DiGi posted a new offer on its website last Friday called “Vintage Phone Sale”. Basically as part of the offer, DiGi is offering the Nokia 3310 for RM1499, Motorola StarTAC for RM2399 and the Ericsson SH888 RM1899.
All these phones comes with the “DG SmartPlan Classic” plan at RM148 a month(does not exist at the point of writing) and free 30GB of Internet. DiGi said pre-order will be available soon.
Why we think this an April Fool Prank:
- These phones are no longer produced, too old, more than 10 years old. Plus the if you are serious about getting these phone such as the Nokia 3310, local dealers such as Retrons is offering refurbished units at only RM179 plus optional delivery(cost up to RM15) via courier. The two other models (Motorola StarTAC & Ericsson SH888) are too old to be found, even for the refurbished ones thus its hard to justify the DiGi Vintage Phone Sale as these should be brand new units from DiGi at these prices.
- Free 30GB Internet for phones that does not even have a WAP 2.0 browser. Forget surfing on these phones as most website won’t even load. Plus it will take you days(maybe months) to hit even 1GB via WAP on these phones. Even if its true for the latest model in the market today, we doubt DiGi can actually deliver it. DiGi got the largest fine recently for the highest number of dropped calls in the country. We are waiting for SKMM to announce the fine for the worst performing 3G operator(We think we know which operator would get this “award”).
- The Motorola StarTac is a GSM900 phone, and DiGi does not really support a GSM900Mhz network with just 4Mhz of spectrum. Thus by offering an unsupported phone like Motorola StarTac, DiGi is only making itself look like a fool.
Under the Malaysia Law, DiGi can be held responsible for misleading the public. According to the disclaimer on DiGi’s website(part of it shown below):
The information on this Webpage server is provided “as is”. Except as required by applicable law and except to the extent that this disclaimer (or part) is held to be invalid no warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a purpose is made in relation to the accuracy, reliability, completeness or content of the pages. The information contained in the Webpages herein may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors.
DiGi reserves the right to revise the pages or withdraw access to them at any time. DiGi assumes no responsibility for material created or published by third parties that DiGi’s World Wide Web pages have a link to as the material has not been verified or authenticated by DiGi.
DiGi shall not be responsible for any damages suffered as a result of your use of the information in the Webpages and in no event shall DiGi be liable for any indirect punitive or consequential damage howsoever arising from your use of the Webpages or the information contained herein.
Please note that the content published on our platform is sourced from various service providers with careful measures in place to ensure the material is properly sourced/ appropriately attributed to the rightful owners. However, if there is any contention on the copyright or ownership of said material featured on our platform, you can seek clarification via PM to us on FB/Twitter or e-mail us at [email protected]
We referred to DiGi’s official Facebook page and found this with a link pointing back to the DiGi Vintage Phone Sale page:
In conclusion, by law, the information published by DiGi is valid despite DiGi may at anytime take down the page or make any changes to the page at DiGi’s discretion without informing users.
Public service message from MalaysianWireless: If you feel that you have been fooled or don’t want others to be fooled, make a complaint to SKMM[link] and CFM[link].
What DiGi could have done to make this a good April Fool Prank:
- Reduce the price of the phones to less than RM300 each.
- Remove the DG SmartPlan Classic and free 30GB Internet since these phone does not support HTML browsing.
- State clearly that these are VERY LIMITED Refurbished units.
- Or forget the above suggestions and make this prank real. On April 1st, replace the phones with the latest models, for an example the Nokia 3310 to a Nokia Lumia 920 and drop the price low (Motorola replace with a Nexus & Ericsson with the Sony Xperia Z), make it an attractive offer.
In the mean time, considering that this is an April Fool Prank, we got TWO suggestions for the DiGi Management:
- Send the marketing team back to school (do give them each a Nokia 3310/Motorola StarTAC/Ericsson SH888)
- Replace the marketing team with people who are more qualified (the marketing/branding team in DiGi before 2007 are awesome, find and hire them back!)
Instead of pulling on a silly prank like this, we really hope that DiGi could focus to improve its network, improve customer service experience, improve products(example, DiGi is the only prepaid service in the country to cap a maximum Internet speed of 384Kbps), stop misleading customers and not to forget, please replace the marketing team.
P.s: Hope Maxis/Celcom/UMobile/TuneTalk will not do something desperate like this.
