Short-term profit tactics can screw your long-term brand loyalty.
Posted on 01 January 2007 by Lord Brar
My cellular service provider — Idea Telecom — came up with such a genius idea for Christmas Day and New Year’s eve that it made me sit up and take notice of how easy it is to screw up your brand loyalty by trying to make a surge in your short-term profits.
The thing is that I have a subscription to a special scheme where I have to pay Rs. 25 per month and I get 250 SMS free and after that I have to pay Rs. .10 per SMS instead of Rs. 1 per SMS.
So what was the genius idea? Oh yeah, the special rates are not going to be valid for Christmas Day and New Years Day.
Seriously speaking, this one move to earn a few extra bucks from me tarnished my loyalty for them. I’ll never be able to say to others that they have the best scheme out there as I don’t know when they end up pulling a stunt like this again.
