Student SGH vs. omnipotent bureaucracy – three short stories.

All presented in a bit weird way – as timelines…

Case 1 – Master’s thesis

September 2009 – I took a decision to complete all courses on Master’s studies within three semesters, rather than within four, as it is was set out in curriculum of studies.

July 2010 – To achieve the goal I began writing my Master’s thesis, with a view to submit it as early as possible and part company with my ignoble school.

12 October 2010 – I submitted a Master’s seminar application in the student office (dziekanat). I had a choice either to take two seminars in one semester (technically feasible) or do the first part of the seminar over the third semester and the second over the fourth semester. I opted for the latter to give myself a safety buffer in case I couldn’t make it in the allotted time, having in mind that it would put back a date of my Master’s exam.

5 January 2011 – I made it. Master’s thesis was prepared and approved by the supervisor.

16 February 2011 – I visited the student office to submit the Master’s seminar application for the second semester. Rules and regulations of studying clearly stipulate a student is obliged to do this within first two weeks of each semester. Despite this I was rebuffed and told not to show up there before I got the credit for the previous semester… Procedures clashed with the overwhelming system…

11 March 2011 – Having logged in to my account in SGH’s IT system I found out I had become a fourth semester student…

16 March 2011 – I finally submitted the hapless application, but was instructed not to put my thesis through an anti-plagiarism system, as, according to student office worker, the system was not ready to deal with theses uploaded by last semester student. I was also told to do this next week. Slightly bemused I postponed the process of checking if I wasn’t a copycat.

23 March 2011 – Same old story. Again I was ordered to wait for one more week.

30 March 2011 – I couldn’t leave the office earlier, so around midday I simply called the student office. I talked with another worker who told me I had been misinformed and the system had always been operational. Delay was then two weeks (or six weeks, if I was to count in the delay in accepting Master’s seminar applications)

31 April 2011 – I waded through all regulations concerning submitting Master’s thesis. One of quite bizarre ones was that it was not the student whose duty was to submit the thesis and several attachments by the supervisor in the flesh. I contacted the supervisor and asked him when he could go with me to the student office and handle all formalities. The only possible date was next Monday, around midday.

1 April 2011 – I took a day off at work (tapping my paid holidays) to wrangle with my beloved school.

2 April 2011 – I put the thesis through anti-plagiarism system, printed out the thesis and dozens of attachments, had my thesis bound, arranged a meeting with my supervisor.

4 April 2011 – I went to my supervisor’s work, where he were supposed to meet, unfortunately he couldn’t go out of the office, so he signed all documents and wrote at the back of an envelope a power of attorney for me to submit the thesis and attachments on his behalf. He pointed out the requirement that the supervisor was to do the job was virtually dead. Half an hour later, at school, he was proved wrong. The school followed all procedures… The whole day went down the drain.

13 April 2011 – My supervisor and I finally made it to the student office together and submitted the thesis and all documents. A student office worker, the one who had misinformed me, refused to confirm the receipt of the thesis and attachments and told us not to change workings of her always perfect office. I was also rebuked for reproaching the office over being open only three hours a day in hours inconvenient for working students – I was told to choose either to work and study on weekends or to quit the job and study in day-time mode.

Since then I have received credit for my Master’s seminar and my thesis has been handed over to a reviewer. According to the regulations, he has one month to review the thesis. If he doesn’t he won’t be penalised in any way. And this is the worst – for such misconduct or neglect of duties people should be fined. A fine of 1,000 PLN would make them meet deadlines… Of course now I don’t know when the reviewed thesis will be returned to student office and when the date of final exam will be set, but somehow I don’t hope for the best…

Cases 2 – Driving licence

9 May 2006 – My first medical check-up. A doctor came to a driving school, charged 100 PLN, asked if I was healthy and checked my eyesight. My glasses then weren’t powerful enough and I was prescribed a temporary driving licence, valid five years.

