Payroll Service, Changing Providers. Chapter Three. What should happen when I Change?
Chapter Three. What should happen when I Change?
The three most likely scenarios are:
1) Nothing happens at all, a new chapter starts fresh with no history. That is not possible for the first three months, so you can't do anything until then unless it's a national holiday of some kind. You may be able to change providers after being on the service for at least six months.
2) Your previous provider catches onto your game and cancels your account, rendering any prepayments worthless.
3) Your current provider catches onto what happened and lets you fall into the grace period before changing to their own plan, allowing you to shop around one more time before actually making that switch.
If for some reason your account gets canceled without a grace period, you could switch to another account and try again. You can see what is in the "waiting" period here . Read the signs carefully; you must be very observant and use discretion as that is when you can save yourself from this rut. The waiting period for a plan change is between 30-90 days depending on whether it is pre- or postpaid service. Usually, prepayment arrangements are only subject to a 30 day waiting time, but prepaid plans often have no waiting period at all. In either case, you must use your service in the new plan with that provider for at least the length of the waiting period to be eligible for a change.
2) Your previous provider catches onto your game and cancels your account, rendering any prepayments worthless.
There are ways you can play this to your advantage. Usually, when they catch on they will cancel all users on that plan, so it's possible that many of the people there won't even be on Warid yet, so if you have some friends there you can convince them to give Warid a try too. Even if they were on Warid, it's a good opportunity to get them back into Warid.
3) Your current provider catches onto what happened and lets you fall into the grace period before changing to their own plan, allowing you to shop around one more time before actually making that switch.
This is exactly what happened to me. I was originally on the 2200 plan with Mobitel and I discovered another plan available from Warid called the 1550 which is just slightly cheaper than the 2200 but includes all calls, including international calls. I immediately signed up for it, hoping to get Warid on the 1550 in hopes that I could use the same number and cut down on my international calls. Once I signed up and gave them the new number they told me that they were already aware of it and had already entered everything in their system. Then they told me that I would be placed on the 3095 plan, which would be somewhat cheaper but way more expensive than their previous plan. They also said I would be a new user, which meant that I would have to pay extra (about ADD $10) for everything like installation fees as well as one-off charges for things like submitting reports while on the plan. I pushed back and insisted that I wanted to be on the 1550 or lower but they were unwilling to work with me.
So what did I do? I made a call to customer service again and this time, when they asked me the name of my provider, I told them Mobitel. The guy immediately told me that he would credit my account for being a loyal customer and would put me on the 2595 plan, which was about 100RD less than what I was paying per month for the 1550. He said all I had to do was wait just one hour and voila! My plan had changed without having to pay anything more, not even installation fees or taxes. I was even installed as a new user. I was so happy!
Stay vigilant and aware of changes with your providers and you could be making huge savings each month.
3) Your current provider catches onto what happened and lets you fall into the grace period before changing to their own plan, allowing you to shop around one more time before actually making that switch.
This happened to another reader, Yvonne:
"I'm not sure if you've been made aware of this - it looks like nothing will change for prepaid customers because retailers are not allowed to allow customers a change to any other network provider without penalty. In fact there aren't even a huge number of providers available in Tajikistan . This is because of the law. The government amended the law on communication in October 2013 and now "providers are not allowed to allow customers a change to any other network provider without penalty". I've asked Mobitel about this, and they say it's "for security reasons", so it may be hard to get around. You can find the text of the new law in Tajik here (in Russian).
"This means that you cannot move a prepaid SIM to another operator even if you wish. You cannot change your number (the SIM card will get deactivated). You cannot move between networks. All calls, no matter how short or where made from, will be charged by that provider for life. They don't consider you a customer.
"Moving over to MTS as a postpaid customer isn't much of an option either, since they charge you a monthly fee and also charge per call (whatever handset you buy).
"It should be noted that there are some networks for which the rules are different. For example, Komcell offers prepaid service in Dushanbe and charges less than Mobitel (as far as I can tell – the information is hard to come by) but uses the same numbering scheme as Mobitel (tajikistan numbers start with 9). You can move a prepaid SIM from Mobitel to Komcell at the same number, but you cannot move back. You have to buy a new SIM.
"Other providers only offer postpaid service. Beeline apparently offers prepaid in Qurghonteppa, but again only for postpaid. It is unknown whether it will extend its coverage to Dushanbe.
"It is likely that other operators will be added over the next few months – as of August 2014 there are no reported non-state owned operators offering prepaid plans.
Conclusion: If you stay with your current service provider, it is unlikely that the situation will change for you. Even if it does, there is no guarantee that the new operator will offer a prepaid plan at a reasonable rate. I think what you can do is ask your provider to upgrade you to postpaid when they have an empty slot in case they decide to do so in the future, and sign up for a prepaid SIM card (see them) whenever one becomes available for sale. In our case we were on Komcell, and MTS has recently dropped their prices on most of their plans significantly.