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Another Way Carriers Screw Customers: Premium SMS 'Errors'
An anonymous reader writes "Almost no one likes their carrier. And with the behavior described in this article, it's not surprising. TechCrunch catches T-Mobile taking money from a new pay-as-you-go customer after signing her up to its own premium horoscope text message service — and taking money before she's even put the SIM in the phone. Quoting: 'Perhaps carriers think they can get away with a few “human errors” in the premium SMS department because these services aren’t regulated. Perhaps it’s also symptomatic of the command and control mindset of these oligarchs. What’s certain is that if carriers dedicated a little of the energy they plough into maintaining these anachronistic, valueless (to their customers, that is) premium SMS ‘services’ into creating genuinely useful services that customers want to use then they would have a better shot at competing with the startups leapfrogging their gates. Or they would, if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.'"
...if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.
Clearly this was the work of a video gamer.
They have been doing their competitive race to the bottom for so long, they just don't know how to change. I've been with T-Mobile for a long time myself and have been wasting money on data plans I don't really use. In another few weeks, I'm switching over to a basic service pre-paid type thing. No Data.
It's at times like these when I reconsider when I need vs. what I want. I already moved my wife over to a prepaid carrier with no ill effects and a whole lot of savings. Gonna put mine on there as well when my early termination fee goes low enough.
No more over-priced subsidized phones. This is especially true when you see T-Mobile selling the Nexus 4 unsubsidized for far more than Google was selling it. It was insulting to the public's intelligence. And when I am told "you are required to have a data plan because you have a smart phone" I have to wonder how or why. I just want telephone service and they won't just give it to me. It's nonsense.
Sprint was my first carrier. They jacked me around too much. The only way to get what you want was to tell them you are leaving their service. That was an annoying game after the first couple of times. Next was T-Mobile. And they were better than the others from what I was hearing. At the end of the day, they all suck though.
I just want my freedom back and I only want to pay for what I use.
Odd, it seems someone should notify John Legere that he's dishing up some new fangled bullshit instead of the old fangled bullshit we all know and hate. He also said, "This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying?" But apparently that was only about his competitor's pricing models ...
My work here is dung.
Perhaps carriers think they can get away with a few “human errors” in the premium SMS department because these services aren’t regulated. Perhaps it’s also symptomatic of the command and control mindset of these oligarchs. What’s certain is that if carriers dedicated a little of the energy they plough into maintaining these anachronistic, valueless (to their customers, that is) premium SMS ‘services’ into creating genuinely useful services that customers want to use then they would have a better shot at competing with the startups leapfrogging their gates. Or they would, if they hadn’t spent years destroying the trust of their users by treating them like numbers on a spreadsheet.
Okay, see that entire section of the summary? The one that started out with the weasel word "perhaps" and spun right off into wild speculation and generic "grrrrrrrrrr NERD RAEG!!!1!"? Yeah. That whole part could've been ditched. Not only would it not have hurt the summary to get rid of it, it would've IMPROVED it by not making Slashdot look like just another bog standard snide news website.
Oh, what's that, you say? Then the summary would've seemed too short? No problem. How about adding in one or two actual DETAILS, rather than something that just boils down to "RRRRRRR CARRIER DONE SOMETHING WITH SMS! HAAAAATE SMS!"? That would get you above your word quota.
As I type this, my father is on his phone yelling at his carrier. He's now spent over 20 hours this month yelling at them over the same billing error. He's furious, and it all makes sense.
I have the same carrier. I'm very happy with my carrier. But I've done things very differently. And I continue to do things differently.
The carrier did mis-bill my father. Absolutely and without question. Whether or not it was intentional is optionally obvious. But it's irelevant. My father, like most people, calls them, expects them to work out the issue on the phone for him immediately. And while we all know they should, and they could, it takes twenty minutes and then they don't. Again, intentional or otherwise is up to you.
I've seen all of you guys get frustrated with this sort of thing. So I've solved the problem. Here's what I did, and what I do.
First, I have a "business account". The only difference between a business account and a consumer account is that I asked for a "business account" and they call it a "business account". Otherwise, it's the same. All plans are available to me the same way. If anything, it actually reduces the availabitily of customer support because I need to be transfered to a business account person. Again, true or not is up to your own belief system.
Second, I don't expect anything to ever get done immediately over the phone. About once a quarter, sometimes once a month, I have some sort of an issue to deal with. Maybe billing, maybe account change, maybe whatever. I call, I leave the phone on speaker-phone until I get the right person -- sometimes I'm on hold for twenty minutes, rarely but sometimes. Doesn't matter, I'm working to hold music instead of to my own music, big deal.