January 2011 – my driving licence was to expire on 9 May 2011 so I took first steps to find out what to do to have it prolonged. I had to do a medical check-up and obtain a doctor’s certificate with no counter-indications for driving. In a health centre I was told to wait until I got a health-care package from my employer to bring down the costs…

14 April 2011 – a real struggle began. I made several call to several health centres. In each I was told to do a different check-up, to visit different doctors, some even wanted to send me to a psychiatrist. I tried to do the whole thing at work and one colleague from different department, who overheard to whole conversation (another ‘advantage’ of open plans) told me to go to a doctor from a chain of health centres at which my bank purchased packages for employees. She said that doctor did the whole job even in transport department of my gmina, so what she said sounded like rubbish. Eventually, after find it out which examination I needed to have done, I was left with the choice either to go to a private health centre 500 metres near my house or to have the check-up in Warsaw. In both centres prices were prohibitive and nothing was included in my package. The case was, however, that according to new transport law I had to have level of glucose in my blood checked and this had to be done on empty stomach. The health centre in Warsaw did it only in the afternoon, so I plumped for early hours on Thursday, 21 April and took another paid day off.

21 April 2011 – I reported to the nearby health centre. On the door I saw the sticker advertising medical services provided in partnership with the chain of health centres I have my health care package with. To my surprise two out of three check-ups were covered by my employer and I only had to pay 70 PLN instead of 149 PLN. One nice surprise. I had my driving licence prolonged by ten years. In the transport department things went on quite smoothly, after queuing up for some forty minutes. After forking out 154 PLN and tapping a day off I wait for a new driving licence, which I won’t probably pick up before my old one expires, but this is really a minor issue.

Case 3 – Cyfrowy Polsat (this one dedicated to Scatts)

1 October 2009 – after terminating the contract on Neostrada we bought a subscription to Play Online Mobile Internet and wished it delivered a better service than Tepsa…

2010 – Play Online sucked… Couldn’t wait to the end of the contract. They declared the maximum connection speed would be 1 Mbps. Actual speed reached in peak hours around 60 kbps, as much as on my first dial-up modem in 2001…

March 2011 – I researched mobile operators’ mobile internet offers. I ruled out Play out of hand, then what three main mobile operators offered didn’t seem interesting and in the light of the fact their networks were already congested even off-putting. Once I found a leaflet advertising Cyfrowy Polsat, checked their page in the internet and settled on their plan 3 GB + 9 GB for 50 PLN. I told about it my parents and my father, after he heard the name of our new provider, immediately hatched the idea of buying the internet connection bundled with satellite television.

2 April 2011 – my father and I set off to the nearest shop of Cyfrowy Polsat in Piaseczno. It was supposed to be open on Saturday from 9:00 am. We arrived there at five past nine and it was closed. We hung around for 40 minutes and the owner failed to turn up. I called CP’s customer service and heard they couldn’t help it as this was an outlet run under franchise contract and the closure was its owner’s business… Back home I found the old leaflet which contained the number of CP’s sales representative. He agreed to visit us at home and came around some two hours later. A man in his 50’s seemed to have had problems finding a better job and was forced to foist CP upon people. Clunky but honest, he didn’t persuade us to buy a mobile phone with CP, nor to order extra TV packages. Having acquainted with offer we plumped for internet + sat TV bundle and placed an order. The rep was to hand over the order to a technician who would be supposed to contact us and deliver a satellite dish, a decoder and internet devices.

14 April 2011 – till then nobody got in touch with us. My father called the rep, who said he had forgotten about the order, but promised to mend his ways.

15 April 2011 – the technician called and said he would turn up with equipment and contracts the other day. He told us to wait all day long for him because he didn’t knew when he would be able to come…

