Cellular Companies in Pakistan, in order to cut short its advertising expense; they have started promotion their services and new promotions through SMS. As we may see a notable decrease in print and Electronic Media advertisings, number of promotion SMS sent to each customer has dramatically increased.
There are few instances in which a cellular companies sent upto 6 text messages a day to its client.
According to Wikipedia: “Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages”. This definition clearly describes what spam is.
Now companies directly send messages about their new offerings and promotions. Personally I’m a little annoyed by these messages as these promotion messages may arrive at wrong time. By the way, customers may tolerate once a week but upto 6 messages daily, it is surely spamming.
I am a customer of Warid Telecom. And daily I get bombarded with new packages offerings, caller tune activation details, W zone sign up offer and the funniest message that I got today is:
“Dial 555 & get hot Bipasha Basu wallpapers, top ring tones, celebrity pictures & more Rs.5t/m.”
Cellular companies are trying to save their advertisements spending and rather getting more personal with the customers. In the above message the usage of word HOT is just to make teenagers more eager to dial 555. But it is ethically wrong to use such words and target a certain demograph. There won’t be any wonder if we see word “Sexy” in place of HOT, in near future.
These small tactics may increase revenue for sure but they are ethically very poor and immoral.
Wateen Telecom in another front, has been spamming blogs and forums with irrelevant and promotional messages as comments. ProPakistani.com receive at least a dozen comments each day with almost identical promotion messages from wateen folks. So my suggestion to them is to stop spamming, instead get involved in discussion and you may give your company’s url at the end. There are 100 percent chances that you will be liked if you are participating some role in discussiosn or if you are solving problems and queries of Wateen users.
What you say, should companies be allowed SMS advertising which is actually spamming? Do you get annoyed by such messages? Please share your thoughts with us!
i am also waridtel customer customer.
same spamming messages i am also facing which are describe above.
in this situation i think mobilink is the best —-i hardly get one message once in a week
One must consider the current economy when it comes to taking stock of ‘promotions’ like these. Like every other industry, the IT and telecom sectors are also in a bind as to how to promote themselves in a cost-efficient manner, without big budgets, so that money can be spent on infrastructure and functioning et cetera. Sending promotions to subscribers through SMS seems to be the latest fad, but to play the devil’s advocate, this is the most effective and direct way telcos have to reach their target market! Any person putting two and two together as a marketer can pick on that trend and run with it because it is conveninet and sadly – also efficient.
As far as companies spamming message boards and forums – well, that’s another new take on ‘self promotion’. I have seen this activity in action at a lot of places and it often turns ugly, when people start responding negatively to such comments. So it is a make or break thing, really, and companies cannot hope to rely on this tactic for long.
However, if someone wants to share their actual good experience as a consumer of a service or product – more power to them!
I agree with you! something should be done about this!
I agree with you. I use Warid and Ufone connections. And Warid wins by sending more promotional messages than ufone. I received same message too which you mentioned above about “Hot wallpaper”. This is very poor technique. And I really get annoyed at times.
I think there must be some option, provided by cellular companies, to turn such messages completely off.
Rightly said I am a ufone customer and receive such promotional sms at least once every day. I used Warid too and you are right worst in sms promotion is warid.
Its makes sense if they send one sms for each new service. But it is annoying when you receive same promotional message again and again.
Yes you are right, I think that PTA have rules to support spammers and companies against customers. if you are receiving this kind of SMS from the same company whose service are you using, they say that it is our company policy that we send our promotional messages to keep our customers up to date.but, if it is some other company, like what happened with me, your own company is neither concern nor responsible . They simpaly ask you to contact them on your own.
I am a customer of warid, in May I applied for PTCL broadband student package . one day I called PTCL help line 080080800 to inquire about the delay in my getting broadband facility, during that call I was asked to give my mobile number in the name of providing me so called quick services at my convenience.
how I got that broadband that’s another story but from that date I started receiving SMS from the number 598 advertising PTCL’s promotions. in the beginning it was one or so message a week. But with the start of november things started getting from bad to verse from 8th till 15th November I received around 37 messages. Only on 9th November I received 11 messages from the same number, and to add insult to injury all the messages were the same copies of one message:
“watch free movies, songs, cricket matches, religious and educational content exclusively on PTCL broadband connection. Call 080080800 to order.”
Firstly I called 321 and told them what was happening to me. In reply I was Told that because the messages weren’t by warid’s network they can’t stop or negociate with PTCL. so, I contacted PTCL help line by myself and told them my problem.
The thing which really surprised me was that one of their team leaders Mr. Khuram told me that “sir your number might have been stuck somewhere in the system that’s why you are getting this kind of repeated messages.” Sir, “I can forward your complaint but I can not stop these messages.” I am surprised that how easily companies can shift the burdon to other company and during all this durty game the poor customer suffers.
@Shabbir Awan, Thanks to God that I’m not getting such messages. But yes i sometimes get messages from like go to Iffy’s Bakery, get Marks of FSC, and like this. But you are absolutely right, our companies easily shift the burden to other companies. Thats why we don’t prosper. We just seek our benefit. Ca you email me all the details? I will see what i can do. Email me at [email protected]
I am a ufone postpaid customer and never recieved such promotional messages.
even PTA is silent on this
Ufone is also doing same thing but these ads are very less in telenor