How Airtel and Jio's prepaid users can avoid higher tariffs
What's the story
Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have announced a price hike for their prepaid and postpaid mobile plans, set to come into effect from July 3. While there is no escaping for postpaid users, by scheduling recharges in advance, prepaid customers can bypass the price increase for several months. This workaround becomes all the more attractive because the tariffs are set to increase from 12-25% for Jio and 11-21% for Airtel.
Pricing strategy
Recharge in advance to retain current pricing
Prepaid recharges made before July 3 will maintain their existing prices, even if the plan is later discontinued or increased. This presents a unique opportunity for savings, especially on long-term plans. By scheduling recharges in advance for the desired time period before July 3, these recharges will be activated successively, thereby avoiding the tariff hike on the plans.
Recharge queue
Subscribers can queue recharges
Jio has confirmed that its subscribers can queue up to 50 recharges, either on a monthly or yearly basis. However, there is no information available regarding the number of recharges Airtel subscribers can queue up. This recharge queuing option is exclusive to Jio and Airtel subscribers as Vodafone Idea (Vi) users do not have the ability to schedule their recharges in advance.
Data offers
Changes to unlimited 5G data offers
While Airtel has not made any changes to its unlimited 5G data offer, Jio has updated the requirements for availing its unlimited 5G data offer. To avail free unlimited 5G data, Jio users will now need to recharge with plans that offer 2GB daily data or above. Postpaid users, unfortunately, do not have a workaround to avoid the price hike but they can consider moving to a lower plan for their next billing cycle if their data usage allows.