why do we let phone companies get away with exhorbitant charges for text msgs?

[BlahBlahYouToo]

first it was 10 cents to send, free to receive.
then 5 cents send, 5 cents receive.
then up to 15 cents each way.
currently 20 cents each way.
next price jump probably like 25 cents each way.

i HATE that i am charged to receive, and I get random txt messages from strangers or services. that should be fucking illegal.

by upping prices and charging to receive, they're forcing people to get a bundled deal for unlimited, or X amounts of text per month.

and for a service that costs them next to nothing, but they are making millions of dollars on it. and why? because they can get away with it because so many idiots out there use text.

As described in this NY Times story (What Carriers Aren?t Eager to Tell You About Texting), the bandwidth required for a text message isn't only minimal, it is non-existing from an economical standpoint. Text messages can be exact 160 bytes, hence the limitation to 160 characters. Those 160 bytes are part of a service bandwith that every cellphone transmission has by default.

TechCrunch made an interesting calculation about the cost of text messages, in Mega Bytes. According to this article (AT&T?s text messages cost $1,310 per megabyte), one MB of text messages costs $1310 with 20 Cents / text message.

That calculation makes AT&T's $20 offer sound much better. But if you think about it twice, AT&T doesn't have any additional cost, if you send 1 or 1000 text messages.

 

[OCGuy]

Are police charged for receiving text messages?

 

[TridenT]

Get a different carrier or cancel your service

 

[Ns1]

Why should they charge you less?

 

[SunnyD]

Why do cell phone companies get away with charging outrageous prices for EVERY service when landlines are dirt cheap?

Because you let them.

 

[Pegun]

Text

Because our law makers let them, like idiots.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: Ns1
Why should they charge you less?

i'm not asking them to charge me less (i actually have an unlimited everything plan from my company).
i'm asking them to not charge me to receive because i get random text message from wrong numbers, or even if i get txt from friends, i'd prefer not to because of the charge.
why should i get charged for something i have no control over?

and on top of that, it costs them next to NOTHING to process text msg so it makes it even more outrageous.

 

[tasmanian]

$10 a month for unlimited texts for me.

 

[BoomerD]

Back in the day...when there were no texting plans, I'd receive spam texts, usually from a number like, "000-000-0000." I'd always bitch at AirTouch or AT&T (before they became Cingular then AT&T again) and make them remove the charge...but it was a PITA I shouldn't have had to go through since I didn't send texts. So, I had to finally have texting disabled completely. No incoming or outgoing texts at all.
I never did find a reason to have texting turned back on. If I wanted to talk to someone, I called them.

 

[acheron]

Because people pay for it. If people stopped putting up with it, they wouldn't be able to anymore. Capitalism yay!

 

[Nik]

I have Cricket. I don't understand the concept of a minutes, texts, or picture messages limitation. I live blissfully under the umbrella of talking 24/7/365 while sending a text and/or picture message every second of every waking moment every day and not having to pay a single cent extra. I :heart: Cricket.

 

[RagingBITCH]

Your post is exactly like your username, full of total crap no one cares about

 

[lozina]

So use e-mail

 

[Genx87]

The worst is I havent run into a carrier yet who will turn off text msging. But they will still charge you for unsolicited inc text msgs.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: Genx87
The worst is I havent run into a carrier yet who will turn off text msging. But they will still charge you for unsolicited inc text msgs.

T-Mobile has been disabling text messaging for ... at least 5 years. Noob.

Only thing, though, is that it used to be for the entire account. I'd be surprised if it's not yet on a line-by-line basis, but it used to be an account-wide setting which screwed everybody on a multi-line account.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Nik

Originally posted by: Genx87
The worst is I havent run into a carrier yet who will turn off text msging. But they will still charge you for unsolicited inc text msgs.

T-Mobile has been disabling text messaging for ... at least 5 years. Noob.

