When Kenya’s largest telco by subscribers and revenue introduced Storo Bonus back in 2015, it was a way of encouraging its then 25.7 million subscribers to spend more airtime on the network. How this works is that each user has their own personal target of how much they should spend in a day in order to receive the 100% bonus airtime that can be used for on-net calls and SMS.
It was a brilliant strategy that saw many Kenyans rush to reach their daily targets, because, free things. The honeymoon period quickly wore down as subscribers started claiming that the targets were too high while others said that they would get the Storo Bonus airtime minutes to midnight, which is when they expire.
Over the year, Safaricom has done little to change the way Storo Bonus works, it has just remained to be a gem that gives subscribers a reason to call their ex (read long-lost friends) whenever the bonus pops up.
On September 3, 2018, the company’s CEO, Bob Collymore tweeted what we consider to be the biggest change coming to Storo Bonus, “You can now use your Storo Bonus to buy Storo data bundles,” read part of the announcement:
As I said, we are listening. For today, it’s Stori Ibambe. You can now use your Storo Bonus to buy Storo data bundles #MoreToCome
— Bob Collymore (@bobcollymore) September 3, 2018
This means that once a subscriber meets their daily target, they can then use the awarded bonus airtime to purchase data bundles. However, note that you can only purchase from a specific list of bundle offerings accessible through *460# and selecting option 6.
This news was well-received by subscribers but in true Kenyan fashion, they did not lack a thing or two to complain about, the major issue being that Safaricom should extend Storo Bonus’ expiry period to 24 hours after being awarded and not just until midnight of the same day.
That's a good move. Sasa ile imebaki ni storo kuwa valid for 24hours. If this were to happen, oh sweet little baby Jesus! Life would be awesome!
Chew on that big man.
Make it happen for us someday. #AsantesanaSafaricom.— Kamau Lisbeth (@Kamaulisbeth) September 4, 2018
With one particular subscriber proposing the validity to be extended to 48 hours:
Make the storo bonus a 48 hours usage it's so sad you being given at 11 pm
— esalimba_brian (@EsalimbaBrian) September 4, 2018