Then, I ask for whatever I want. If it doesn't get done and solved perfectly in five minutes by the first reasonable-correct agent, I simply say: "I need to go, please work this out and call me back tomorrow at this time." 90% of the time, that's exactly what happens, and it's perfect. The remaining 10% of the time, if they don't call me back and it doesn't get done, then I walk into the physical brick and mortar store, and say exactly the same thing -- to someone wearing a manager tag. I smile, I shake her hand, I flirt a little (it works between men too, by the way), and I ask them to do me the personal favour and call me back with the solution -- and I give them a full week.
I think a lot of you forget that, assuming your phone is functional, all of these billing- and plan-, and account-related issues can be worked out retro-actively. There really is no rush. It's not urgent.
So I live a very happy life. I get problems solved within a week, with minimal time and effort spent by me. Why does anyone need any more? You deserve to have your problem solved. You don't deserve to have your problem solved within an hour.
From what I've heard, carriers in other countries are far superior (better service, period) to what we have in the US. Trying to wring every last dime from the customer is par for the course in this country. Why else would we have crippled, locked-down phones that force you to pay extra to use built-in features like tethering, an absolutely absurd system where the recipient pays for SMS messages (thereby allowing scammers like Jamster to spam people with impunity), and so-called "unlimited" data plans with caps?
The whole phone system in this country needs serious government regulation since they can't seem to "regulate" themselves without fucking everybody over in the process. Trust the private sector to regulate themselves, indeed. I have no idea how anyone can say that with a straight face.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
What's certain is that if carriers dedicated a little of the energy they plough into maintaining these anachronistic, valueless (to their customers, that is) premium SMS 'services'
If customers find them valueless, why do they sign up for them? They are optional. So optional, I've never heard of them even after being a ten year customer of T-Mobile.
After reading TFA .. yes the newly minted SIM card was receiving premium SMS before even being inserted into a phone. But from TFA, they talk about how phone numbers are recycled, so there is a chance that the previous owner's profile was not properly scrubbed before the number was re-issued and that previous owner had subscribed to that service.
The TFS and TFA are beat ups based on the complainer speculating that because they were given the run around by customer service that T-Mobile is acting in a nefarious manner. That and *gasp* they had to give their elderly family member's birthdate over as a part of the activation , and that the horoscopes being received matched the birthdate.
So as far as I see .. it's all speculation and conjecture.
(And yes I admit that I am a happy T-mobile customer, but that has nothing to do with this hatchet job)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I've been using prepaid for a few years now. Tried Boost first, didn't like it. Switched to Straight Talk which was OK. Then just recently I switched over to Page Plus. Liking it a lot better. Page Plus uses Verizon's network and just about any Verizon phone can be activated on their service without being unlocked (though 4G/LTE phones can be a pain). That said, all of the prepaid carriers I tried were a fine replacement for a contract carrier, and far less expensive.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
They're by far the least evil of the major carriers in the US.
Only for certain definitions of "evil". I've been with them for 7+ years and every year the service gets a little worse, the plan gets a little more expensive, and they offer fewer new phones that I actually want to purchase. Sure, their customer service is cheery and all, but they rarely actually accomplish anything.
If Verizon Wireless is the Republican party - interested just in clever new ways to extract more money from those with the least money to spend so they can funnel it to the top executives - then T-Mobile is the democratic party, promising all kinds of things that they can't deliver while ultimately giving you the same lousy and uncaring product as the Republicans but with a fresher face to it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Fixed.
As part of an Ofcom directive to ensure that the UK doesn’t run out of numbers, PAYG numbers are recycled. In this instance, it appears that the premium text service attached to the number remained when the number was transferred to [the customer]. When PAYG numbers are recycled, they are attached to new SIMs so no personal data is transferred.
We have placed a block on [the customer's] account to stop any further texts and we have credited her account to cover the charges incurred.
This was an isolated human error and no personal data was shared. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Shitty nonetheless, but they did fix it once they realized what was going on.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Well duh, America has been a corporatocracy for a few decades now, its common knowledge that laws affecting a specific business sector is often written by the lobbyists FOR that sector and simply handed to the congress critters for submission, so is anybody REALLY surprised by this?
This is why I really can't stand those that beat the "free market herpa derp" drum, because honestly the USA hasn't had a free market since the New Deal, probably even earlier than that before you can find a market that wasn't steered by insiders in one way or another (teapot dome, Standard Oil, the trusts, etc) so frankly shit like this is pretty much par for the course in the USA. We get lousy service, price gouging, backdoor bullshit like this, cheery picking and duopolies, its the same old insider "wink wink" crap we've had to put up with for ages now and it stinks but what can you do? Both sides are as crooked as a snake, there is 4 lobbyists for every person in congress, and voting is like playing 3 card monty with a street hustler and thinking if you put enough money on the table eventually you'll get ahead. unless your last name is Gates or Dell or Buffet you won't, its not a game for the citizen, its for the elite.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I used to sell phones for Verizon. There is a 'Block Premium Text Messaging' account option. I selected it for every subscriber I signed up by default unless they indicated otherwise.