Only thing, though, is that it used to be for the entire account. I'd be surprised if it's not yet on a line-by-line basis, but it used to be an account-wide setting which screwed everybody on a multi-line account.

Verizon will do it on a per-line basis.
<--- disabled texting on daughter's phone

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo
first it was 10 cents to send, free to receive.
then 5 cents send, 5 cents receive.
then up to 15 cents each way.
currently 20 cents each way.
next price jump probably like 25 cents each way.

i HATE that i am charged to receive, and I get random txt messages from strangers or services. that should be fucking illegal.

by upping prices and charging to receive, they're forcing people to get a bundled deal for unlimited, or X amounts of text per month.

and for a service that costs them next to nothing, but they are making millions of dollars on it. and why? because they can get away with it because so many idiots out there use text.

As described in this NY Times story (What Carriers Aren?t Eager to Tell You About Texting), the bandwidth required for a text message isn't only minimal, it is non-existing from an economical standpoint. Text messages can be exact 160 bytes, hence the limitation to 160 characters. Those 160 bytes are part of a service bandwith that every cellphone transmission has by default.

TechCrunch made an interesting calculation about the cost of text messages, in Mega Bytes. According to this article (AT&T?s text messages cost $1,310 per megabyte), one MB of text messages costs $1310 with 20 Cents / text message.

That calculation makes AT&T's $20 offer sound much better. But if you think about it twice, AT&T doesn't have any additional cost, if you send 1 or 1000 text messages.

Sheesh, you must be part of the entitlement generation.

Do you know that it takes about 10 months for a cell phone company to make ANY money off you? The cost of acquiring and outfitting a new customer takes 10 MONTHS to recoup!

Cell phone companies have every right to charge for text messaging. They have no legal or ethical obligation to provide you something for free; they're in business to remain self-sustaining and profitable.

Your whine also sounds very juvenile when you consider the other amazingly overpriced areas of your life that you ignore. Have you ever paid $7 for a sandwich, or $15 for a dinner plate of pasta? That sandwhich only cost $3 to make, and the pasta only cost $4. Do you whine about how the restaurants should charge only their basic costs and it should be illegal for THEM to make a profit?

Just because you can SEE the people, building, materials being used to make your dinner you accept that your costs are going towards those and you pay without complaint. If a restaurant is too expensive you go elsewhere. You can't see the building, people, research, testing, etc that goes into providing you your phone so you feel perfectly justified in whining about the cost.

<---- used to work in corporate at a cell phone company. You make it illegal for them to profit on the text, ringtones, data plans and other "extras", expect them to keep providing cheap or low cost hardware yearly or more frequently, and you WILL drive those companies out of business.

There is NOTHING unethical about a company making a profit.

Oh, and texts AREN'T free. The manpower, site rental/purchase and materials costs mean that your texts DO cost money.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: Nik
I have Cricket. I don't understand the concept of a minutes, texts, or picture messages limitation. I live blissfully under the umbrella of talking 24/7/365 while sending a text and/or picture message every second of every waking moment every day and not having to pay a single cent extra. I :heart: Cricket.

How is their coverage? And do they use GSM?

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo

Originally posted by: Ns1
Why should they charge you less?

i'm not asking them to charge me less (i actually have an unlimited everything plan from my company).
i'm asking them to not charge me to receive because i get random text message from wrong numbers, or even if i get txt from friends, i'd prefer not to because of the charge.
why should i get charged for something i have no control over?

and on top of that, it costs them next to NOTHING to process text msg so it makes it even more outrageous.

611. Call them, tell them it was an unsolicited text, ask them to block texts. They'll reverse the charges and prevent texts from being delivered to your phone.

 

[BillGates]

Were you charged when your carrier's network was upgraded from 1X to EVDO (or similar GSM improvment)? (not likely) Gotta pay for that infrastructure one way or another...

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: AreaCode707
Cell phone companies have every right to charge for text messaging. They have no legal or ethical obligation to provide you something for free; they're in business to remain self-sustaining and profitable.

