Last week, Telecel launched what the company may consider to be their biggest product launch of this year; Telecel Red. The product is basically an attempt to attract subscribers to post-paid contracts – the contracts 95% of Africans are known to shy away from.
Our opinion on this, and one we shared with some friends at Telecel, is that people love prepaid, and it must be for a reason. People have dual-sim (tri-sims and even quad sims now apparently) mobile phones for a reason. And these reason may have to do with the fact that people loving the fence-sitting because that means they have choice.
It’s the same way I love my prepaid electricity and just wish City of Harare would come up with a prepaid ‘clean’ water solution. I consume that which I’ve already paid for already, and I pay for it in bits at a time. It’s the same way most of us foolishly handle even our health matters; health insurance is something we only get because the employer says they are going to pay it anyway. Otherwise its pay as you go health. A low cost only ‘when you need it’ approach.
In short, on Telecel Red we’re as curious about how the product will do as most of you are. Wait and see we’ve chosen, so that hindsight bias can make us into the thoughtful wise men we fancy ourselves.
Thankfully for you dear reader though, not everyone is wait-and-seeing on this one. A Telecel subscriber, one begotten sun, has broken Telecel Red down to its simplest form – “a Rip Off”, he says.
You can read the reasons in his full post on the matter. And while you read, bear in mind his motives are not to just bash Telecel, he correctly points out that he’s been championing Telecel’s products for some 2 years now!
Have you subscribed to Telecel Red yet? You agree with this guy or not? What are your reasons?
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11 comments
Its called marketing, not really a rip off. You think the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the Apple IPhones are worth what we buy them? Nope. But they market them as such. Unless someone thinks it through like this guy did (its a nice blog piece), u might be tempted to go for the REd promotion. But i have to agree with him, their pre-paid product whallops their Red service hands down. Maybe they should rethink the promotion through and increase the data, sms, and talk time a little bit for it to make financial sense.
Looks like someone just discovered that messaging/calling over IP is cheaper than vanila GSM. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, at this unthinkable turn of events.
@author, the correct/future-proof link to the article is http://begottensun.blogspot.com/2013/02/dear-telecelzim-why-i-think-is-rip-off.html. Your top level link will not work as expected as soon as he posts another entry
thanks a mil, fixed.
begottenson carries a strong argument. Marketing can only get you so far.It is a first and I assume it’ll only get better. As an Econet subscriber I feel you’ve done a better job than my carrier, good initiative keep it up
In all my enquries with Telecel about their product they have assured me that you can opt for a prepaid or postpaid version. Please verify as this is what their sales staff has told me.
I doubt you can change from post paid to pre paid just like that. Not even here in SA else you sell your handset plus get a loan at the bank to get out of one of their contracts. Super high penalties to do that so those sales staff are going to be singing the blues very soon.
The guy has a point though, strong ones l say! Reading through telecel again shows that they have nothing unlimited like the unlimited l kno from other places.
I think the development of the product could have been better BUT its a massive step in the right direction. In a country where many industries have adopted a “one size fits all” approach, it’s good to see telecel working hard to give us choice. The one thing that telecel has always promised is value and im pretty sure that as RED develops that value will become more apparent. and the convenience of just paying once for everything is an added bonus
He is right in a way but unfortunately these days subscribers want more data than sms and voice calls. And yes prepaid is the best offering right now. We have our own “shady” deals from the usual suspects of MTN (eMyTN) and VodaCom (VodasCum/VodaCon). 60MB? Really these guys are smoking some Beira Corridor stuff.
And they “copied” the VodaCom theme!
Its very unfair for this dude to say its a rip off then went on to compare it to another Telecel promotion which we are not sure if it will stay forever. If the Mega juice promotion ends tomorrow, then all his points are invalid! He should validate his points but comparing with other providers or non-promotional scenarios!
its more of like an illusion you get just about five times the value you paid for for “free”. which means when you pay $30 bucks you get $150 worth of talk time to prefered number. so its not unlimited. trickery if not fraud at its best. they talk of a fair usage policy. bla bla bla.