Block your number if you have lost your phone, plan not to use it for a long time, or it has been stolen. If your phone is lost or stolen, blocking the number will help protect the funds in your account from unauthorized persons. During blocking, the subscription fee for the tariff and services is not charged.
There are two types of number blocking:
- Blocking of services due to the loss of a SIM card, which is activated with any balance and only when contacting support or MegaFon showrooms.
- Voluntary blocking, which is activated when the balance exceeds the shutdown threshold. You can activate this type of blocking not only when contacting MegaFon support or showrooms, but also independently in your Personal Account or the MegaFon application.
The number can be blocked for up to 180 days. After this period, the number will be unblocked automatically.
Price
The subscription fee for the service “Blocking services due to the loss of a SIM card” is 0 ₽ (from the 1st to the 7th day), starting from the 8th day the subscription fee is 1 ₽ per day.
The subscription fee for the “Voluntary blocking” service is 1 ₽ per day.
How to block your number
- Submit a request to connect the service using the form feedback“Write to us” in the Support section. In the text, indicate the phone number that needs to be blocked, the reason for blocking, the full last name, first name and patronymic of the owner of the number and passport data (series, number).
- Call the Help Desk at 8 800 550-05-00 or (from MegaFon number) or +7 926 111-05-00 (when roaming).
- Contact the MegaFon salon with your passport.
- Ask in the support chat in your Personal Account.
- Block it yourself in your Personal Account or the MegaFon application. This method is only available for voluntary blocking.
How to unblock your number
- Specify the date when the service is disabled when blocking, and the number will be unblocked automatically on the selected day.
- Send an SMS to the number 0500 from a valid MegaFon number.
- Contact any MegaFon salon with your passport. If necessary, you can get a new SIM card with the same phone number for free at the salon. More details in the description of the SIM card replacement service.
- Unblock it yourself in your Personal Account or the MegaFon application. This method is only available for voluntary blocking.
In January–March 2017, Megafon closed approximately 400 communication stores. A person close to Megafon told Vedomosti about this. Operator representative Yulia Dorokhina clarifies that the company has reduced its network by more than 400 points, or 10%. This was done to increase the efficiency of the retail network and reduce the number of new connections in the market as a whole: service penetration mobile communications in Russia it exceeded 180%, she explains. Megafon is ready to further reduce its retail network, but this will depend on market conditions, Dorokhina notes.
In Russia in general and Megafon in particular, there are too many communication stores, representatives of the operator have repeatedly said. In the summer of 2016, the company’s general director, Sergei Soldatenkov, at a meeting with analysts, promised to reduce the retail network by 25–40% to 2,500–3,000 stores within 3–5 years. The operator is going to focus not on increasing the number of customers, but on retaining the subscriber base and, by reducing retail, intends to reduce the annual outflow of subscribers from 50 to 35%, UBS analyst Roman Arbuzov quoted him at the time. Payments from new subscribers for services do not cover the costs of maintaining retail networks, follows from a Megafon report published later.
Megafon's largest competitor, MTS, is also reducing retail. In the first quarter, MTS reduced 7.5% of its network. By April, it had 5,725 communication stores, says operator representative Dmitry Solodovnikov. According to him, MTS expects other operators and cellular retailers to further reduce their retail networks. This will help stabilize the market, Solodovnikov believes.
No more subscribers
According to AC&M Consulting, in the first quarter of 2017, the number of MTS subscribers decreased by approximately 1 million to 79 million, VimpelCom - by 1.3 million to 57 million. At Megafon, this figure did not change - 75.6 million. Tele2 does not disclose its subscriber base.
The retail network of T2 RTK Holding (Tele2) did not shrink in January – March, notes its representative Olga Galushina. By April, the operator had 3,400 branded salons and modules. But at the same time, retail is based on franchising. Tele2 has built a high-quality network and is now focusing on the efficiency of each point, and is also developing online sales, says Galushina.