16 April 2011 – a quarter before nine the technician called to let us know he would be in ten minutes. My father told firmly the technician and his assistant would start installing the dish only after he finished reading the contract. Ten minutes upon their arrival technician were drilling holes in the wall of our house and my father handed me the contract and attachments to read it, as he didn’t… The contract included two factual errors (wrong prices), three understatements and lacked all attachments. I called the customer service of CP, learnt they have three lines, one for TV subscribers, one for internet and mobile phone subscribers and one for potential clients. Having talked to seven consultants after forty minutes I established I was right to have deemed the contract flawed. In the meantime the technician mistook the cardinal points and drilled four holes in the western wall of our house, which turned out not to be the southern wall. The holes remained but Mr technician did not give up and decided to fix the satellite dish to the existing aerial mast with terrestrial TV and radio aerials. He accidentally dismantled my FM aerial which provided excellent signal to my Hi-fi system, my father didn’t bother because the thought this aerial was totally superfluous. Finally we ended up with not signed contracts, satellite dish hung and wires attached to the outer wall and pulled into the drawing room. An hour after the technician left wires came off the wall. The rest of the day was spent on fixing the wire back to the wall and laying it under baseboards in the drawing room.

21 April 2011 – they came again, installed everything and now it even works.

Internet connection, compared to Play Online works like a miracle, TV is OK, hope further dealings with customer service will not be a pain in the neck…

The art of manipulation honed to the limits

The contract with our current Internet provider (Play Online) expires soon. Their service generally sucks. Connection speeds are comparable to those standard in Belarus and my shoddy modem stops trasferring data whenever it feels like. Wrangling with customer service of P4 is a big ordeal, so the decision to give up on them was an easy one. We don't know yet what company will our new provider be (only mobile internet is comes into play), but we have already taken steps to break up with Play Online. We send them a letter in which we noticed them we wanted to terminate the contract on its expiration date. In response we received a missive in an electronic form, scan of its print below. Watch out for the underlined words and phrases.

Now a small exercice in translation. A word which crops up four times in the missive, not accidentally, is aż, it doesn't have a short equivalent in English, so I decided to do it into Eglish as 'as much as'. Slightly stilted, if you have better suggestions, please let me know.

Ref. no. 2723****

Dear Sir,

We confirm the reception of your letter dated 2 February 2011 regarding the cancellation of services provided by P4 sp. z o.o.

On this occasion we are glad to thank Sir for the current cooperation and by the same token for placing trust in our company.

Especially for Sir we prepared an offer "RePlay Online Great with a discount" without a modem. As part of this bargain we offer you a discount of 10 PLN for the whole contractual period what adds up to a saving of as much as 120 PLN. The monthly allowance under this contract is as much as 5 gigabytes and the contract length is only 12 months.

There is also a possibility to prolong the contract for 18 months, under a modem plan. Under "RePlay Online for Christmas" special offer, the monthly charge for first four months will amount to mere 1 PLN. The monthly allowance under this plan is as much as 5 gigabytes. After the discount period ends, the monthly charge will be mere 45 PLN.

We will be pleased, if you get in touch with our Customer Service at the number *500 (call only from  mobiles in Play) in order to learn about the details of the offer and to place an order. The order will be effected by courrier free of charge.

If your decision is upheld, we inform that the Contract for the number +48791****** will be terminated on 9 April 2011, after the cancellation period, defined in paragraph 14 point 5 of P4 Terms of Telecommunication Services for Subscribers, expires. The current Play Online number will be transferred to Play Online pre-paid service, in which the service account may be topped up only when necessary. When the new plan is activated, Sir will receive as much as 1 gigabyte of data transfer to be used up within 30 days.

Yours sincerely,

Anna M****

Now some essential remarks.

1. Our letter was dated 26 January 2011. Why the hell did they change the date? Never mind that.

2. Especially for Sir (specjalnie dla Pana) is nothing but a barefaced lie. The same plan is offered to any customer who wishes to prolong their contract.

3. The contract set out 1 April 2011 as expiration date, so why did they discretionally prolong it by eight days? But to make up for this they gave 1 gigabyte as a farewell gift, so this can be forgiven.

Now let's get to the core of what I'm drivng at.
The word aż (as much as) was used four times.
The word tylko (only) was used once.
The word zaledwie (mere(ly)) was used two times.

Back in August 2007 I did my first job as telemarketer for another mobile operator. I went through some trainings and realised the importance of these seemingly unimportant words. A human beign feels a natural need to make a good deal. By using those words hard-sellers persuade their clients victims they do so, although the deal in fact is not a big bargain. Believe us, you'll pay so little and we'll give you so much. How can you turn down such a great offer?

