Jio Prime Membership Renewal Is Free, Here's How to Do It Right Now

Techenonik , 03 April 2018

HIGHLIGHTS

• Jio Prime subscription is free for another 12 months
• Users can now apply to get their membership renewal
• It may take a couple of hours for the service to get renewed

Jio Prime membership renewal provided free to existing customers of the programme for another 12 months, the Mukesh Ambani-owned telecom operator revealed on Friday. This has finally ended the confusion over the fate of Prime subscription, which ended on March 31, for all consumers regardless of when they purchased the Rs. 99 membership. Of course, customers who join the Jio network on or after 1 April 2018 - or those who are a subscriber but don’t already have a Jio Primemembership - will have to pay the subscription fee of Rs. 99 to avail the benefits that come with the membership, which will be valid until 31 March 2019.

Of course if you are already on Jio, chances are you are one of the 175 million people already enjoying Jio Prime membership. Here’s how you can extend your benefits for another year, for free.

How to extend Jio Prime free for 12 months

While everyone was expecting Reliance Jio to continue charging at least a nominal amount for Prime membership, the telco has surprised everyone by making it free for another year. It's really simple to extend your membership - just follow these simple steps to get Jio Prime for another year:

1. Download the MyJio app and sign in using your Jio number (whose SIM card is in the phone).
2. Once logged in the app, you will notice a banner with the text: Congratulations! Extend Jio Prime free for a year. Here, tap on the Get Now button. If you don't see a banner, follow these steps.
3. On the next page, you will see the following message: "Jio Prime is getting bigger, you are a valued Jio Prime member. And we are extending one full year's subscription absolutely free for you." Below this message will be the list of Jio numbers registered to you.
4. Tap on the number whose Prime service you plan to extend, and tap on Proceed; you can choose multiple numbers to extend the service, provided you have purchased Jio Prime for them.
5. Now, you will see a message saying “request raised successfully,” and that the company “will get back to you shortly.”

That’s pretty much it for the process of extending Jio Prime for one more year. In a couple of hours, you should get a message saying your Prime membership has been extended for a year.

The Prime subscription was announced in February last year as the company went from a free service and adopted the paid model. Priced at Rs. 99 for the whole year, the subscription came to an end on March 31. At the time of the announcement, members were to be given additional data at the same prices compared to non-Prime members. While it was an opt-in service initially, the Prime membership fee was later automatically added to the recharge cost when a user tried to purchase a pack, thus making it effectively mandatory.

Jio Prime subscription is essential if you want to benefit from the offers the company provides from time to time, such as the Rs. 50 discounts on recharge packs with daily data allocations. Similarly, the Jio promise  to offer data tariffs 20 percent lower than the nearest competitor works out for Prime users only. Moreover, the access to content apps, which the operator values at Rs. 10,000 for the whole year, comes only with plans for which Prime subscription is a pre-requisite. Jio's suite of apps includes Jio TV, Jio Music, Jio News, etc.