It's difficult to be a consumer nowadays if you don't keep up on information about the product of your choice. If you're loyal to some goods or services and continuously pay a fixed amount every month without asking any questions, you may be letting the companies providing your goods or services take advantage of you.
Pantip.com product manager Apisilp Trunganont recently tweeted inviting his followers to try his method of getting a cheap internet package from TrueMove H. It's simple _ just call TrueMove to cancel your mobile number and wait for a rather unexpected offer.
Mr Apisilp was actually a user of the TrueMove H fair use policy 3GB package, but it was not sufficient for his data usage. He told a call centre service representative in frank terms that he wanted to switch to another operator that provides 4GB at a cheaper rate. Suddenly the customer service representative offered to upgrade him to the 5GB a month plan for only 500 baht a month, half the normal rate of 999 baht.
Oh my god! This was a wonderful result _ the TrueMove representative pulled him back from cancelling his account by making this offer without thinking whether other customers would also get this price or not.
Imagine if you are a loyal customer using the 3GB package, paying for the service every month and happy with it. If you suddenly learned that other customers who called to end the service were upgraded to a better service at a cheaper price, it might occur to you that you're actually a foolish customer.
If you were a customer using the 5GB package and paying 999 baht a month, I wonder what your reaction would be to learn this information. Do you still want to pay 999 baht a month?
Certainly, I wouldn't.
Then I had a flash-back to the still-fresh bitter memory of members of True Visions who were unhappy with black screens during the Euro 2012 football. Some subscribers called to terminate the pay-TV service and also were offered a 50% discount on their monthly fee until the end of August if they agreed to continue subscribing.
I was unlucky as I didn't call to suspend my membership of True Visions, so I still have to pay the full price. My loyalty over the past decade means that I'm a bonehead who pays without asking. Now, I don't understand why some subscribers can pay only half the normal price until next month while loyal customers pay the full rate.
One of my colleagues also got a similar offer of a 50% discount when he called to cancel his membership and shift to another system. An inquiry with a True Visions representative found that the offers are part of the company's normal customer retention strategy.
It would be good if all subscribers of TrueMove or True Visions called to cancel their accounts as a way to get a discount. But some people reminded me there is the risk the services actually will be cut off because we don't know the details of True Vision's policy.
There are similar practices in other industries. I was once a loyal customer using a credit card issued by a foreign bank and I decided to cancel it as I did not want to pay the membership fee since there were many other banks out there offering cards without the annual fee but required a certain level of spending on the card. I got an offer to continue holding the card without paying the annual fee. This offer applied to all card holders under the condition that they call and ask that the fee be withdrawn. If there was no call, the full fee would always be charged. The bank showed no honesty at all in its services. I cancelled the card as I was unhappy with the unfair treatment and its numerous calls offering unwanted credit or insurance.
As you can see, loyalty is sometimes useless. I would like to ask service providers to apply the same policies across the board. To me, this is a simple corporate social contribution that has more value than CSR activities firms' promotions to establish their good corporate public images. Just being honest to all customers is more than enough.
Somporn Thapanachai is Deputy Business Editor, Bangkok Post.