That job was a big nuisance, but with hindsight proved to be a very valuable experience. Now I'm very sensitive to all kinds of manipulations I am exposed to and can make wiser and well-thought-out consumer decisions and I don't fall for all the twaddle I'm being said. And after all I sometimes sympathise with those poor people who sometimes call me to sell a product or a service and try to make me believe I can strike a great deal.

Goodbye Tepsa... :)

What Bartek and his family have been waiting for almost four years will come to a pass tomorrow. We’ll finally part company with the biggest national provider of internet access and landline phone services. Like many Poles we’ll confine to using mobile phones only. Our new internet provider will be… I’ve endorsed that company too many times so the careful readers will surely guess what the choice was. The new connection will be a bit faster, wireless, partly mobile (the coverage is not nationwide, but limited to 500 cities as the operator declares) and much cheaper. The drawback will be transfer limit imposed by the provider – although five gigabytes allows one to surf the web conveniently, downloading more than one or two films a months is up in the air.

A decade ago having a mobile phone in Poland was an extravagance. Since then the call charges have fallen by 85 per cent, handsets have become much more affordable so the penetration (number of mobile phones per citizen) of the market exceeded 100 per cent – everyone has a mobile these days, including pensioners, children from nursery school, drunkards, even the homeless. Meanwhile the landline, still regarded as a basic form of providing telecommunication services tends to be luxurious and maintenance costs are unreasonable. Currently the cheapest monthly plan of Telekompromitacja Polska S.A. costs 50 zł (unless you can submit the slip from local social welfare centre (Ośrodek pomocy społecznej) – then you’ll get the cheaper one, for 18,30 zł) and includes 60 minutes to national landlines. Ludicrous – for sixty minutes of calls to the landlines from my mobile phone I’d pay 3 zł. TP S.A. will charge you round seventeen times more for such doubtful pleasure. Doubtful for sake of the quality of calls, cracking, humming and other noises are what you should expect to hear in your receiver.

Below: the “infrastructure” of TP along my street…


Infrastructure is the official term for those strings tied up together and hanging on the concrete posts. To the left – white box attached to the post – a makeshift device used in 2005 to connect my house to the line, the wires run downwards to the white pipe, also fixed to the post. In the middle, just in front of the lamppost one can notice a beautiful hook-shaped object and one of the wires hanging down – this is the trace of the breakdown caused by Kiryll hurricane in January 2007. To the right – the rusty pipe through which the wire to my neighbours’ house runs. Makeshift all the way, don’t pay too much attention to the stonemason’s plant at the opposite side of the street. They’ll never tidy up there, it’s a matter of mentality, they don’t mind the squalor ('dziadostwo' in the “rightest” context)…

When inquired about the lack of investments in infrastructure in our locality, TP representatives replied according to their calculations it wouldn’t be cost-effective to put the wires underground, so it will stay like this until it falls apart. Such stance means that locals will be deprived of the access to the fast Internet for years – the capacity of such infrastructure is 700 – 800 kbps, what in two or three years will not be classified as broadband connection. In the West 10 to 20 Mbps becomes a standard, in Poland UPC is the provider which develops its infrastructure to provide its clients with such speed of connection, TP does nothing to improve its services. Moreover – its representatives claim their activity is barely profitable, only the price for the end-user is exorbitant. It’s the main reason why so many people turn them away. Assuming that customers’ decisions are based on cool calculation and common sense, the number of TP individual clients should drop drastically within the next five or ten years. French owners milk their cash cow to the limits, but one day the cow will die…

To Powsin – by bike and on foot

It was nice to experience one of the last moment of permitting weather and visit the Entertainment and Culture Park in the sunny afternoon, when most of people sit in their offices. I set off at 13:30 to Julianów, where my friend lives, left the bike at his garage and on foot we strolled (or rather marched) six kilometres to Powsin. The route is so short only when covered on foot or cycled – the path runs along the coal line, (below – the level crossing in Kierszek, to my surprise this section of the track has been modernised – old wooden sleepers have been replaced with the concrete ones).