Note that blocking premium SMS also blocks some non-evil stuff, like being able to donate to charities like the Red Cross via SMS, which has become popular after a tragedy these days. So while I probably saved a lot of people from billing headaches, I may have inadvertently barred people from making easy charitable donations. C'est la vie.
It's a US site with a ton of foreign users. It's a lot more appropriate to just surrender to this fact. "Almost everyone in the US" is not that hard to type.
Visit India for me. Then you may want to restate that carriers in other countries are far superior (better service, period) to what we have in the U.S. After being in India a month, I couldn't wait to get home for cell phone and data plan to work properly. It took 6 days just to turn on the phone there! Then another several days to get a data package that was used up on 2 days which I was not allowed to upgrade or refill for 30 days. In other words, I got 2 days of internet and not allowed to have anything above 64k download the rest of the time. You purchase from people at small shops on the roadside that don't know what they are talking about. You get the run-around constantly. Same struggles in South Africa and Zimbabwe for me.
;(
Sure, we have issue to resolve here in the US, but don't assume the whole world works much better. It's not better in the 20 countries I've been to.
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I used to sell phones for Verizon. There is a 'Block Premium Text Messaging' account option. I selected it for every subscriber I signed up by default unless they indicated otherwise.
And is that why you no longer work for Verizon?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I watched the following happen. T-mobile launched "pay per use" web service and were putting the service on customers' phones without notice. All phones (like any other computer) is going to try and use a network connection if it has one. Customers with flip phones would call in and have a $10.00 data bill. It was discouraged to credit the money back.
It was a _requirement_ of your job to push features to customers EVERY time they called in and your metrics were based on whether or not you sold them anything. I'm sure lots of the "top sellers" were adding features onto people's accounts without authorization from the customer.
Here's the best part : If you call in and ask for a manager, your'e given the run around. If you ask to have the call pulled (since they are all supposed to be recorded), expect to wait at least two weeks and most of the time you won't get a call back ever.
Want to cancel your account? Fine. You will be credited NOTHING and will have to pay your contract termination fees. The entire call structure is built around NOT giving you access to a manager to talk to about the problem. The manager is in the background telling the rep your'e on the phone with to sell you EVEN MORE as you're complaining about being robbed. It is completely ridiculous.
I used to sell phones for Verizon. There is a 'Block Premium Text Messaging' account option. I selected it for every subscriber I signed up by default unless they indicated otherwise.
Note that blocking premium SMS also blocks some non-evil stuff, like being able to donate to charities like the Red Cross via SMS
Unfortunately, all this option blocks is the extra money that a premium SMS service can charge your account. It does not actually block the text messages.
Since I don't have an unlimited text plan, this was a huge problem for me when a pseudo-premium service started spamming my phone with SMS. After a while, it was costing me $0.20/text they sent me, and there is no way to block messages from a specific source. Since the text messages claimed I had "subscribed" (which I had not), the only thing Verizon could do was to tell me to text back "STOP" and hope that worked. It didn't, and so I spent a few days on the phone with Verizon getting the text message charges removed from my account.
Eventually, Verizon was able to solve the problem by cutting off the account of the source, but they didn't seem to be able to do that until after about 15 hours of my time (and their customer service rep time).
First I would like to point out that customer service representatives are people. And as people they make mistakes. I worked in cellular customer service for over two years and probably made a few mistakes. The first representative probably got the 3030 service mixed up with another service. There are many of them and sometime it is difficult to keep them straight. Give the people a break as it is human error. I just love when the article says "spokesperson". It implies that the CSR is speaking for the entire company when all they are really trying to do is help the customer in the best way they know how. Why didn't the CSR call back? Maybe they were not on shift yet.
The recycled phone number issue is getting more and more common. Some people change their number much too often. The problem occurs because the separate system that provisions the horoscope messages may not be cleared when a phone number is cut of. The system may not even recognize the number is cut off and continue to send messages. The sender does not care because they do not get charged for the messages. The issue is when a new account gets attached to the number and the number is still subscribed to old services. As for the horoscope being the correct one there are two possibilities. First that pure chance may have hit. There is a 1 in 12 chance of having the same sign as the previous owner. Another option is that there may be a query into the T-Mobile system that shows the horoscope system the birth-date of the owner of the phone.
Remember Hanlon's razor; "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
CSR's can be pretty stupid at times. I know I have had to fix quite a few stupid mistakes.
I'm still waiting for someone around the world to post that they have wonderful, self-sacrificing, inexpensive and fast/responsive cell phone carrier somewhere in the world. Hello? Anyone?
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