Etisalat prepaid habits in the UAE, from the desk view.
The desk is small. That makes the dataset small too. Even so, a few patterns are stable enough to share. Nothing below identifies anyone — these are aggregates from a couple of thousand requests.
Amount peaks
Half of the requests sit in the 50–100 AED band. Most of that is 50 flat — the classic “refill enough for the week” top-up. About a quarter of requests are below 50 AED, usually 20–30, and they cluster around end-of-month when people top-off to keep a bundle alive one more day. The remainder sits at 150 and 200 AED, split evenly, and those are almost always requests placed on payday.
Hours
Two peaks: mid-morning (10:00–11:00) and just before dinner (19:00–20:00). Almost nothing between 02:00 and 07:00 — those hours belong to autoreply. Friday looks different: a quiet morning, a big spike from 20:00.
Where from
Two-thirds of the requests come from Dubai postal areas, the rest split across Sharjah, Ajman, Abu Dhabi, and the northern emirates in that order. Not surprising for a Dubai-based counter — the site is in English and Arabic and does not do local promotion outside search.
Repeat rate
Roughly 40 percent of requesters come back within 60 days. That is our favourite number on the whole page. It says the reply email did not annoy anyone, that the payment link worked, and that we did not chase them with newsletters they never asked for.
The one thing this dataset does not show
Individual behaviour. The system is designed so that a single manager can serve requests without profiling anyone. We can see “50 AED at 19:00 is common on Thursdays”. We cannot see “this specific person tops up on Thursdays at 19:00” — we would have to reconstruct that, and we would rather not.