Then in the village Kierszek one has to turn left and walk, ride along the east verge of Las Kabacki. (below – east to the path there are lots of fences of big plots bought by the new-rich. Many of them are dilapidated, here the example of the compatriots’ artistic activity).


Entertainment and Culture Park itself brings to mind the holiday resort. For a moment I feel like in a typical resort. People sunbathing, cycling, pensioner playing chess, some drunkards sipping “sparkling wine”. The quiet was interrupted only by the integration party held by one of the construction companies. Below – a snack bar where we took a rest.


Heading back home I noticed the new landmark of Piaseczno in the distance. The photo below was taken somewhere around Kierszek and shows the “flagship building” of the town – “Sand City Tower” – sixteen storey high building put up just next to Piaseczno’s bypass. Its main asset was meant to be picturesque view splaying out from Landscape Park to the south up to the Warsaw’s skyline to the north. Indeed, it is visible from the distance of seven kilometres, but the view won’t beat the Warsaw skyscrapers’ panorama seen from Lesznowola.


The last snap, from bike in Józefosław – this is a new bus service which links the new estates built south of Las Kabacki with Warsaw. It runs each twenty minutes in the rush hour, to ride it one needs a ticket valid in a suburban zone. Locals already complain about high prices of tickets, bad route and frequency of shuttling…


Late afternoon at home I find – two Polish absurdities.

First from my university – the whole description (in Polish – here). Phone conversation between a student and a lady from the dean’s office.

Student: Kiedy dostaniemy dyplomy? (When will we get our diplomas?)
Lady from the dean’s office: Żle pan trafił bo dziś mamy rekrutację na uzupełniające i nikt panu nie pomoże. (You’re out of luck, today we’re dealing with the enrolment on post-grad studies and no one’s going to help you.)
Student: Chodzi mi tylko o dzień (I would only like to ask which day will it happen?)
Lady from the dean’s office: Proszę pana nie chce mi się przestawiać myślenia na to pytanie bo mam zajęcia związane z rekrutacją które wymagają skupienia (Dear sir, I don’t feel like shifting my thinking into your question, cause I’m busy with the enrolment and this requires a lot of concentration.)

The second one – the news that Play Mobile’s shareholders might wish to shove up its capital brought about a swift reaction the competitors. Jeśli Play znowu dostanie pieniądze, będzie mógł dalej psuć rynek – komentowała anonimowo osoba zbliżona do jednej z sieci stacjonarnych. (If Play gets money once again, it will be able to keep on spoiling the market – commented a person affiliated with one of landline operators). I don’t know whether that landline operator has close capital tie-ups with one of mobile operators and I have absolutely no idea if companies like Telekompromitacja Polska S.A. and Orżnąć have something in common with that statement, but I can come up with one conclusion. It shows what is the attitude towards customer among the old operator. Within last two and a half year the prices dropped by sixty percent (figures for pre-paid plans). The market from oligopoly evolved into customer’s market. All changes which took place were to the benefit of ordinary people who could pay less and use their phone more often. But maybe I should understand the anger of the company which took lower revenues, lost some clients, but one the other hand they deserved it. Serves them right, I suppose the cash injection will be earmarked for investments in infrastructure, but I hope Play will continue to spoil the market, to the benefit of customers and to the detriment of other operators.

The newer ways of stigmatising

Browsing through the forum for the dissatisfied with the quality of the telecom services, I stumbled upon a comment from a man dividing his friends into callable and not callable… “I mark the people who have their numbers in Play with a star, so that I know who I shouldn’t call if I don’t want to go bankrupt”.

The fourth operator, as it was entering the market in 2007 was granted quite favourable decisions on MTR from the regulator. The discrepancy in inter-operator settlements was justified by the fact Play would have to build its own infrastructure from scratch and by the undeniable truth its offer would boost the competition on the market of mobile services.