Your whine also sounds very juvenile when you consider the other amazingly overpriced areas of your life that you ignore. Have you ever paid $7 for a sandwich, or $15 for a dinner plate of pasta? That sandwhich only cost $3 to make, and the pasta only cost $4. Do you whine about how the restaurants should charge only their basic costs and it should be illegal for THEM to make a profit?

I don't see where he said they shouldn't be allowed to charge for them, or that they shouldn't be allowed to make a profit... he did say it should be illegal to charge for unsolicited texts.
I do agree with him that text fees are phenomenally ridiculous.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: AreaCode707
Sheesh, you must be part of the entitlement generation.

Do you know that it takes about 10 months for a cell phone company to make ANY money off you? The cost of acquiring and outfitting a new customer takes 10 MONTHS to recoup!

Cell phone companies have every right to charge for text messaging. They have no legal or ethical obligation to provide you something for free; they're in business to remain self-sustaining and profitable.

Your whine also sounds very juvenile when you consider the other amazingly overpriced areas of your life that you ignore. Have you ever paid $7 for a sandwich, or $15 for a dinner plate of pasta? That sandwhich only cost $3 to make, and the pasta only cost $4. Do you whine about how the restaurants should charge only their basic costs and it should be illegal for THEM to make a profit?

Just because you can SEE the people, building, materials being used to make your dinner you accept that your costs are going towards those and you pay without complaint. If a restaurant is too expensive you go elsewhere. You can't see the building, people, research, testing, etc that goes into providing you your phone so you feel perfectly justified in whining about the cost.

<---- used to work in corporate at a cell phone company. You make it illegal for them to profit on the text, ringtones, data plans and other "extras", expect them to keep providing cheap or low cost hardware yearly or more frequently, and you WILL drive those companies out of business.

There is NOTHING unethical about a company making a profit.

Oh, and texts AREN'T free. The manpower, site rental/purchase and materials costs mean that your texts DO cost money.

Hahaha... you're so full of shit. You may have worked in cellphone corporate, but you've obviously eaten the propaganda they fed you. Cell companies are making a profit on their customers from bill #1 they send out. Barring the costs of putting a salesman in front of you (which incidentally isn't necessary), advertising/marketing (which is a company's perceived cost - in this case irrelevant) and the actual hardware (which they take little to no loss on EVEN WITH SUBSIDIZED PRICING)... as soon as the computer spits out the account information and turns the account on, it's profit.

Yes, the companies are always putting up more infrastructure, and that means money invested. Your 10 months may be true for a customer serviced by a brand new tower, but nowhere else. And finally, infrastructure gets depreciated over time, and for the incumbents at this point about 80% of their infrastructure is fully paid for multiple times over.

The problem is that these companies keep jacking up prices on something that is essentially free to them. The reason: because people pay it. It's a two-way street on the whine... so consumers need to get over themselves. It's the exact reason I don't have a cell phone anymore.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog


Verizon will do it on a per-line basis.
<--- disabled texting on daughter's phone

No wonder she hasnt gotten back to me! (I kid, I kid....unless she of course is 18+, in which case I no kid.)

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Nik

Originally posted by: Genx87
The worst is I havent run into a carrier yet who will turn off text msging. But they will still charge you for unsolicited inc text msgs.

T-Mobile has been disabling text messaging for ... at least 5 years. Noob.

Only thing, though, is that it used to be for the entire account. I'd be surprised if it's not yet on a line-by-line basis, but it used to be an account-wide setting which screwed everybody on a multi-line account.

They(T-Mobile) refused my dad when he tried with his phone. But his account is a commcercial account so maybe that is why?

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: BillGates
Were you charged when your carrier's network was upgraded from 1X to EVDO (or similar GSM improvment)? (not likely) Gotta pay for that infrastructure one way or another...

they do that because they have to remain competitive. not because they are doing me a favor.
and they'll make their money by retaining customers (like me) and those who use a data plan (not me).