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OMG Did U C What U R Paying 4 Texting?
theodp writes "If you thought gas prices were rising too quickly, writes CNET's Marguerite Reardon, check out what's been happening to text messaging. Since 2005, rates to send and receive text messages on all four major carrier networks have doubled from 10 cents to 20 cents per message. If the same pricing was applied on a per-byte basis to a single MP3 song download, it would set you back almost $24,000 according to one estimate. So why are carriers gouging their customers so? Because they can, concludes Reardon."
A professor at my university was recently asked by a British TV program to calculate the cost of retrieving data from the HST, and it came out quite a lot cheaper than sending text messages.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I just emailed Sprint asking for free text messaging and got it. I have done this for about 10 extra things on my account for free. I have 500 free text messages a month and never used half
The so called free market isn't free.
If customers had any idea about the true cost of things to the companies that they purchase from, they wouldn't buy at the prices that things are being sold at.
Free markets require perfect knowledge. And without that, the invisible hand doesn't work.
Oh yeah, like in the US you have to pay to receive messages? Would you put up with having to pay to receive emails or take all phone calls? Fuck no.
Meh, this is a random ol' rant.
(Oh yeah, to the fuckers who say "communism", I'm an anarchist. Check my "homepage" for info about that. Oh yeah, and no I don't get anything for the referral link, and if it really bothers you, you can remove it.)
I wank in the shower.
I have SMS disabled on my phone at the carrier level. The only SMSs I can receive are administrative which are free. No one can send me a mesg and I can't send out. I did that after my previous carrier (which got bought by AT&T) started charging for incoming messages. I asked why they did that and they said because everyone else was charging for incoming too. And of course then it went from 10 cents to 20. I don't need SMS so the charges don't hurt me because I don't have any.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
i have an AT&T phone - i don't have a text message plan because i have the data plan and juse AIM/ICQ on my phone...
i get charged 25cents for each incoming text message - there is no way for me to disable incoming text messsages...
that is bull shit - i don't want them - but they don't have a way of disabeling them coming in - and yet they will happly charge me for incoming...
if they are going to charge on a per message basis - the sender should play flat out, oh wait they do... then why the hell am i paying to recive?
right now at AT&T the rate (if you don't have a messagling plan) is 35cents to send and 25cents recive..
that is 60 cents per message..
are they trying to tell me that they are so damn bad at delivering small bits of data accross the cell network that it costs them more than the oh so inefficent us postal office does to send a first class letter physicly accross the country (42cents)
the phone compaines are full of shit.. as soon as there is a better way - I.e. a company that doesn't screw everyone over .. i will be more than happy to switch
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I am on T-Mobile, and there is no way to opt out of receiving text messages. Each one I get costs me $0.15, whether it's from someone I know, a text sent to the wrong number, or simply just a spam text, which I get fairly frequently.
Rubbish. That's only true if
(a) There are lots of suppliers (limit as number of suppliers goes to infinity)
(b) There are lots of buyers
(c) There's perfect information (about the value of goods, and about all options)
(d) All goods are equivalent
(e) The market is "free" of regulation (but there's a dodge here -- regulation constraining theft, murder, or the threat of one of those is allowed)
The mobile market fails on many of these. Certainly it fails on (a). (c) is also a failure -- all of the services advertise to distort their brand worth, use confusing contracts, and so on. (d) is of course not true, since each network has different coverage (and small networks that may be interested in cheap prices suffer here). (e) doesn't hold either, with the FCC et al. involved in the game.
But even supposing that the big BIG assumptions of the free market held, why do you think the "equilibrium" delivered by the intersection of supply and demand is stable? It seems obvious to me that it's an equilibrium because no player in the market is happy with the price, but the forces pulling the price each direction are perfectly balanced. That sounds like an unstable equilibrium to me.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
U.S. Cellular is fairly unique among readily available providers in WI in that they don't charge for incoming text - only outgoing. They've raised their outgoing prices along with everyone else, but they proudly advertise the fact that incoming text is free for everyone, even if they don't have a text plan. Any other national or regional carriers that do this?
If you don't want to pay for text messages, don't send any, then call the customer service rep. T-mobile will credit you the inbound charges in most cases (if you're polite about it and explain you never use text messaging so all that you received was unsolicited).
Still a hassle, but I've heard a rumor that T-mobile will begin allowing customers to opt-out of text messages starting in August when they bump the rates to $0.20.
It's still ridiculously overpriced. This is what happens when the FCC and FTC don't do their jobs and let the companies merge and merge and merge until we're left with oligarchies rather than true competition. I think it should be illegal for phone companies to charge for the first couple minutes of an inbound call and ANY inbound texts.
Right now, they're just milking SMS for all they can because they know its days are numbered. The first phone on the market (i.e. one of the open platforms coming out) that treats text messages as ordinary data and eliminates the phone company's ability to charge outrageous per-message rates will kill this little "profit center" dead.
Wait a minute. Do you pay when you receive text messages!? Do you also pay for receiving calls? What if you don't even answer? Why are you expected to pay for other person's decision of messaging with you? Is that even legal!?
Your head a splode
Oh! That reminds me. Anyone who has a contract with T-mobile will be able to cancel in August due to the rate increase without paying the fee. Increasing text rates is a "material change to your contract" and you can cancel without consequence.