But VimpelCom plans to expand retail. It is necessary to improve the quality of sales and expand the range of services sold, explains VimpelCom representative Anna Aibasheva. The operator does not disclose the number of salons. According to Infoline Analytics, at the end of the third quarter of 2016, VimpelCom had 3,850 points of sale, including 2,300 franchised ones.
Euroset (equally owned by VimpelCom and Megafon) and Svyaznoy are planning a tiny growth. Euroset has about 4,000 stores, the company intends to slightly increase their number, says network representative Alexandra Pertseva. During the first quarter of 2017, the Svyaznoy network increased by 32 stores to 2,732 retail outlets, notes company representative Alexandra Vinogradova. Svyaznoy plans to expand its retail network by several dozen stores by the end of the year, she says.
Cellular retail in Russia is excessive, so most retail outlets generate losses, says Telecom Daily CEO Denis Kuskov. There has not been a significant increase in subscriber bases or an increase in phone sales, and the connection of new services and their payment are gradually migrating to the Internet. A slight increase in the number of salons is possible as their location is optimized, but radical expansion of networks is a thing of the past, notes Kuskov.
MegaFon has been expanding its network of sales points and showrooms for years, looking, so to speak, at similar actions of its main competitor, MTS, but has now decided that its work and the colossal money invested are in vain. The operator now estimates the development of its branded salons at 60 million rubles, the opening of each at 1-1.5 million rubles.
Now MegaFon has come to the conclusion that such a number of its stores is clearly excessive, and in the coming years they will face a significant reduction. Now the number of the largest networks, according to MegaFon, in Russia is over 23 thousand stores and outlets, in total - about 28 thousand. Therefore, the operator plans to close from 25 to 40% of its offline stores, reducing them from 4 to 2.5-3 thousand in the next 3-5 years.
The thing is that, despite the growth of a variety of retail outlets where you can buy SIM cards, their sales are no longer growing, because the communications market has long been oversaturated. That is, it turns out that with the growth of places where SIM cards are sold, their sales at each individual point only fall. The consumer is increasingly making purchases via the Internet, and issues of connecting/disabling services or changing the tariff are decided by himself through personal account on the operator's website.
MTS shares the competitor’s opinion, but is not ready to make a similar decision. After the termination of the contract with Svyaznoy, this operator only continues to reformat its retail network and open more and more new stores - both contracted by RTK and under the Telefon.ru brand.
Push
If a reduction in quantity leads to an increase in quality, then I see MegaFon’s decision as extremely correct. But not otherwise. And if MTS also comes to this, the service in its RTK showrooms is not only below par, but simply a disgrace and a mockery of subscribers, then everything will be completely bad.
Remember the years long past, when there were operator offices - the cat cried, but they were staffed by highly qualified specialists who knew their job and were able to solve almost any problem at a high level.
What do we see now? There are salons at every turn and there is a desire to avoid them. Of course, if your goal is different from buying a new SIM card or a case for a smartphone, that’s all their sellers need in terms of earning their percentage. They have no interest or motivation to understand communication services. That’s why they are just trying to sell you something unnecessary and unnecessary.
All residents of Russia know firsthand that Russian mobile operators like to write off money from subscriber accounts under strange pretexts and sell unnecessary paid services, mislead and profit from their subscribers in every possible way. Today it became known that mobile operator MegaFon, which is in good standing with many, cruelly scams all its subscribers out of money, and it does this, of course, secretly.
This story was told by a user with the nickname InGrib on the Yaplakal forum, but it is absolutely reliable and confirmed by screenshots. It all started with the fact that one of the residents of Russia did not use his number for several months, after which it was automatically blocked - this is a common normal procedure. Since this number was important for a subscriber of the MegaFon operator, he went to the operator’s salon to restore it.
When restoring your number, you need to top it up with 200 rubles, and also choose any of the new tariff plans available for connection. In order not to pay a single ruble, the Russian opted for the “Go to Zero” tariff plan, which has no subscription fee at all. As a result, restoring the number cost only 200 rubles, but after logging into my personal account on the official website, something completely different turned out to be true.
