At least until July 2007, Nextel would tell it’s customers that you could not have Voice-Mail without Text-Messaging service turned on. And unless you purchase a Text-Messaging package for $4.95, you would be charged $0.10 for each text message.

So basically, if you never had any business using text messaging on their “Re-branded Motorola” phones which were hellish to text anyone, but you wanted Voice-Mail, you would constantly receive unwanted Text-Messages which you were forced to pay for.

They have several other fishy billing schemes… but then again, Motorola isn’t doing so well these days, so they must get their money somehow.

t-mobile claims that its customers need SMS for “emergencies” when really they use it to send spam ads for t-mobile services

Someone signed me up for a $9.95/month text msg service where I would get one or two a day with updates on hollyood stars… something that is not even on the list of things I give a crap about. I didn’t sign me up, Sprint couldn’t tell me who signed me up and I was getting charged like all of you for the text messages. Their initial attitude is that I MUST have signed up for it. When I didn’t get anywhere with their customer service I went to a sprint store and had to cause a huge scene in front of a store full of potential sprint buyers to get their attention. They initiated the call to a “sprint customer care” call center that regular sprint consumers don’t have access to. It took less than five minutes for this service center to credit my account and block any and all text messaging to my phone… I don’t use texting at all so no big deal for me. They still could not explain how a company I never heard of, from a website I never visited, was able to get $9.95/month on my bill. Sprint sucks just like every other cell company in the states. Try spending some time in Europe and Asia and you will understand just how bad cell service is in the USA.

Go get them I get spam tyoe text messaging , and can’t see paying for it.

I am very happy about this. When I first got T-Mobile, I couldn’t believe they charged me to receive text messages–that’s ridiculous! It made it even worse that I couldn’t simply disable it, so everytime someone decides they want to make my family pay more money, they simply need to send a few text messages. I suppose the ultimate exploitation of this would be to use unlimited text message or one of those online text senders and send about 10,000 text messages to the person: that’s $1500. Would anyone ever do this? It’s probably extremely rare, but I’m sure someone would. What would T-Mobile do to protect you? I’m glad they might finally end this.

Cingular did the same thing to me. My first (and last) telephone with them had a previous user that loved to receice text messages and did not let anyone know she had a new number. After the 20th or so text message, I called them to complain. I said that I could choose to reject an incoming call, but I didn’t have that option with a text message. They agreed to remove the charges, but stated that their policy was that I was responsible for any and all charges from then on. I kept calling, and kept refusing to pay for them. It was shitty that I had to spend that much of my time calling about something that I never agreed to pay for. Assholes.

Is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (from 1991) still in effect? Among other things, this law makes it illegal to telemarket cell phones, send recorded messages to cell phones, and to send text messages to pay-to-receive accounts like cell phones.
I got text spam on my Sprint phone, at 50 cents a pop! When I called them up, their help(less)desk Indian’s script said I could go online to block texting on my account. I would’ve assumed that I could do that over the phone with the phone company. Guess not.
One of the spams came from a bar in the next town, some party they were having. I drove over there, showed the owner the spam on my phone, and demanded he stop spamming me or I’d sue him. He called the ad agency and ripped them three new ones for involving him in spamvertisement, void contract, full refund, wasn’t paying them, the works. He invited me to stay for a free beer, and while I was enjoying that, the ad agency rep showed up. All the customers could hear the owner ripping this guy another one from the office. I left very happy.
The moral of this story is: being spammed by a local company’s ad agency is very entertaining, satisfying, and may involve free beer 😉

