Ufone Email Subscription Campaign & Lucky Draw

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 6, 2008 at 3:27 AM

Ufone has recently launched a campaign for Email subscriptions or enabling their customers to receive their monthly bills via email and win handset from lucky draw.

The main objective of this campaign is to target those E-Customers who used internet on consistent basis. with the grasping of their email addresses, they will be targeted for different objectives like Gift cards , Greeting Cards campaigns.

Customers will get the SMS on mobile phones, asking for email subscription of their e-bills. They can reply back this SMS with email in it in order to subscribe for receiving E-Bill on their emails . By replying they will automatically become part of lucky draw and might be able to win handsets.

This offers is good step towards Mobile Commerce.

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Now PTCL Customers Can Pay Phone Bills on Ufone Service Centers/Franchises

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on November 6, 2008 at 3:22 AM

We have just learned that PTCL customers can now pay their landline phone bills at Ufone Service centers & Franchises. It is again one new step towards Value added services of Ufone in collaboration with PTCL.

It will not only help Ufone to serve in customer services, but it will also help PTCL to recover it’s in time payments from customers.

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U-Campaigns Need U-Turn

Posted by: Abu Asma on October 31, 2008 at 8:20 PM

Let me introduce Islamabad based Abu Asma, who is associated with advertising for 12 years now and is currently a Creative Director in a leading advertising Agency. Let’s welcome Abu Asma as latest addition in ProPakistani’s Team.

It is a general view point that money making in Telecom Sector is very simple – they lay down their infrastructure once, and then they can reap money for ever. Indeed this phenomenon is logical, but in real this might not be the case with every venture as some towering expectations might get crashed in days.

With multiple telecom players available in Pakistan, all the telecom companies are fighting hard to increase their share in market. It is very interesting to see that now mobile companies are offering call prices in Paisas to attract more customers and their strength to sell their products by advertising.

As a creative professional most of the time I wonder that big companies just believe on ambush marketing with out localizing the content of their adverts – also, without keeping their customers in mind. Today we have selected Ufone to discuss its advertising campaigns and their approach towards TVCs. Continue Reading This Story

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Ufone’s MMS and GPRS Undergoing Problems

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 28, 2008 at 6:51 AM

Not a big deal as far as MMS service is concerned, but inavailability of GPRS while you are on the go can be crucial. There are several reports, we getting from our readers about problems being faced with MMS and GPRS services on Ufone’s network.

Lately Ufone’s GPRS system remained down for dozens of hours, on other side, MMS is not being sent/recieved by many of customers, especially post paid ones.

One of our reader, reported that he has been repeatedly calling Ufone’s helpline for last 4 weeks to get his MMS going, but all in vain. By the way, i am myself not able to send/recieve MMS on my Ufone number.

A CSR has confirmed me that the issue is going on server end, and they are infact upgrading their billing server (Which in deed required a upgradation). We are not sure when these services will get stable, but as of now, there seems no luck in coming couple of weeks.

Maybe some one from Ufone can comment anything on this…!

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Free Handsets with 2 Year Contract for Ufone + HBL Credit Card Holders

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 28, 2008 at 6:25 AM

Ufone has partnered with Habib Bank Limited to offer post paid connections to HBL credit card holders with special rates plus free handsets. Rates are not that special in fact, as line rent is kept high, but calling rates may beat every other cellular package by Ufone itself and othre companies too.

Idea of giving out free handset with mobile connections was tried by Ufone itself and other cellular companies too, but that was for low end market with subsdized handsets. However, in this case, they are offering high end handsets like Nokia N78, Blackberry Curve 8320 and 8310 too.

As i mentioned earlier, line rent is kept high for all four packages available - meaning that you will be charged on monthly basis, and for minimum of two years. Yes, you will have to sign a 2 year contract in order to get this package and free handset.

Also note that there are around 20 models of mobile phones available for different packages. But first let’s look at tariff

Package Plans (All Rates are for 30 Second pulse)

Note: Package information displayed on Ufone’s website is incorrect as free minutes are called Free SMS there. But i have counter checked this and made sure that all packages come with Free Minutes. By the way, i have informed their helpline about this typo. Also, Ufone didn’t mention that these rates are for 30 seconds pulse.

Clearly, both on-net and off-net calls are offered at good rates. Also number of free minutes and SMS, somehow justify line rent.

What Handset options are available?

You are given with couple of options for handsets, depending on package you choose.

