Instance game: I signed a pact with the gods, and the gods accused me of cheating

Qin Qiuhe's heart suddenly calmed down. He mustered up his courage and walked forward, his eyes falling on the table in the wine cellar.

He was even afraid that the body might have been taken away by someone, so he turned on the flashlight on his mobile phone and studied the table carefully for a long time. After making sure that there was not a single long hair and no signs of resistance, Qin Qiuhe finally calmed down.

He wiped away some of the shadows in his heart, took out his cell phone, and called Zhang Xiaofen hesitantly.

"Beep beep..."

"I have a good dad, dad, dad, dad~"

The next moment, the phone rang in the empty wine cellar.

"..."

Immediately after the external beep, the call was connected.

However, there was no clear female voice that Qin Qiuhe had imagined. There were some voices over there, but no one spoke. However, even so, Qin Qiuhe's heart was put back into his throat.

Zhang Xiaofen uses the smartphone that was given away as a gift when you top up your phone bill during the 3G network promotion phase.

That's right, it's the China Telecom Tianyi 11G Internet phone that was given to us around 3 years ago. It's quite useful, but has a few drawbacks. First, it has a small memory; second, it's prone to overheating and crashing; third, because it's a contract model, it doesn't support three cards.

Plus, the story is now set in 17 instead of 13.

At that time, young people had not yet been poisoned by TikTok. Not to mention a Ferrari per capita, having a mobile phone instead of a PHS in class could crush all colleagues. Many young people of that period might still use electronic products retired by their parents even if they went to college in other places. The most obvious example is the mobile phone!

However, this early generation of smartphones with contracts had a special feature.

An unlock password is required to answer the phone!

At that time, the situation of losing a mobile phone was not that serious. Although the Android system itself was not improved from the Symbian system, the Android system borrowed a lot of things from the Symbian system, including some details.

This is indeed true. In the early years, the smartphone market was in chaos, and the secondary market was even more chaotic...

If you steal an Android smartphone, it is hard to say whether you can sell it.

At that time, almost no one stole Android phones, and most of the stolen phones were imported Apple phones!

When Nokia dominated the era of mobile communications, mobile phones in the Symbian era had an interesting tradition: you had to flip open the cover or push and pull to answer a call. Perhaps this was a way to protect user privacy?

It's just like a popular meme on the internet: "Why is your trajectory to the left?" "Because I don't want the enemy to pick up my gun and use it directly."

At that time, if you lost your phone, you wouldn’t panic at all, and you didn’t have to worry about your friends and relatives being defrauded on the spot.

It's so funny. Maybe the person who found the phone doesn't even know how to answer a call.

Therefore, early Android contract phones also retained this feature.

Of course, there was no need for pushing, pulling or flipping the lid at that time, but the anti-theft feature was retained.

However, according to relevant sources, retaining this function is not just to prevent others from picking it up and using it on the spot.

The hope is to increase the probability of users finding their mobile devices after losing them!

Because most of the contract phones in the original batch were given away for free when you topped up your phone bills.

Generally speaking, in order to get a free mobile phone package, you must pay for one year in advance.

What this means is that you have to recharge a certain package for one year before the product is given to you.

what?

You said you don’t have the money to pay it all at once?

It doesn't matter, we also support you to pay monthly.

I can't come up with 540 yuan for phone bills in one go, but it's okay to deduct 45 yuan from you every month, right?

That's fine too. The phone card is registered with your real name and installment packages can be customized to suit your personal financial situation.

Pay 45 yuan per month and apply for it in the same month, and you can take away the latest Tianyi 3G mobile Internet phone.

Of course, smartphones were still very expensive during that period.

The package price is naturally not that cheap, the above is just a simple example...

Anyway, because of this operation, China Telecom was in full swing that year and directly became the well-deserved T0 among the three major operators. Just relying on the promotion of this contract phone, China Telecom beat China Unicom and China Mobile without any chance of fighting back.

However, there is a problem here. As we all know, contract phones can only be tied to one operator.

What does that mean?

For example, if you have signed up for a package with China Telecom and received a smartphone as a gift, then you can only use China Telecom cards in this device. China Unicom and China Mobile are directly blocked and you cannot use the cards at all.

This is also to ensure that deeply bound users continue to use Telecom’s phone cards for a long time.

But here comes the problem…

What if the user loses his mobile phone?

If his cell phone is lost and the person who picked it up spends all his phone credit, and then he watches his cell phone turn into a brick, the person who picked it up is unlikely to top up someone else's cell phone card, right?

It’s impossible for the person who lost his phone to continue spending on the lost SIM card, right?

In this case, where will the telecommunications company deduct the user's phone bills from?

The cost of mobile phones is not low. For the sake of profit and user stickiness, they choose to launch a contract phone policy. If the user loses the phone at any time, even if the user owes them money, it will be extremely difficult to get the money back.

What companies fear most is not non-repayment of debts, but large-scale bad debts!

The money can be recovered by suing, after all, they are the capital...

