Airtel has introduced ‘Lifetime prepaid 495‘ scheme recently, and its competitor Reliance’s Lifetime validity recharge cost Rs 499. The difference between the two schemes is not just Rs 4 but a few extra years of validity, says Reliance. As per TRAI regulations any ‘Lifetime Validity’ product should be valid only till the license period of the mobile operator. And this helps Reliance, since it has longer remaining license period. So it is more than happy to break the myth that lifetime is not exactly your lifetime but it refers only to the plan’s validity period.
Even before the Bharti’s and Reliance have conceptualized their lifetime validity schemes, many credit card companies have successfully implemented lifetime free card schemes. Here again lifetime refers to the lifetime of card, which in most cases is only 3 years. So the next time you try renewing it, you might be asked to pay the annual fee. Better get ready for that too.
Don’t start to curse the marketers soon, for misguiding the people with their lifetime plans. They are not the first ones to play with the lifetime term. Indeed Govts. of various countries have used the term lifetime as per their wish. Lifetime sentence or life imprisonment doesn’t mean the same in any two country. It varies from 10 years to 50 years and in some rare cases it is applicable for the entire remaining life too.
So you better don’t waste your lifetime trying to figure out what lifetime really means.
Hi Siva, great post.
Have linked to this post from my blog.
Thanks Nirav