Safaricom changes to Karibu post-pay tariff plans revealed

Safaricom subscribers on the Karibu post-pay tariff will lose all unused airtime, SMS credits and data from their old plans on May 26 this year.

Bundles received from that date on will expire after 30 days, ending the unlimited accumulation of airtime and data that made the Karibu tariff the telecom operator’s most popular post-paid option.

The telecoms services firm has announced that, beginning midnight on May 26th, customers on the Sh1,000 and Sh2,500 post-paid plans will lose all unspent bundles accumulated since the product was launched in 2011.

UPDATE May 1: You can keep your accumulated Karibu minutes, Safaricom says

Users have reacted to the announcement with anger, threatening lawsuits and departure to other mobile service providers.

“This is so wrong,” cried one user. “I have 20,000 accumulated minutes! Safaricom reassured us that we would not lose our minutes as they were going to change the product tariffs. Now they give us 26 days to clear that balance? We should start a class action lawsuit. Safaricom cannot purport to withdraw accumulated minutes which we have already paid for.”

Safaricom, which considered terminating the closed tariff entirely, promised to keep it on earlier this year and offer its over 140,000 subscribers new terms. No new subscribers are being accepted.

The mobile giant has left the monthly charges for the two plans unchanged, as well as retained their call times, text message credits and data bundles.

“The changes mean that all subscribers on the (Karibu) PostPay 1000 and PostPay 2500 bundles will be expected to have used all their existing resources (minutes, SMS and data) before they expire and become unavailable on May 26, 2015,” the telecom operator said in a notice to its subscribers.

“After that date, the subscribers will continue to enjoy the existing Karibu PostPay bundles and will receive the same amount of minutes, SMS and data which will be renewed on a monthly basis, with any unused resources automatically expiring after 30 days.”

The Karibu tariff has two price plans. For Sh1,000 per month, a subscriber gets 900 minutes talk time for on-net calls, 100 minutes for off-net calls, 100 megabytes of data and 100 on-net SMSes.

For the Sh2,500 per month package, subscribers get 2,200 minutes for Safaricom-to-Safaricom calls, 300 minutes to rival networks, 250 megabytes of data and 250 on-net text messages.

The revised tariff will be a bitter-sweet pill to swallow for subscribers who now have just 27 days to clear accumulated talk time bundles that, especially for early enrollers, run into tens of thousands of minutes.

Many will be glad, however, at the decision to retain the tariff at the same price and bundles, given the more drastic measures feared when the tariff revision was first announced a year ago.

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore has in the past described the Karibu tariff as promotional, saying its loss-making run since launch made it a candidate for termination.

The low revenues from the tariff were attributable to the fact that Karibu subscribers pay less than one shilling per minute to make calls, compared to Safaricom customers on pre-paid plans who pay about Sh4 a minute for calls made during peak hours (8am and 10pm).

On May 25 last year, the telecom firm announced the tariff termination adding that it would no longer be accepting subscriptions from new subscribers.

“People on post-paid are essentially making calls at less than one shilling per minute,” Collymore said in May 2014 when announcing the termination.

“This rate is not only lower than the post-paid tariff we give to corporates, but also to prepaid consumers.”

Existing Karibu customers, he said, would continue enjoying the service until May 26, after which they will have the option of migrating to other tariffs.

Safaricom in January, however, announced that it would not be terminating the tariff but tweaking it instead, offering a reprieve those on the plan.

The initial plan was to either increase the cost of each bundle or decrease its size at the current rates to maintain its customers while ensuring profitability. The company has, however, embraced neither of the options, choosing instead to get rid of the accumulated bundles and rolling over provision which it sees as a liability on its books.

Safaricom has other post-paid tariffs, including one where customers pay for units they actually spend every month, but the Karibu tariff — which is considered most affordable — has been leading the growth charge.

“Please note that these changes are only effective for existing Karibu PostPay bundle customers,” the company said in a statement. “The terms for all other PostPay tariffs will remain the same.”