As a child I remember my dad telling this joke about a man who freed the genie from the lamp and was granted three wishes; he asked for money, a bottle of scotch that never finished and after thinking a moment he asked for another bottle of scotch that never finished… just in case. I never understood why that man would need a second bottle if the first one would never finish. Strangely enough I feel like I have just been offered that second bottle of scotch myself… And I still don’t get the point!
For several months I have subscribed to unlimited calls and SMS’ on my mobile phone with GO whereby every week I pay the tariff and I get the mentioned service. I also read the terms and conditions where in the case of the unlimited SMS’ it stated that “If, in the reasonable opinion of GO, the customers’ use of this option is excessive, GO may ask him/her to moderate usage. If after the company informs the customer to moderate such usage, he/she fails to do so, GO reserves the right to charge for the excessive element of the customer’s usage”.
Last Tuesday I topped up my account and I received a message saying that GO is giving free unlimited SMS’ for the next seven days… And yet not more than a minute later I received another message saying that I was as usual charged for the weekly unlimited SMS offer. I called customer care to point out that since GO was giving a free unlimited SMS offer for the week then I shouldn’t be paying for it and the reply was “you will not be losing your offer, you will be getting it twice… at the same time”. Can someone kindly explain to me how it is possible to get two separate unlimited SMS offers covering the same period of time? And by the way, I got this reply after waiting endlessly on the line until the person helping me asked around. He told me that unlimited does not really mean unlimited, “it means a large number of SMS’”, which, when I asked him to specify what the words large number meant, he said he didn’t know but according to my records he told me that I had never exceeded that number but, if I exceeded this “large number” this week I would be covered by the second offer that I was getting for free. Impressive!!
Before selling communication packages to the public GO should teach their customer care officers how to communicate with the public and give them proper training on the products they are selling… and while they are at it maybe buy them a dictionary as the person who helped me, sort of, concluded by telling me that I was not understanding the meaning of the word unlimited and how, according to him, I could have two identical unlimited offers at the same time.
For those who still are not getting it here’s a little help. Found in the most common dictionary on the most common word processor the meaning of the word: Unlimited adj having no ends or limits: boundless, endless, illimitable, immeasurable, infinite, limitless, measureless, unbounded. Or maybe I should say that this week I am gonna get drunk on the first bottle of scotch without ever having the opportunity or the need of opening the second bottle… which by the way will be taken away just the same next week!
Dorothy Busuttil Fitzpatrick
MARSAXLOKK