Sunday, April 27, 2008

Maxis says

Disclaimer : There is a lot of Mathematics included in this post. To understand the following, you will have to follow closely to the calculation I am doing...

I got an SMS from Hotlink/Maxis (a communication service provider) just the day before...and this was what it wrote :

Get 1500 SMS valid for 7 DAYS! Enjoy great value ! ONLY RM7 with Hotlink Super Savers. Valid from 6am-6pm (Maxis-Maxis)!! Dial *128*4# to purchase by 30/3/08.

From : Hotlink
11.27am 24 Mar-08

(Bold and enlarged letters mine)

Hence, my response;

Dear Maxis,

I'm afraid that there are a few issues that I feel the need to call attention to :-
a) I honestly think that this generous package you are offering, is definitely for corporate businessman/women. Let us do Maths for a while, shall we?...Lets say I were to subscribe to your oh-so-hard-to-resist-offer...and foolishly allowed you to deduct RM7 from my credit, in exchange of 1500 SMSes, that is only valid for 7 days...and do note...so you stated 7 days...but statement number 4 tells me, that it is only valid for 12 hours of the 7 days...so let me see...if my maths do me justice, I would say that 12 hrs x 7 = 84 hrs...that will make it a full 3 and half days...never mind that...

So, theoretically, I am suppose to finish 1500 SMSes in 7 days...that means I have got to sent 214.3 SMSes each day...between 6am-6pm...well, unless one is a teenage kid, with a new handphone and number, I highly doubt that anyone would be able to send that much an SMS as 214...even a corporate businessman/woman would rather pick up the phone and dial a number, than to spend 5 minutes of their precious time to punch in a message. Just think about it for a while, shall we??...let us say that in average, a person with 2 left thumbs, will spend 3 minutes typing an SMS...so if one would to subscribe to your oh-so-wonderful package, he/she will have to spend 642 (214x3) minutes on the phone...that makes a full 4 hours of a day...well, technically, it is 4 hours out of the 12 hours that you would so nicely put aside for us...

In summary, subscribers of your package, would have to squeeze in 4 hours of their waking hours (beside their working hours, of course)...typing their fingers to the limb, in order to put this marketing scam...sorry...ahem, marketing SCHEME, into our advantage...pretty illogical, don't you think??

b)...Don't you think it is rather unfair that you have only allocated this package for Maxis to Maxis phone-line only??...For one, I'm sure that in the 500+ names that people have saved in their phone/SIM card memory ( I only have about 70 names in my phonebook)...less than 100 are personal friends...and of the 100 personal friends that people might have (it can be imaginative friends for all I care)...I'm sure that only 30 names would turn out to be class mates/people that one would come across everyday...and out of the 30, would be 10 names, probably...that we would believe is worth our time SMS-ing...and SMS-ing...and SMS-ing....

And oh, let us not forget...these 10 loved ones, may not even be subscribing to your company!!!...they might be DIGI or Celcom subscriber, for all we know...so that will bring the number down to a probable 6 loved ones, which we can send SMS-es to, at a freakin' cheap rate...

So, at the end of the day, we have got to send 214 SMS-es to 6 people, which we deem is worthy of our time...that means, each lucky loved one, would receive 36 SMS-es from EACH DAY, for SEVEN DAYS...by the end of the week, they will each receive a whooping 250 SMS-es from one sincere but very annoying loved one...

How sweet...but too much love, I'd say...

I don' t know who your marketing team may be, or even if they exist or not...but I'd really suggest that you give them a sack...all these marketing scams are just darn annoying...and I receive this kind of message almost every week...well, not that you really care anyway...as long as the money comes, isn't it??

- lessajinomoto

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