Pelephone disappoints in TheMarker Com.Vention
March 30th, 2009Yesterday I attended TheMarker annual web convention, Com.vention09. when I arrived, a girl approached me and informed me that Pelephone are giving away the Palm. As I’ve been awaiting for the Palm Pre, and knowing that it will distributed via Pelephone, I got super excited and even ready to buy it! When I got to Pelephones stand I asked about it, and after taking a good look at the phone I said; This is not the Palm Pre!
Well, it seems that Pre and Pro sound rather similar. After explaining to the sales person why this phone is not the Pre, he said, “Yes, the Pre will only be available in September” and explained how good is the Palm Pro. Since I was there already, I played a game. I was impressed that Pelephone had such a big stand, and thought to myself that its probably due to the new technology they are marketing : High Speed GSM, which is actually HSDPA (where did they get that name!?!).
At the end of the convention, I went up to meet a friend near the Pelephone stand, One of the girls told me I can play as much as I’d like (woohoo). surprisingly enough, I had won! I was shocked, I have never won before. I went to get my prize, and found out that in order to get my prize I need to sign up to Pelephone for 36 months and pay 70 NIS per month!!!, which is 2520 NIS!!!, doesn’t sound like a prize to me!. After talking a bit with the sales guy he said the problem is that I have a different operators phone and that I need to have a Pelephone subscription in order to be legible for the prize. sounds fair enough. As Pelephone charges me for some unknown reason for the past two years, I was actually happy. I have two numbers subscribed to Pelephone, which I haven’t been using for periods of three and five years yet they’ve been charging me 60 NIS per two months. As me being one of those costumers that don’t want to wait 2 hours on the phone, I just let them charge me 30 NIS a month. finally I thought it was worth it. I could get the phone for 30 NIS a month, and still keep my Orange number. But it seemed that the ONLY package I could get in order to receive my **FREE* phone was the 70 NIS or up packages. It was to expensive to get the free mobile phone. I would actually prefer not to win a FREE phone and get all disappointed. After this incident, I’m going to wait on the phone how ever much it takes and cancel my 2 subscriptions to Pelephone. Although it does say on the small print that you need to subscribe to Pelephone, it does make you feel stupid that they make you pay a big amount and change your subscription package to a more expensive package. Shame on Pelephon!
a crazy week of events is ahead of us. even if you are not going to CTIA, there are allot of hi tech related events this week! (if you are going to CTIA, look below for my recommendations) I don’t know if its because the Kinnernet camp or because the upcoming holidays. anyway, below you may find a list of upcoming events so it will be much more easier to track and not miss on something you would like to attend:
The Mobile Monday Peer Awards where held during the MWC 2009. Different MobileMonday chapters from all over the world sent their chosen startup. Each startup had 3 minutes to introduce themselves. My favorite presentation was by Jaime Lanchares, Unkasoft CEO. In his presentation he “talked” to his application and demonstrated what the application can do… I recommend you at his presentation . The Tel Aviv chapter sent Fring, which started as a mobile VoIP client, and enhanced to a mobile clients that allows various ways of interactions with your contacts. There were three award categories; jury award, audience award and the chapter award. PopCatcher won the jury award, Unkasoft won the audience award, as I said before the presentation was amazing! Fring won the chapter award and also got second place in the jury awards.
We had a speed lecture session; each person talked 15 min. we had a special guest from China - Ori Elraviv, Dragon ports Co-Founder, that talked about the mobile scene in china, and mostly answered question. Aviv Revach, Mominis Co-Founder, gave a short intro about mobile gaming. Guy Ami-Ad from Mobi, talked about mobile advertising and was charming as always, Aviad Rabinovich, Oranges Music Manager talked in addition to the regular "listening to music on your handset" about using your mobile for getting to know more music, music campaigns and song recognition, which I liked the most. It works by sending a part of a song recording to some server, and receiving the name of the band, song name and the album in a few seconds from the server. I was impressed, even more than seeing 3 other blonds in a mobile event. I already know some sites that do something similar, such as 
GC Heap View:
Comparing heap states
Last Monday was the second event of Mobile Monday Tel Aviv. The theme was mobile VoIp, a theme close to me. Although sceduled to start the lectures at 19:30, we started at 20:00, half an hour late, due to guests that were still arriving. I think that for the next MoMo event we should allow more time till the lectures start….:) on the bar were cool blue shot glasses courtesy of Sun.
At the beginning of the week I attended the 
Guy Ami-Ad,from Mobi, gave a rememberable lecture with allot of examples of innovated advertisements. a basic idea is that with a mobile, you can get to the user any time and any place, in the bed before he sleeps, or even in the bathroom…. he talked about having loyal users, and doing it by billing them only "after a few clicks".. and how important is it to make the users involved in the brands advertisements. there were many more interesting lectures and talks.