The new Safaricom Night Shift Bundles – a completely useless offer

It’s not long ago that I wrote about Safaricom’s new data structure in the article Data should have no expiry date – Bob Collymore, 2012. In that article I briefly touched on the new bonus data bundles called night shift bundles, basically pointing out the new timing for the restructured bundles. But let’s start from the very beginning.

A year ago I analyzed my usage of Safaricom’s Internet in regards to the night shift bundles and wrote an article titled Night Shift Bundles by Safaricom to lament over my inability to effectively use the night shift bundles as a result of poor timing; a lamentation Safaricom paid a deaf ear to.

In my lamentation I wanted two things to be changed. First I wanted the timing to shift from between 10 PM and 10 AM to either between 6 PM and 6 AM or 8 PM and 8 AM. Or better still the timing should have been between 9 PM and 9 AM. I also wanted the two weeks expiry period for night shift bundles be extended to one month for those who bought the 3 GB bundle, and  to two months for those who bought the 8 GB data. Nothing changed.

The Safaricom night shift bundles available today

But one year down the line Unliminet happened, and this forced Safaricom to come up with a new data structure that gave us the monthly Internet offers as follows:

1. 100 MB + 100 MB @ Shs 100
2. 300 MB + 300 MB @ Sh 250
3. 650 MB + 650 MB @ Sh 500
4. 2 GB + 2 GB @ Sh 1000
5. 5 GB + 5 GB @ Sh 2000
6. 10 GB + 10 GB @ Sh 3000
7. 25 GB + 25 GB @ Sh 5750
8. 50 GB + 50 GB @ Sh 6750

A similar structure exists for the seven days data of 4, 10, 30, 65 MBs at 5, 10, 25 and 50 shillings respectively. Every data bundle has a 100% bonus night shift bundle.

There are two things to note from the above bundles structure; one is that each data purchased gives you a 100% bonus night shift bundles. Secondly, the cost per bundle is probably the lowest in town. If for example you have bought the 10 GB data for Shs 3000, you are better of than someone on Unliminet because for the same amount Unliminet will give you 6 GB only. For shs 3000, Safaricom gives you another 10 GB to be used at night, completely free. No hidden charges, I promise.

Bu wait until you want to use the 10 gigabytes of free data.

I have no issue with the day time paid for bundles except for the fact that if you don’t use it in one month, it’s lost – gone forever – and there is nothing you can do about that – nothing.

My issue is with the night shift bundles for two reasons: 1. Timing 2. Safaricom’s crappy Internet.

1. Timing of the new Safaricom night shift bundles

In the article Night Shift Bundles by Safaricom, I had issues with the 10 PM to 10 AM timing and I explained it this way:

Safaricom data structure is supposed to benefit those who want to burn the midnight oil like me but as you can see, these people have merely 4 hours or so to burn that data (33% of the night shift time). An ordinary person who goes to bed at 10PM would probably wake up at 5AM. After preparation for work, driving in the traffic and settling at work, that person will not have the time to access the night shift bundles between the 5AM wake up time and 10AM before the data is turned off. The same person will also not have the time to use before bed time as he/she must go to bed early in order to wake up early for work.

What Safaricom has done, instead of giving us better timing for the night shift bundles, is to reduce the total night shift time by 4 hours. The night shift bundles start time has been retained as 10 PM but  the stop time is no longer 10 AM but 6 AM.

I can bet that most Safaricom Internet subscribers, more than 80%, wake up between 6 AM and 7 AM. The remaining 20% either wake up between 5 AM and 6 AM or between 7 AM and 9 AM. This then means that less than 10% (I am being very generous with that figure) of Safaricom Internet subscribers can freely (without giving up their sleep) take advantage of the night shift bundles very early in the morning.

So majority of us are left to take advantage of the Internet before we go to sleep. Again, I can bet that most of the Safaricom Internet subscribers, almost all, go to sleep between 10 PM and 11 PM. If there is anyone who normally goes to sleep past 11 PM, then that person is in the minority of less than 1%.

The question is, is the Internet available at that time of the night? Below is my experience, you may share with us your experience in the comments section below this article.

2. Safaricom’s Crappy Internet

Related Article: Safaricom new Unlimted Internet Data bundle is a big Crap…

That related article was written four years ago and it’s on a different subject. The crappy nature of Safaricom Internet I am talking about is on speed and stability.

Related Article: BilaWaya: The exciting free Internet in Nakuru

Since around September last year, I have not been able to access Safaricom’s Internet between 6 PM and midnight every day. I have complained about this to Safaricom severally and at one point they told me that they were aware of the Internet problems in my two areas of residence (basically they were saying there is no need to remind them of Internet predicament all the time).

The unavailability of Safaricom’s Internet between 6 PM and midnight each day means that you will probably never use the Safaricom night shift bundles between 10 PM and 11 PM. It won’t be there.

For example, to write this article that I started at 10:20 PM, I had to switch to Equitel’s Internet in order to pull up those related links and previous articles for reference… and this I do every day.

The screen shot above is my data bundles balance as at 00:04 March, 18, 2015. I bought the bundles on 10th March 2015 – that is eight days ago. Within the eight days that I have used the bundles, I have consumed about 1.3 GB of the day time bundles (I had some previously unused 90 day bundles that’s why the expiry date is not April but June) and consumed only 326 MBs of the night shift bundles.

Two important things to note with my data consumption: 1. I do not solely rely on my mobile data bundles during the day as I access free Wi-Fi at that time, yet for the last eight days I have been able to use more than 1.3 GBs of daytime data. 2. Realizing that my “free” night shift bundles will go to waste, I started watching useless videos whenever I get Safaricom connection to at least accelerate the consumption of the night shift bundles.

What these tell me is that I will hardly use my huge but free Safaricom night shift bundles. The offer should just be scrapped as it is completely useless and a waste.