Ok, we couldn’t resist the pun! The news is this: starting tomorrow, the Libertie and Prepaid Business Partna packages will be killed off gradually. Subscribers on the two discontinued plans will be automatically migrated to the new unified Buddie plan re-launched in the morning today.
The idea, according to Econet Commercial Director George Barbaressos, is to unify and therefore simplify the subscription plans. The Libertie and Prepaid Business Partna were introduced during Zimbabwe’s decade of economic downturn in response to the day’s operating environment.
In the current more stable economic environment, the three different prepaid plans by the same mobile carrier only served to confuse subscribers, and according CEO Douglas Mboweni, courted perception problems as subscribers felt one was superior over the other.
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6 comments
It make sense, there was no need to have several packages….
If you have used either of the packages (Libertie or Business Partner) in the recent past, you’ll concur that these operate on a clearly inferior platform from the Buddie package. I hope Econet’s network expansion will yield enough excess capacity to allow the Unified Buddie plan to operate optimally because of late, dropped calls and failed messages have become synonymous with Buddie. (And i have to say, their ‘refunded messages’ facility doesn’t seem to work properly because i get back less messages than those that actually do fail.)
I must say Econet’s service is atrocious, especially when it comes to signal strength, network coverage and sms delivery issues. Any attempt to engage them about these issues is also not very productive. This is rather strange given the the company’s claims of upgrading their equipment and expanding the network. My suggestion is that as consumers we need an objective 3rd party such as PORTRAZ to offer consumer protection and also audit some of these claims of network upgrades and expansion. My feeling is that at the moment the consumer is getting a raw deal and the ‘service provider’ is laughing all the way the bank
Buddie has always bn the line 4 the original Econet users,the ones who wer with Econet from the start,we cd call,them…or maybe more specifically,ourselves,the Elite Econet users,Libertie has alwys bn the line 4 the “others” who r usualy current or ex-Telecel/Net-one users.I think Econet shd mek sure it acknowledges this and facilitates us,since we will always be with it thru thick and thin………….
Econet realy is a big disapointment for its customers. Their liberty lines are just terrible. I had a liberty line 0917 that i was using in bulawayo, but funny enough when came to harare, it just wouldnt text. Econet is just taking its customers fogranted. They are just surviving on lack of sound competition from other providers.
l love buddie,keep up the good standard