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Mobile phone users find limits on promotions uncalled for
Mobile phone users find a recent ban on huge sales promotions offered by service providers hard to understand.
Tran Thanh Hang of Hanoi said mobile phone operators had offered customers bonuses worth more than 50 percent of a prepaid recharge card’s value for many years, “so why the ban now?”
While prices of many other products are likely to surge, hurting local consumers, there is no reason why sales promotions should be controlled, Hang said.
Do Thang Hai, head of Trade Promotion Agency at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said Vietnam’s Trade Law stipulates that a bonus offered by businesses cannot exceed 50 percent of the value of the product they are selling. The agency has asked telecom firms to stop all such illegitimate sales promotions in October.
But phone users used to complementary offerings of even 100-200 percent of the value of a recharge card, protest the tightening control over promotions, saying it is not a pro-consumer move.
Nguyen Tuan Phong of Ba Dinh District in Hanoi said the move could even make the situation worse as disposable phone numbers would increase.
Phong said he himself now chose to buy new SIM cards filled with more money instead of recharging an old account.
A manager at a telecom firm, who wished to be unnamed, also said he expected the number of disposed phone numbers to rise because without huge promotions, phone users would not choose to refill their account.
The Ministry of Information and Communications said last month that mobile phone users account for 87.9 percent of Vietnam’s 110 million phone subscribers.
Hoang Ly
thanhnien
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