As it turned out, to the free tariff plan, for which you do not need to pay a fixed penny, the mobile operator MegaFon quietly connected four paid unnecessary services, including “Replace the dial tone” (93 rubles per month) and “Who called+” (37 ,2 rubles per month). At the same time, the remaining services seem to be free, but if you read their description carefully, you will notice that they will become paid after some time, when the “trial period” ends.
For example, the “SMS XXS” service is free for the first 10 days, but then it costs 3.5 rubles per day, that is, 105 rubles per month. The Internet XS service looks no less interesting, since initially it costs 190 rubles, but from the second month this amount increases to 210 rubles per month. Moreover, in your MegaFon personal account it is displayed in the “Without” section subscription fee", as if on purpose.
As a result, if the buyer of a tariff plan from the MegaFon operator does not log into his personal account immediately after connecting, that is, in the first days, then he may lose a large amount of money, which he will find out about after some time. So free tariff plan“Go to zero” without a subscription fee straight out of the box costs 450 rubles per month.
Of course, it depends on everyone, but in our humble opinion, the MegaFon operator cruelly swindles all its subscribers out of money by connecting them to absolutely unnecessary and useless services, and the client is not even warned about this. It’s good if you come across an advanced subscriber who will immediately go into his personal account and turn them off, but what about older people and those who are not at all comfortable with electronics? Pay 450 rubles per month for a tariff without a subscription fee?
Join us on
On March 7, 2018, Megafon announced that subscribers of some archived tariff plans will be transferred to other archived tariffs without the consent of the subscriber until May 31, and some other parameters will also change. You can familiarize yourself with this news from March 7 for the Moscow region. It also occurs in other regions.
Then, on May 21, 2018, Megafon published news that it did not have time to transfer everyone to other tariffs in a timely manner before May 31, so the deadline was extended until June 30. Link to news.
Finally, after several months, I received a screenshot of an SMS with information about transferring to another tariff. Now you can figure out, at least partially, whether Megafon is transferring subscribers to good tariffs or not...
This message was sent to me by one of my good friends. His current tariff plan is “Everything is simple 15”, from June 22 to 24 it will be transferred to “Everything is simple 16”. Megafon claims that communication will become more profitable! Let's compare the tariff parameters.
| Parameter | It's simple 15 | It's simple 16 |
| Subscription fee | 0 rubles | 0 rubles |
| Calls to numbers home region | 1.8 rub/min | 2.2 rub/min |
| Long distance calls to Megafon | 3.9 rub/min | 3 rub/min |
| Intercity to numbers of other operators | 3.9 rub/min | 12 rub/min |
| Mobile Internet | 9.9 RUR/MB | 9.9 RUR/MB |
| SMS to home region numbers | 1.9 RUR | 2.5 rub |
| SMS to Megafon Russia numbers | 3 rubles | 2.5 rub |
| SMS to numbers of other Russian operators | RUB 3.55 | 2.5 rub |
As you can see, “Everything is simple 16” is not particularly profitable than “Everything is simple 15”. Some parameters have become cheaper, but the main ones have become more expensive.
There is another set of parameters that may make you think that new tariff became better – trips around Russia.
Here are the conditions that were on the “Everything is simple 15” tariff:
Now all incoming messages and SMS in the region of your stay (when traveling around Russia) are the same as in your home region. True, this does not apply to incoming calls from other regions (including home) - they are charged 5 rubles per minute.
Has it gotten better? Yes, sure. But there is one nuance - the FAS has obliged everyone mobile operators cancel roaming when traveling around Russia. This means that similar conditions should have been introduced for the “Everything is simple 15” tariff. And yes, no paid inbox!
So, did Megafon deceive my friend? I think so
- It will become more profitable to communicate - no. Just look at the most popular parameter: calls to numbers in your home region - 2.2 rubles instead of 1.8 (+22.2%).
- From June 22 to June 24, your tariff will be updated - no. An update is a change in the parameters of the current tariff. Megafon simply transfers to another version of the tariff, and this is a replacement of the tariff, not its update.
