Dear friends,

In a bid to woo the ignorant customers, the cellphone companies are coming
with one after the other only to repeatedly fool the people. I bacame a member
of this group when I had a miserable time with reliance. Since then, I have been
reading the emails sent by other members and occassionally giving suggestions.
Now, I am writing this email to forewarn the members not to fall prey to the
lifetime connections. Before, you go for it, I suggest you to consider
a) TRAI has not responded so far about the validity of the scheme. Hence, if
TRAI wakes up one fie morning from its deep slumber, and decides that this is
not a valid offer, where do we go? Remember that Reliance has introduced the
DAPO promising 15 sec pulse rate, 40 ps per minute STd et all.
b) The offer appears to be primafacie untenable as there is no guarantee that
they will renew their license after the current term. It is also not sure if
some other player comes into picture offering a more lucrative deal to the Govt
and the current service provider is outbid. It is not understood as to how they
offer lifetime schemes.
c) Despite saying that it is lifetime, the fineprint shows that the customer
has to recharge at pre-specified frequency. Although the recharge options
currently start with very low cost of Rs 10/- onwards, there is no guarantee
that they will not increase. What will be our remedy if they simply state that
you have to recharge with only 1000 rupee denominations every six months.
d) Finally, the lifetime offer appears to be the lifetime of the instrument
and not the subscriber atleast in respect of CDMA phones (Reliance and Tata).
Tata indicom service personnel were atleast in honestly admitting this when
approached. So what is the point in paying money for the short life of the
instrument when the outgoing call rates are prohibitively higher in these
schemes as compared to the regular offers. These schemes may be useful to be
distributed by sales departments to its executives where the management can keep
in contact with their personnel at almost no cost.
e) It is also interesting to note that the tarriffs have been falling ever
since the mobile phones hit th market. So it is possible that the companies will
come up with free handsets and better tarriffs without any committment from the
customers.

I wrote to idea cellular asking them for these clarifications and there is no
response even after more than a week. Not even the auto response that ususally
comes.

So better look at the fine print, and decide if you can live with only
incoming calls without making outgoing calls.

Regards