Rs. less.
In the second & third year You will pay Orange = 1024 X 12 = 12, 288 while you will pay Reliance = 600 x 12 = 7200 which is 5088 Rs. less.
Thus totally you will be saving approx 14, 363 Rs. by using Reliance instead of Orange.
The Reliance Offer includes a free handset. So if you are a first time user and if you go for the Reliance Offer you will save totally 14, 363 + 5900 (the approx price of the lowest end Nokia phone) = 20, 263 over a period of 3 years which approx means an average of 6750 Rs. every year. But if you already have a GSM phone then probably you could trade it in with Reliance and get a credit of approx 7000 Talk time vouchers.
And we are still not talking about SMS charges. All SMS is free in the Reliance Offer, while Orange charges 1Rs. per SMS sent. So if you send 500-600 SMS a year that keeps adding and the difference between the two offers keeps mounting.
But what about the Handset & the service? I shall rate each experience out of 10 to give you a fair idea.
Handset :- I have been given the LG RD 2030, they told me that this is the handset for the Mumbai region. I actually would have preferred the Samsung but after using the LG It is really not much of difference. So far I have used the handset for approx 4 days and find that it is quite decent. As good as the Nokia 3310/3315, not as good as the Nokia 8310 and Nokia series above but as good if not better than the Siemens and the Motorola going around in the market. For a user like me it suits my purpose. It’s about the same size as the Nokia 8250 and is quite light. Battery life etc is all very good. I do not need a flashy handset to advertise my economic status. I would give it a 7 out of 10.
Service :- The Agents that I dealt with were pretty good and they even setup the handset for me to start using. I would give them a 7 out of 10 as well.
The only downside that I feel there is that they(call centre service people) took a long time to pick up my call. Approx 17 minutes on hold in my case. 1 out of 10
The Reliance world feature works but is a little dodgy sometimes, I would give them a 3 out of 10 for that.
The Network:- is as good as any other service provider, please do not believe all the bad network rumors. I stay in Bandra Pali Hill area and work all over the city - no trouble so far. 7 out of 10.
Voice Clarity :- call to a land line is pretty decent, even an STD call made to Chattisgarh was clear. 6 out of 10
BUT it seems that calls made to GSM service providers are not very clear, and also to make a call to a Orange number or receive a call from Orange / BPL is sometimes getting an ’’All lines in this route are busy message’’ while if I call the same number through a land line I can get through. I know for a fact that Orange and Co were blocking calls from the Reliance network until they were forced to let them through. But I think they are deliberately keeping the number of connections possible to & from Reliance low thus making people believe that there is a problem with Reliance. But as landline numbers get
dialed instantly I feel that this (not letting Reliance network connect properly ) indeed is one of Orange & Co strategies. So giving Reliance the benefit of the doubt I would give them 6 out of 10 for clarity.
SMS: - Orange and Co are still blocking all SMS to and from Reliance networks, So if you have a friend who uses an Orange or a BPL phone then you will not be able to send or receive SMS from him/her. I have called the Reliance service and they told me that Orange etc are blocking SMS and they plan to sort this out in a month or two. This is really disgusting from Orange and BPL, I think they will learn their lesson when Reliance overtakes them in the number of subscribers. So I will abstain from judging the SMS services for now.
Well that is about all from me for now. I will get back when my first bill comes and I shall let you all know about hidden costs etc(if there are any). Thanks for reading my opinion. And that is what it really is(an opinion). I am not trying to convince you about anything and I am not a Reliance employee or anything like that, I am an IT Exec working for a restaurant company. The calculations given above were based on my research and if you guys feel that I have missed out anything please feel free to correct it. Also if any one wants to cut and paste what I have written and put it somewhere else as his/her own research they are free to do so. And if anyone has any specific questions then please feel free to post it as well.
-SirDj