Vodafone Moves to TRAI, Says Reliance Jio is Still Luring Customers to Subscribe Summer Surprise Offer

On Monday, Vodafone moved to TRAI against Reliance Jio Summer Surprise Offer, complaining that the company is still “luring customers” to subscribe the offer.

“Reliance Jio is continuing with this offer held as not meeting regulatory norms, in the garb of configuration changes. For past three days, it has been promoting and luring customers to quickly recharge to avail the benefits of a non-compliant offer and also asking its retailers to communicate the same,” Vodafone said in a letter to TRAI.

Last week, TRAI had asked Reliance to discontinue its Summer Surprise as it was in compliance with the norms.

“In our view, such promotion of the customers on an offer held as non-compliant, is a blatant violation and disregard of TRAI’s advisory. Such promotions to customers make (rpt) make the regulatory advisory meaningless,” the letter to Reliance Jio said.

At that time, Reliance Jio said that it would obey the order and stop the offer as soon as operationally feasible, “over the next few days.”

Mukesh Ambani commercially launched its Reliance Jio in September. The newly-launched company became famous overnight after rolling out its three-month promotional offer, providing free data (with some restrictions on daily usage) and free calls for life (over the Internet). The offer was extended in December, for next three months. On March 31, Reliance Jio announced that it now has over 72 Million ‘Prime’ Subscribers, and the counting continues. The company also introduced its Summer Surprise offer on March 31 to provide free three months of call and 1 GB 4G data per day to customers signing up by April 15 for a data plan worth Rs 303.

In its complaint, Vodafone says Reliance Jio is sending SMS to consumers asking them to recharge quickly to get benefits of this offer. Vodafone has request TRAI for “immediate intervention and issuance of suitable directions to Reliance Jio for withdrawing the said offer on immediate basis and notifying the consumers about withdrawal of said offer from the date of advisory received from TRAI.”