“Reliance Jio used to assign complementary Rs 50 cashback coupons to users doing recharges on the MyJio app, which now appear to have expired.”

When Reliance Jio debuted in India, one of its primary pitches was to drastically reduce the overall cost of phone plans in India. Not only did Jio spark off an industry-wide price war, but contributed significantly towards promoting 4G connectivity across all of India. Along with its recharges, which after a lengthy period of free services was made available through the MyJio smartphone app, offered even further discounts through Rs 50 cashback vouchers, that were offered as a complementary add-on. Now, if reports are to be believed, the additional discount vouchers have been withdrawn from the company’s platform.

A report by 91mobiles Hindi states that this is not an isolated case, and coupons have been withdrawn by Reliance Jio for all users. The conclusion is based on multiple users’ inputs, who have stated that while even until a few days ago, many of these users had over 20 such complementary vouchers stored in their accounts, all of them seem to have disappeared now. Further details reveal that the vouchers came with an expiry timeline of October 2019. However, since the initial timeline coincided with the rollout of Interconnect Usage Charges (IUC) tariff, Jio seemingly extended the expiry date of the voucher to February 29th, 2020.

It is important to note that Reliance Jio did disclose that the vouchers would have a set expiry date, mentioned within the clauses of the usage and recharge of prepaid connections. What would have made things clearer and avoided confusion was if the expiry dates of the vouchers were mentioned even more prominently, therefore giving users a prior intimation that their complementary vouchers would expire soon. Jio’s vouchers were also deemed non-transferable, and hence, could anyway not have been usable had a user not needed to make multiple recharges in a row.

Since its introduction and offering of largely free services, Reliance Jio resorted to a price correction of multiple prepaid plans as the telecom industry started to feel the strain. The introduction of IUC charges further pushed costs up, and the expiry of cashback vouchers would add on this. However, despite all of this, India remains one of the least expensive markets for telephony costs, with the price of data in India being super affordable. While telecom operators are right now appealing to set a higher floor price for data and calling services, it remains to be seen how consumers, who are largely used to the value prices of tariff right now, would react to a sudden price increase.