But the problem is that the time cost is too high. For the telecommunications companies at that time, if such incidents occurred on a large scale, they might suffer heavy losses and even break their capital chain.

In addition, the market for second-hand contract phones was in chaos at the time, so Telecom gritted its teeth and took control of the market.

The original telecom direct-operated stores had a service called recycling second-hand Tianyi 3G mobile Internet phones that had "forgotten passwords and could not be turned on".

Pay attention to the key point, 'Forgot your password', this is a benefit for pickpockets, a pickpocket paradise!

Of course, they also launched a more slick routine. If a user reports the loss of a mobile phone, he or she can apply for a new mobile phone card within 72 hours, and can enjoy the old user subsidy benefits of replacing the old phone with a new one within 3 days...

What does that mean?

What this means is that if your Tianyi 3G Internet phone is lost, it doesn't matter. Just bring the invoice and the instruction manual to find the serial number and provide your unlocking password.

You can exchange it for a new 3G Internet phone at a very low price.

It has to be said that Telecom worked very hard to keep its users...

They recycle used phones themselves and do not require a password to unlock them.

Basically, pickpockets who steal mobile phones will sell them to their official stores.

After all, this is their direct business. Who would be kind enough to recycle a phone without even knowing the password?

Only the telecom companies dared to do this. This was a do-or-die battle...

Telecom's idea is good. They thought about recycling these stolen phones and launched a service that old users can exchange for new ones without having to pay for their phones. This will form a virtuous circle. Even if the old users' phones are stolen or lost, they will still belong to their telecom company in the end.

After all, they are the only ones who recycle mobile phones with passwords, and then unlock them one by one according to the serial numbers and the passwords provided by old users. These phones can be flashed and put back on the market.

Oh, that’s right!

That’s right, death will come at this step.

At that time, they gave away too many mobile phones in order to offer discounts and increase the number of users.

Therefore, once this policy was introduced, it not only gave pickpockets hope, but also gave some opportunists a glimpse of the future.

At that time, Tianyi had many activities...

For example, the old bring in the new!

What do you mean?

If an old user brings a new user to apply for an installment package, the old user will be rewarded with cash.

After all, there is a policy for recycling stolen goods.

Anyone who is a little smarter can already think of the loophole!

That is to buy a mobile phone with a certain installment period, and then recommend a few friends to come and apply for a package.

After making back the money, he took the invoice and serial number and instruction manual to report the phone lost, and bought himself a new model, but in fact he still had an old model.

Finally, I took the old machine to other specialty stores to sell it.

Before I knew it, I had paid off my prepaid phone bill by attracting new customers, and even sold my old phone...

hey guess what?

And made a lot of money.

However, at that time, Tianyi really wanted to control the prices of second-hand phones and even wanted to stabilize the market.

Unfortunately, I took too big a step and didn't consider the possibility of tearing my pants.

In those days, telecom companies paid special attention to user experience in order to gain control and hegemony.

In the Internet industry, user privacy is also a top priority.

So, following the example of Nokia in the Symbian era, a feature was added: "Why is your trajectory on the left?" "Because I don't want the enemy to pick up my gun and use it directly."

Without unlocking the phone, you cannot make or receive calls.

Let me digress and add a social phenomenon. It is precisely because of this that around 10 years ago, there were many state-owned enterprises with official backgrounds or official endorsements. Telecommunications companies did not care about personnel, but played the monopoly and capitalism to the fullest, and their methods of reaping the benefits of the people were endless.

This has led to the development of this consumption concept among people born in the 80s and even the 90s.

Let me ask, after the real estate industry collapsed and the economy continued to decline, are the people born after 00 whose quality of life is getting worse day by day?

No, not really, those born in the 80s and 90s.

This group of people live in an environment where there are too many people who go with the flow and believe in official endorsements. The habit of heavy consumption is cultivated over time. You will be surprised to find that there are very few hedonists or people who are keen on impulse consumption among those born in the 80s and 90s.

But most of them don’t live a very comfortable life in real life, yet every time the environment is bad, it seems that they are the ones who are harvested.

Similar to the fund boom in the past two years, the paid knowledge of Internet courses in the past two years...

The fundamental reason is that when faced with organizations, platforms and individuals with strong social credibility, their generation will over-trust those organizations, platforms and individuals with social credit, be incited by emotions and consume ahead of time because of the trust habits they have cultivated since childhood.

Because in their eyes, these organizations and platforms are officially endorsed and cannot possibly deceive people.

Including the TV advertising scams in earlier years.

It's like those TV commercials where you can get a prize by just calling and answering a question correctly, and it's the latest game console, spinning top, yo-yo, toy, etc. I think everyone has participated in them.

In fact, they will charge an extremely exaggerated ringback tone fee.

Although the questions are simple, and you can win the prize as long as you answer them correctly.

But the key problem is that it only takes a few minutes for your parents to rack up an astronomical amount of debt on their cell phone bills.

Because the numbers on these answering ads are voice platforms they have built themselves, and they have extremely high charging standards.

If you just make a call for seven or eight minutes, you will be charged several hundred yuan.