The first argument could be disproved – not every entity starting up can get the special terms for conducting the business (apart from tax relieves, etc.), if somebody decides to take the chance and puts a lot of money into a dicey undertaking, they must analyse the competitors’ potential and costs of underselling to convince the clients of the competitor to vote with their feet. The most effective way of drawing new customers is bringing down the prices – so the onset of its activity was marked with the cheap rates and simple pre-paid and post-paid plans, meant to signify its advantage over the “big three”. The bigger price war was sparked off by Play in March 2009, as the operator marked its second birthday with a new pre-paid offer. The new service is not rendered below the costs, but the home truth is that the revenues of the operator come mostly from inflated termination rates. The other operators have thus reason to detest Play. Not only for the sake that more and more of the aware clients ditch them and take their numbers away to Play, causing the operators’ yields to drop. Those are not the termination rates, that’s the crippling price war, in case of three settled mobile providers hitting their balance sheets, in case of the fourth one not letting it break even. From the theory of economics we should know in the long run the price war doesn’t have to be advantageous, even for the customers. The initiator of the fight might be unable to carry the burden of dumping prices and go bust, the other firms on the market may follow suit, so the situation that only the stronger businesses won’t pull out of the market is likely to take place. Moreover, this may lead to a monopolisation of a market. In Poland Play successfully broke the oligopoly set up by “big three” to keep up a fictional competition.

The second argument is backed up by the welfare of the customers. On the market with the barriers to entry the external regulation is often essential to ensure the consumer protection. Play did manage to change the mobile telecom market in Poland. It still has the lead in the stats concerning number transfers and the number of new clients. The price to pay for the rest who stayed with the older operators comes out on their bills or accounts whenever they decide to call a Play user. The rates range currently from 0,72 to 0,80 zloty. In many networks the basic flat rate is currently 0,29 zloty. When looking at termination rates one could see a certain disparity. If the TR for all old operators is 0,1677 zloty and for Play 0,4047 zloty, how big should the rate for calls to Play be? A short calculation tells us it should be 0,70 zloty, so the operators get the extra margin for calls to Play. Many people, conscious of it, were put off by the exorbitant costs of chats with the Play-using fellows.

When taking a decision to transfer my number to Play I deliberately chose to fork out 50 zloty at the time and retain the prefix 608 belonging to another operator. Aside from avoiding the chaos of notifying everyone about the new number I could also avoid comments like “I’ll be paying more for calls to you”. I told those of my friends whose calls to me tend to last more than a quarter, but it never became to them an obstacle to call me if they wanted to talk. I sometimes offered calling back and they took up on it, as the costs of the same call was for me three times lower than for my interlocutor.

The crucial factor for me is the huge amount of perks, special offers, minutes and messages for free, bonuses I get from Play, thanks to which I can spend around twenty five zloty monthly on my phone, instead of over sixty a year ago with the previous operator. I sometimes mind the fact someone pays over the odds, but its their decision to flounder in the clutches of an operator which rips them off. But if you really are so petty to divide your friends into cheap-to-call and expensive-to-call you’re a penny-pitcher! If you don’t feel like paying, ask to call back, you’ll save on your phone bill, but first you’ll have to overcome the embarrassment…

Zagadka oligopolu...

