So, I just got a cell phone for the first time. I held out for 6 years; almost unheard of for an IT guy and student. Ended up with a little Samsung slider phone, the t429, which I’m growing to like: it’s small, lightweight, has easy-to-feel buttons, and a large screen. I do have one complaint, however.
I don’t really need text messaging. I have email and IM already, and both are more convenient for actually writing something down. However, people my age are obsessed with it. I got a text within 2 hours of getting the phone out of the box, and made the unpleasant discovery that receiving a 36-byte message cost me fifteen cents! Fifteen cents for something I didn’t even ask for! If I had a chance to reject it, as you can with calls, that’d be fine, but apparently that’s not an option. You just pay whenever someone else decides to send one to you.
I talked to my friends, who said their providers let you opt out of receiving text messages; great, since it’s a service I didn’t sign up for or want in the first place. However, T-Mobile doesn’t let you opt-out, claiming their software isn’t smart enough to do that. I can block texts sent as email, which I guess is a big problem thanks to advertising, but I can’t keep my friends from costing me money by accident. The network obviously knows what kind of plan I have, as it bills me for service instantly. Why can’t it also check to see if I don’t want the messages in the first place?
So, now I’m stuck paying an extra $5 a month for 400 texts. I guess I’ll use some of them, now that they’re there, but it’s still poor service to not give your customers the choice. T-Mobile, you make me a sad panda.
Update (July 16 2008): On a family plan, you can’t get the $5/mo package: you need to buy the family pack, which nobody else in my family needs. That’s $15 a month–more than my line in the first place!
Update (July 24 2008): Hey, looks like T-Mobile’s facing a lawsuit for this!
Update (July 28 2008): T-Mobile promised they’d block texts for me. I continue to receive them. I’ve also been told I won’t be charged if I don’t open texts. This is also not true. I’ve also been charged for 13 outgoing texts, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t send, as I’ve never composed a message. Grr.
Yeah, sounds like Europe has this figured out. It astounds me that the collective cost of exchanging 160 characters between friends can cost almost as much as the postage for a letter! T-mobile does consider photo and audio (not sure about video) messages at the same rate as text, though, so that’s something nice.
One option I’ve been considering is having my computer read texts… somehow, and leave me voicemail using festival, but I think the time it would take me to implement that would be worth just paying for the text plan in the first place.