|
Privileged sales and banks' money to in-laws |
In recent weeks, some mobile operators are offering mobile phones with new SIM connection. "Tie-in" sales are pretty common in consumer activity but we have to keep an wary eye on such sales as it has the potential to harm consumer interests in the long run. In addition, many leading operators are offering insurance to protect your cell phones from future damage. At first sight, it appears harmless and beneficial to consumers. But a deeper look may unravel some uncomfortable truth.
For instance, operators offering "tie-in" sales are also providers of high speed data. With high speed data, you will often notice that browsers auto add plugins or updates,often supplied by malicious providers with dubious intentions. Furthermore, YouTube streaming or other live streaming like in Facebook often makes your device vulnerable to hacking. Apart from that ,WiFi hotspots and free WiFi network also make your handsets and devices vulnerable to hacking. Maybe some deranged employee within an operator may engage in harmful activities, causing you lots of trouble financially. I experienced these things in the past and am often vocal against such consumer practices. I used the public operator for some time at ease ,experiencing higher pace of internet and no damage to my handset whatsoever. But for the last 11 months, I have stopped using it as services deteriorated. Switching to other operators only brought back those bad experiences back. Why are you offering insurance to handsets or new handsets with new connections if you are not acknowledging there are some faults in your side causing damages to consumers' handsets? Damages range from wiping out the operating software to key-logging the onscreen keyboard,from dark screen to dysfunctioning touch pad. Very few consumers have little knowledge about what happened. Moreover, lack of technical knowledge of the law enforcement agencies and consumers also fails to track the origin of the problem .
From the perspective of fair business, "tie-in" may cause unhealthy business competition. Say company A holds significant market share in industry A and another company B (say it is in the mobile phone business) holds significant market share in industry B. The companies decide to offer "tie-in" product for industry A(say the mobile SIM market). This "tie-in" will consolidate their market shares for both the industries by pushing up their sales. In this time of austerity, while consumers tighten their pockets, this kind of "tie-in" gives unreasonable privileges to the companies who consolidate their market shares to worrying level. This should be stopped.
At the same time, there should be no access to public banks' money for operators whose owners are politicians or in-laws of politicians. In the past, we witnessed how banks' money fallen into the hands of politically blessed in-laws became bad loans, only worrying the ordinary depositors and worsening banks' balance sheet. If they have better business ideas, they should go to the stock market, to IFC/MIGA or to the Dubai/Singapore based banks. They should not be given access to local banks' money.
From poultry ingredient market to the cellular networks ,we see how tie-in is adversely effecting the consumers, leaving a heavy blow to welfare and competition alike. For the sake of business and consumer's interest in this time of austerity, all kinds of privileged sales pitch should be stopped.
