… and I blame it to Citibank Indonesia and Telkomsel.
Received this SMS few days ago:
BlackBerry Bold hingga Rp 5,9 juta & Cicil 0% selama 6bln.Kunjungi exhibition 5-10 Feb di Pacific Place & MKG3.Tgl 11-15Feb di Sency&MTA.INFO 69999 (148 characters)
So I spent my precious time to visit the booth. And… foolish me… blinded by the glittering attraction of that Bold…
Turns out to be eligible for 5.9mio purchase, I have to redeem 140,000 (hundred forty thousands) of Citibank Reward Points. Normal price is Rp 7.1mio (market price of BB Bold is around 6.9mio) and the reward points give you +/- Rp 1mio discount (or Rp 7,- per reward point redeemed while to get 140k points you have to shop for Rp 350mio on that credit card)
My point is to rant about such an OBSCURED and QUESTIONABLE (shrewd is too positive, while scam-ish or irresponsible is a bit too harsh adjective) marketing practice. NOWHERE in the SMS is mentioned about the reward points redemption. NOWHERE.
“Hingga”? It’s so vague… so ambiguous… what do you mean by “hingga”?
So Citibank, next time, please please:
- Add “T&C applies” or if you insist an asterisk (“*”) to the SMS, it still fits the 160-character limitation. It costs you nothing. That way we know there’s something fishy…
- Put more information in the Website – a quick check, I CAN NOT find an easily discovered info about this promo ON BOTH WEBSITE. It costs you a fraction of nothing.
- Don’t expect us (me at least, the web generation) to call your call center and put on hold for more than 5 minutes and STILL GETTING UNINFORMED ABOUT THE T&C. I chatted with a friend that called the call center and he also didn’t realize that there’s T&C applied… he was shocked to find out about this.
Bottom line. Transparency. (This is the 2.0 era, right? Everything is transparent and honest).
Respect us. It was a very interesting SMS and offer — buried amidst a lot of spam SMS (I always delete all advertising SMS after 2 seconds quick glance). You got my attention, but you wasted it… 
Nice try, better luck next time.
PS: thanks to my partner in crime. Better luck next time, Sis… scrutinize those customer service officers and read the non existent small prints. 
