In Whither Cross-Selling And Upselling With eBills And eStatements?, I’d written about how I got hit by exorbitant SMS costs and how I solved this problem by ordering an SMS Pack that gave me 1,000 SMSs for only INR 35 per month.
Things were fine for a few months.
Then, suddenly, I again received a biggish bill a couple of months ago. Although I’d only sent around 800 SMSs – well below my free quota of 1,000 – I was charged for an additional 300 SMSs. This didn’t make any sense.
When I called my MNO – a leading global telecom company – I was told about a so-called “Blackout Period” when SMS packs weren’t applicable. Covering five festival days in a year – e.g. Diwali, Christmas – SMSs consumed during this period are charged at actuals.
I happened to have sent 300-odd SMS greetings during the two blackout days that fell during the billing period, which explained why I got docked separately for them.
I protested to the MNO’s CSR that there was no mention of a blackout period when I signed up for the SMS pack.
He claimed that the MNO’s website included a reference to this. However, when I challenged him to point out the exact page on the website where I could find a mention of blackout period, he gave up.
Another CSR told me that the order form signed by me while ordering the SMS pack carried this information. I pointed out to him that I’d purchased this SMS pack via a combination of social media and email, so there was no order form carrying my signature. Confessing that he never knew customers could order things from his company without wet-ink signature on a printed form in triplicate, this CSR bit the dust.
Sick of talking to CSRs who evidently had no clue about what was happening, I asked to escalate my call. The customer service manager who came on the line was indeed able to cite this clause on their website. At this point, I stopped arguing and made a note to myself to keep this blackout period in mind going forward.
However, being festival days, there’s this natural urge to send greetings by SMS and I wasn’t sure how long I’d stick to my resolution.
It later struck me that, by advancing your greeting messages by one day, you could beat the Blackout Period. Lest your friends receiving your greeting before the festival day start wondering if you’ve lost your sense of date and time, you could spin your tactic with “I wanted to be the first person to wish you”.
If you’re following content marketing, you’d note one common advice for making your message go viral: Use titles like “Top 10 Ways of Blah Blah Blah”, “Best 5 Strategies For Blah Blah Blah”, and so forth. I normally take this advice seriously because it works.
But the current post is an exception.
I only know one way to cut SMS costs. I’m not going to lie for the sake of headline bait. I’m going to ignore content marketing best practices and leave the title of this post the way it is, with the assurance that this one way will work (at least until the MNO cottons on to it).
Hopefully, the human urge to save money will make this post go viral despite its truthful title. Let’s see.