All three major telecom service providers — Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone-Idea (Vi) — have announced the price hike for their tariff plans. The price increase affects several plans, including prepaid, postpaid and add-ons.
A workaround — recharge queuing — has made it possible for Prepaid Airtel and Reliance Jio users to beat the price hike, but only for a couple of days.That said, if you are an Airtel customer and planning to use ‘recharge queuing’ technique to prevent the price hike, then there are a couple of important things that you should know.
What is Airtel prepaid plans queue and how it can help beat the price hike
Airtel allows users to buy multiple prepaid plans, add-ons, etc and activate them as necessary. So, let’s say, you recharge your phone with a Rs 155 prepaid plan, and you can buy the plan a couple of times for your phone number. It will automatically activate after your current plan is over. This way, you can sustain for not months, but years without paying more after the price hike.
Airtel recharge queuing is an option, but only two days are left
The new pricing of the prepaid plans will come into effect starting July 3. So, you only have two days left to act on it. Once the price hike goes live, the queuing won’t be an option after that.
Avoid making this mistake
The most important part to note about queuing recharges is that not all the plans offered by Airtel can be clubbed together. Here’s what you need to understand about this.
Airtel offers two types of prepaid recharge plans — With daily data limits and without daily data limits. The daily data limit plans come with per-day data limitations, while no daily data limit plan offers no per-day data cap — it has monthly data quota.
The notable part is that both types of plans can’t be clubbed together while queuing up the recharges. For instance, if you have the active no daily data limit plan and you recharge with the daily data limit plan, then both plans will get activated. This also goes vice versa.
Airtel has also clarified this on its support page.
“Rs 155, 179, 199, 289, 296, 455, 489, 509, 1799 plans which offer unlimited voice with fixed Data are accretive only on the same individual price point i.e when current and subsequent recharges are done with same”, reads the support page document.
Rs 209, 239, 265, 299, 319, 359, 399, 479, 499, 519, 549, 666, 699, 719, 779, 839, 869, 999, 1499, 2999, 3359 plans which offer unlimited voice with daily Data are accretive within this defined group of MRPs which offer Daily data benefits”, the document adds.
How many recharges can be queued
Well, Airtel has not clarified the number of recharges users can use at a time. However, the support page clarifies that recharge with a new or same plan before the existing one expires users can extend the validity up to 730 days (approximately 2 years). Just remember, if you wait too long after your plan ends, subsequent recharges won’t work. Also, this applies to plans offering unlimited calling.