Minus the mercilessly incessant spam SMS that EcoLife became known for, the model of the life assurance product itself was brilliant. Based on a minimum threshold airtime usage of $3 per month, Econet subscribers would qualify for $12,000 life cover. But the service was discontinued, and when its successor, EcoSure, launched 3 months ago, the model had changed – one would need to subscribe monthly.
Today I received an SMS from Econet (below) and it suggests, if not wholly, that they are at least trying some parts of the old model where they make it as frictionless as possible for people to sign up to and maintain their life cover. Essentially, the message to the subscriber is “Just confirm your sign up, then make enough voice calls and you qualify for “free” life cover.
When Econet announced the new EcoSure in December. For a crazy reason even I don’t understand, I just couldn’t be bothered. Today, all I had to do was respond YES. The cover kicks in the background, and I continue my life uninterrupted. Brilliant!
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“You are not eligible for this offer” That was my response.
Maybe you spend a lot on voice calls already!
“Your policy details are Policy #xxxxxx
Product: Ecosure Basic
Status: NCE Apply
Beneficiary:-
Balance: $0.00
Premium: $1.00
Cover: $1,000.00”
Maybe its because I am on basic? And Status is cryptic!
So then we must forget all those People who were on Ecolife previously, did they get first preference call when this was being launched or it was a case of screw them lets find new people to screw and hey we could call it Ecosure because we sure gonna catch ’em. Where is the accountability?
@mwana wevhu, if someone was on Ecolife they don pay for the first three month-zero subscription and then after that they can upgrade if they want
LSM, how much they pay you for this promo?
I will admit the old Ecolife was a brilliant piece of marketing manipulation by fear. If you did not keep spending on airtime your cover expired and you had to start from scratch. So obviously you keep talking on the phone in case you had no cover if you dropped down dead, was run over by a commuter.
Sounds like the new scheme is not much different. Keep buying that airtime to keep their coffers filled…sorry did I say that? I meant to keep your life covered.
I’d normally ignore this but some that read this nonsense will take the silence as acceptance that we get paid to write stories. I genuinely feel this is a brilliant model – the price/minimum spend per month ofcourse will determine if it’s a great offer or not.
See http://www.techzim.co.zw/about/ for our statement of ethics
Well maybe you could have been a tad more objective. “Today, all I had to do was respond YES. The cover kicks in the background, and I continue my life uninterrupted. Brilliant!” Sounds like an exuberant personal endorsement to me. My comment on how much you were paid was Tongue-in-cheek on that back of that exuberance. The more serious part of the comment is about the manipulative marketing, I see you have now addressed in another article about the Funeral cover.
please update the article and offer a more balanced analysis. Firstly is the thre months subscription enough cover for old EcoLife clients. Secondly is it ethical for the spam they keep giving us. Econet keeps monitising my fon number -adverts at no benefit to me and without my consent. Thirdly, is it ethical for them to keep passing my personal details across their subsidiaries. i did not sign up for Eco Farmer and EcoCombi therefore they shd guard my data (name and number from these entities) Fourthly when we deposit cash into EcoCash we trust that transactions would be authorised by me entering a pin number. Now for these guys to decide to deduct cash on my behalf is tantamount to fraud. Very Unethical behaviour. Now imagine the many millions of subscribers the organization has and they just took a dollar from each one of us. Evil I say.