A new ad for MTC Touch about their “Friends and Family” service is all over the radio stations now. This new service allows prepaid users to select 2 of their most dialed numbers and call them at 30% less.

That means if you were to fully use the $25 card (which actually gives you $22.73) to call your 2 preferred number, you’ll be able to speak 90 minutes instead of 63 minutes. ($22.73 / ($0.36 * 70%) = 90 minutes)

However, what wasn’t advertised is that this service actually has a cost of $3! And they probably did it that way in order not to allow everyone to benefit from this offer.

Anyway, this means you now can’t subscribe to this service unless you speak a minimum number of minutes with your 2 preferred numbers that are enough to cover the service fee and then start saving money on your remaining calls, so let’s calculate this minimum amount.

Let “T” be that amount, then: $0.36 T * 30% = $3 –> T = 27.7, i.e 28 minutes.

And of course if you were to fully use your card to call your preferred number, the total number of minutes drops to 78 instead of 90. That means the decrease is in fact 23.6% instead of 30%!

Couldn’t they have just advertised a decrease of 20-25% instead of playing smart on their customers?

Update:

Alfa (The second mobile operator in Lebanon) turned out to have launched the same service and is advertising for it as well, with the same fee.

Still, to be fair with the two companies, I have to mention that MTC Touch and Alfa JUST manage the two mobile networks, and to my knowledge do not any control over the rates or the offered services and their fees, it is actually the ministry of telecommunication that controls all of that.