MegaFon Ural, the mobile operator, introduced new bonus schemes on April 1, 2007. The company’s customers can now get sets of 30, 60, 120, and 250 minutes of local conversations and a set of 30 multimedia messages free of charge for 50, 95,180, 340, and 45 points, respectively (The number of points you score depends on how much you actually talk).

The earlier bonuses (free local conversations for a day, for a weekend, and for a month) will no longer be available beginning from May 1, 2007. Both the new and the old schemes will be valid throughout the month of April.

The advantage of the new bonuses is that they are not tied up to any particular time period. A customer can now just use the phone as always and simply check for the number of minutes they can have free of charge every now and then.

‘All of MegaFon’s subsidiaries underwent a market research aimed at customer satisfaction in terms of MegaFon Bonus scheme last year. The respondents had a chance to make their improvement proposals, and this is why we’ve come up with a new set of bonuses,’ says acting Commercial Director of MegaFon Ural Tatiana Sukhotina.

If the company’s subscribers communicate a lot, they can activate several bonuses at a time based on the first in-first out principle (the bonus activated first will be the first to be used). The operator has launched a new and more convenient USSD menu into the bargain: the new menu both updates you on the program and lets you manage your bonus points. This means that rather than having to remember quite a few USSD numbers or call the information and help center all the time you only have to remember one number (115#) instead.