Digi Prepaid: Reload RM100, valid for a year

I have a love-hate relationship with cellphones, leaning more toward hate. I'm not the chatty type; I only make a few calls every week, and usually, it's other people who want to call me. So, prepaid accounts are a great deal for users like me.

The problem with going prepaid, of course, is the credit validity periods. Any credit you reload will eventually expire, so you could end up snowballing credit if you don't use it up. For example, at one point, I had accumulated RM90+ in credit, but I could not use it unless I kept reloading. I'm a Digi user, so I called up their cust service to see if I could turn my existing credit into talk time. They said it's not an option for prepaid users. This BTW, is a fairly common policy among cellphone service providers, and it is meant to 'encourage' you to switch to postpaid.

Fortunately, I decided to poke around the Digi website and I found out about their Reload Validity Promo, where if you reload RM100, it will be valid for one year. Yup, valid for 365 days! Normally, a RM100 reload would be valid for 120 days (4 months). So now I don't have to worry about my credit expiring, until September next year.

If you want in on the Digi promo, you need to hurry though, because it ends on Tue, Sept 30. I believe Maxis has a similar promo.

Digi ad is offensive

I fully agree with Star's Hoo Ban Kee's opinion piece titled
"Hello, where are your manners?" (http://tinyurl.com/33783w)

I also found the recent CNY TV ad from Digi ("Longevity Calls") to be offensive. It depicts a "reunion dinner" where everyone at the table is busy chatting on their handphones. (see screencapt) Worse, the ad also depicts a child looking on in puzzlement at all the adults with their handphones. Eventually the child tries to imitate the adults!

Such a thing would never happen at my family's reunion gathering. In fact, if anyone even tries to play with their handphone during dinner, they can expect to get a severe tongue-lashing from my grandma.

She (rightly) believes that CNY is important time of the year for everyone to talk face-to-face. If not, what is the point of traveling all the way back to gather at one place?



Are there no Chinese executives in Digi? Did they not preview the ad first? Did everyone there think it would be "cute" or "funny" to shoehorn a product ad into such an important Chinese tradition?

The ad is also offensive in another way; it perpetuates some stereotypes about Chinese, particularly the "Ah Beng always on handphone" stereotype.