Czas wrócić do ojczystego języka. Tekst nie jest jednak jak sugeruje tytuł typowo ekonomiczny. Dziś piszę z okazji drugich urodzin sieci Play. 16 marca 2007 roku czwarty operator wszedł na polski rynek telefonii komórkowej, z jakich pobudek – wciąż się zastanawiam – żaden interes nie jest zakładany charytatywnie. Według planów strategicznych operatora, które wtedy czytałem, całe przedsięwzięcie ma przynieść pierwsze zyski dopiero w 2011 roku. Projekt wydaje się więc długoterminowy, ale nie może być charytatywny... Play od początku zaatakował rynek, ustanawiając relatywnie niskie ceny połączeń i oferując multimedialne telefony. Ku zaskoczeniu wszystkich – nie wypaliło i to podwójnie. Po pierwsze dlatego, że pierwszy milion klientów operator zdobył po 10 miesiącach aktywności na rynku, po drugie – jego wejście wcale nie zmusiło operatorów z tzw. „wielkiej trójcy” do obniżenia cen. Coś zatem nie gra jak widać, a nie gra z naszej winy. My jako konsumenci jesteśmy odpowiedzialni za to, że usługodawcy zdzierają z nas pieniądze... A rynek telefonii komórkowej niech służy za przykład – przeciętny Polak nie wie ile płaci za daną usługę, nie wie, co oferuje konkurencja, nie próbuje kalkulować – oszczędności dla nas są być może pozorne i nie namawiam Was do oglądania każdej złotówki zanim ją wydacie – ale taka postawa daje międzynarodowym korporacjom wolną drogę do zdzierania z nas, konsumentów pieniędzy. Era, Plus i Orange nie musiały obniżać cen połączeń, bo tak wytresowały swoich klientów, wmawiając im jaką to cudowną mają ofertę, że nie musiały się obawiać konkurenta. Sytuacja, gdy na rynku są trzy podmioty sprzyja powstaniu oligopolu, jednak gdy na rynek wkracza czwarty podmiot, aby zdobyć klientów musi rozpocząć wojnę cenową. Na perfekcyjnym rynku konsumenci możliwie szybko przenieśliby swoje numery do nowego operatora, jak pokazuje praktyka, założenia teoretyczne o tym, że uczestnicy rynku są doskonale poinformowani, jest dużym uproszczeniem.
Bilans po dwóch latach – ponad dwa miliony klientów, przeciętna oferta abonamentowa (chociaż dla mnie abonament zawsze będzie mniej atrakcyjny cenowo, niezależnie od tego, czy oferta jest z telefonem, czy bez...) i wprowadzona dziś, w dniu drugich urodzin oferta na kartę. Po raz kolejny marketingowcy z Play poczęstowali nas dawką populizmu – mówiąc o strasznych operatorach, którzy ściągają haracz z klientów. Brzmi to jak populizm, ale ja się zgadzam z ich stwierdzeniami. Dla zagranicznych koncernów (zwłaszcza Orange i T-Mobile) Polscy klienci to dojna krowa, która nawet nie protestuje jak się są szarpnie za wymiono...
Pomyliłem się, myśląc, że inni operatorzy nie podniosą rękawicy rzuconej im przez Play – Simplus wprowadza dziś nową ofertę na kartę – jak to Simplus absurdalnie zagmatwaną, ale liczy się, że zrobili jakiś ruch. Heyah daje stawkę niższą niż Play, ale również w zagmatwanych pakietach. Orange ustami swojego rzecznika mówi, że odpowie na ruch Play, ale „nie wie jeszcze jak”. Operatorzy prawdopodobnie prędzej pogodzą się ze stratą kilkudziesięciu tysięcy świadomych i wkurzonych już klientów niż obniżą ceny – a nawet jeśli obniżą, to wprowadzą milion pakietów, które skutecznie obrzydzą życie użytkowników, wskutek czego będą oni płacić więcej.
Może napisałem pean na cześć czwartego operatora, może nie jest obiektywny – ale blog z natury jest subiektywny... Nie jestem żadnym agentem (zwłaszcza ruskim), nie dostaję od Play prowizji za promowanie ich oferty. Po prostu uważam, że takie firmy są potrzebne i ich obecność na rynku leży w interesie klienta... Sam jestem od kilku miesięcy szczęśliwym użytkownikiem telefonu w Play karcie – mam co miesiąc 200 SMS za darmo, za minutę do wszystkich sieci płacę 30 groszy, dostaję jeszcze jakieś drobne bonusy. Niektórzy z Was powiedzą zapewne, że muszą płacić za dzwonienie do mnie więcej, bo Play ma wyższe stawki interkonekt (opłata pobierana przez operatora za „zakończenie” połączenia jego sieci). Wydaje mi się, że kilkanaście groszy więcej za minutę połączenia nie uczyni Was dużo biedniejszymi, a jeśli już uczyni to oddzwonię – stać mnie, ale nie dlatego że jestem bogaty, ale dlatego że mój operator ze mnie nie zdziera...