SMARTalk is not for me

Browsing the papers yesterday, I saw an article that said SMART has unveiled its SMARTalk service. From June 26 to September 30, 2009, all SMART subscribers can make unlimited calls to any SMART number.

I admit I felt excited with this one. My husband and I regularly call each other and the unlimited calls would be great for us, especially since we are both post-paid subscribers. Searching the SMART website, I found out more about this new service. And then the bubble burst…

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) indicates that to avail of the service, SMART Gold subscribers can buy SMARTalk Load 100 or 500 from any SMART load outlet. P500 is good for 30 days of unlimited calls while P100 is good for five days. But the load is on top of the monthly service fee that SMART charges its post-paid subscribers. In my case, this is either P100 or P500 more than my regular P800 monthly service fee.

This disappointed me because I try not to exceed my monthly allocation and I certainly don’t want to add on to it. The monthly service fee that I pay for already includes about 40 minutes of talk-time and about 200 free messages so I really don’t have a need for this new service.

SMARTtalk is potentially good for prepaid subscribers, who like calling their friends and families. Unfortunately, this is just additional expense for post-paid subscribers like.