Reliance Jio’s much anticipated ‘Prime Recharge’ has created consternation on day 1 as the company faced an unexpected rush of users eager to seize the offer.
Many users are facing problems activating the offer and have taken to social media with their complaints.
The offer, which needs to be availed before the end of this month, provides ultra-cheap data and voice offers for existing customers.
However, the option of recharging with 99 rupees to activate ‘Jio Prime’ membership is absent in many users’ cases.
In other cases, people are able to see the option, but are unable to complete the payment.
It is likely that the company — which has tens of millions of customers — is facing a bigger rush on the first day than it anticipated.
The company clarified that the “recharge option will be available shortly.”
It did not say whether the servers were overcome by the huge amount of traffic. Similar problems are often seen in case of ‘flash sales’ organized by online retailers.
Prime membership entails users to get 1 GB of data per day at a price of Rs 303 per month and 2 GB of data per day at 499 per month. They can also get data at the rate of around Rs 13 per GB if they buy 750 GB at one go at a price of Rs 9,999.
In comparison, most of its competitors are providing data at about Rs 50 per GB.
However, the discounts and offers are available only for one year — till March 31, 2018, after which the company will tweak its prices again.
The firm had unveiled one set of tariffs in September, and said that these would apply when it started charging for its services several months later. But it announced cheaper tariffs after rivals matched its earlier tariff card.
The Prime plans are likely to hit competitors very hard as they have brought down data prices by around 80%. The plans also provide 1,000 minutes of free voice calls per month.