Package 1: Nokia 1680, Nokia 2630, Samsung M150
Package 2: Samsung M620, Samsung E251, Sony Ericsson R300, Sony Ericsson T303
Package 3: Nokia 6300, Nokia 3500 (C), Nokia N72, Sony Ericsson W350
Package 4: Nokia 5310, Nokia 5610, Nokia N70 ME, Sony Ericsson K770
Package 5: Nokia N78 - 2 GB, Nokia N - 81 8 GB, BlackBerry ® CurveTM 8320,
BlackBerry ® CurveTM 8310

Offer seems attractive… isn’t it? Okay there is a good news too if you are already a Ufone customer, and that you can associate your in-use Ufone number with your HBL Credit Card and can switch over to these packages. Along with you will be qualified to get free handset too ; -)

Let’s see if such offers with free handsets come for regular customers too - apparently, this could be done only with Banks as they have a comparatively reliable system for tracking customers’ in case of non-payments.

Terms and Conditions

• All current and new HBL CreditCard Holders are eligible for this offer.
• All current and new Ufone Postpay customers can avail this offer by applying for HBL CreditCard.
• Customers are required to sign an undertaking.
• Accordingly customer’s monthly charges will appear automatically on the HBL Creditard statement.
• HBL and the customer will be required to adhere to the terms and conditions of the contract for a two-year period for any one of the 5 plans applied for by the customer.
• HBL reserves the right to refuse any application.
• Handset models are subject to change based on their availability. In case the selected handset is not available, customers can choose from the same package.
• Handsets will be delivered within 15 days of application approval.
  Customers can call HBL PhoneBanking at 111-111-425 for further information.

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Rumor: Ufone to Introduce Voice Chat Portal Soon

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 27, 2008 at 1:35 AM

We are speculating that Ufone is working on a Voice Chat Portal to be launched in coming weeks. We don’t know much about the pricing and features of this service - yet, we are expecting that Service will allow Ufone users to Chat anonymously with each other - Meaning that they will connect with each other with their IDs, once connected, users will be able to share talk to each other and so on (Definitely they will be able to share their contact numbers, once they are connected).

We hope that service charges for this service will not go too high. as this service is going to be a hit amongst youngsters. We have seen anonymous SMS chat before in Pakistan cellular market, however, this would be first Voice Chat Portal.

Lets wait for more details to come regarding this in coming couple of weeks.

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Ufone Makes its Helpline Calls More Complex

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 18, 2008 at 4:02 AM

Ufone has changed the way its subscribers connect to CSRs while calling their help lines. Previously they had to

1. Call 333
2. Dial 1 for Urdu and 2 for English
3. Subscribers could dial 0 to connect to CSR

Now Ufone has changed this menu, and there are only three options available at main menu while there is no short code from main menu for connecting to CSR. (for both Pre-Paid and Post-Paid Costumers). One of their CSR has confirmed this.

Now the Menu is

• Call 333
• Dial 1 for Urdu or 2 for English
• Dial 1 for Promotions, 2 for new services and 3 for account information
• Dial 1 and select “Promotions”
• Now you can dial 0 to connect to operator (CSR)

So next time you call Ufone helpline, don’t get shocked in case you don’t find any option for operator.

I am unable to comprehend why this operator’s short code comes under promotion menu? Just to make this IVR more complex - hence less load on their work force? Maybe with this move, Ufone wants to justify 5 percent service charges they recently imposed on all services.

In parallel, just check out this Telenor IVR map (published on their website), which clearly indicates all available options when you call their helpline.

By the way, selected cellular companies charge their customers for calling their helplines. Given that cellular companies rely on deceptive marketing, and less people have internet access to check out detailed information on their websites, these service numbers should be kept free of any charge. But if customers are paying for these calls too, then they must be offered with quality help and services.

Check out Babar Bhatti’s this post for more Telenor’s IVR.

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Ufone Starts Selling 0336 Code

Posted by: Aamir Attaa on October 17, 2008 at 8:05 AM

There is this new code 0336 from Ufone in the market. SIMs with this new code will be available in the market in a week or so.

Ufone had 0333, 0334, 0332, 0331 code series, before they got this 0336 code.

It merits mentioning here that Ufone’s dialing code has changed to 033 as prefix with 8 digit number, but as we cellular subscribers still remembers cell number with 4 digit dialing code, so this 0336 can be termed as a new code.

You may like reading this post, where I discussed about how to get Ufone’s golden number with 0333 code.

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