This is for those that are tired of getting stuck with charges that don’t belong to them. I noticed my T-Mobile bill going up in price each month, so today, being tired of paying more than what I signed on for, I started to do some research on our bills. Apparently T-Mobile raised the price of our text messaging WITHOUT informing us. We have kept every single piece of paper T-Mobile has sent to us over the last two years…we use one of the phones for business so we had to keep any and all documentation for expense reports and taxes. We never received any “insert”. On top of this, for the last year of our service, we have had dropped calls, static on the lines, no service, etc. We have called many times to get the technical problems resolved-even went as far as purchasing new phones (at full cost) for both lines and replacing sim cards-and still-the service is below par. As far as the texting goes-I did my research and then looked at our plan online…I signed in, clicked on “Plans”, went to the bottom of the window and clicked on “See Other Included Services”, went to the bottom of the next screen and clicked on “More Information About Services”, On the next page…First paragraph under the heading “ALL PLANS” If you read the first couple of lines-you will see that T-Mobile themselves say that text messages are only supposed to be 5 cents a text. This is for ALL PLANS-Not just for mine. Yet they are charging everyone more! As far as I am concerned-this is deplorable-and earns them MILLIONS of dollars a month!!!!! A month-not a year or more. Think on it-every one of their customers is paying more than what they say they actually are charging. I called T-mobile and explained that we were very unhappy with the service and now we find out that our Text cost went up. I spoke to a lady and explained what I found on their website and started to ask why they were charging me more than they themselves state the charge is supposed to be. And here I have been paying more for TWO YEARS!!! She said this was a tax, I said no it isn’t-read the paragraph. She put me on hold for a few minutes. When she came back, I asked what would they do for me since I have been paying more than required for 2 years. She didn’t know-so I asked for a supervisor. It took a few minutes-but I got one. . She came back and actually thanked me for finding the “typo”. She couldn’t believe that no one had found it before. She even confirmed the “typo” with her supervisor and then their business department. When I did get the supervisor, she was very defensive. I wasn’t-I was actually pretty nice. I explain everything again, and I ask her-what was T-Mobile going to do for me since I have been paying over their own rates for the last two years. She states that she has documentation that we received the insert explaining about the Text rate change. She stated that I HAD to have received the insert. I told her I was more than willing to send her every paper I had for the last two years, it isn’t here. Unless I signed it and gave it back (which if I had received it and they had asked me to at the time-I probably would have), she cannot say I received it. I am not a dishonest person-I would take a lie detector test to prove we never received it. She refused to give any-she only offered me a rate of .10 cents for our texts for the last month, but as of right now-I am officially notified that my rate of texts from here on out would be 15 cents per text. I couldn’t believe she said that-I repeated ”So you are saying, as of right now-you are officially notifying me?” She said yes. If that is the case-I should be able to cancel my contract because I am just now officially informed of my text rate change, and since we are still having service problems after trying everything they suggested, we no longer want to keep the service. We especially don’t feel that we should have to pay even more for services that we are not happy with. She said no-and I said-but you stated yourself that people had 30 days from the time of discovery to cancel their contracts without an ETF if they did not approve of the rate change, and you just “OFFICIALLY” let me know of my rate change. She started to get a little more rude now and told me she could not waive the ETF. I explained that this didn’t make sense, from what she herself said in the beginning of the conversation. We keep going round in circles repeating the same points of view. I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me they weren’t there but she would have them call me. I have “print screened” the page with the 5 cent text rate-with the date of 2-6-2008, so they can’t say it didn’t exist. If 5 cents per text was on their site and I saw it-they should honor it, and have it retro-active for the last 2 years. I just feel that they are cheating everyone, and they aren’t even letting anyone know about it. We shall see what happens.

First, it’s not 10, but 20c. Second, go pay for it yourself, I’m not printing money, I’m not a federal reserve. When I sign for a phone service, I want phone service. If they want to send me any stupid messages – fine, but I’m not paying for those, neither I’m going to call any customer service, unless they compensate for the time spent.

I agree, class action lawsuits is the incredibly expensive and counterproductive, but what t-mobile does is outrageous, and sometimes you do what you have to do to make an sob to stop

Matt, you’re a tool. Do a little research. A class action is a lawsuit brought on to stop an illegal practice – it is not suing a party to make a boatload of money. If that’s your intention, opt out of the class and file your own lawsuit.

Second, attorneys for a class action have to FRONT THE MONEY for the lawsuit. Have you ever heard of somebody paying to be a member of a class action? Who do you think pays for the filings and motions, etc., for every member across the country???

Asswipe.

I have a bill with T-Mobile and some of the calls were text messaging from here in Taholah where we do not have a tower here. There are calls that I did not make and T-Mobile is charging for them. They say that the bills are consistant with the rest of my bills which is not true. If I can get in on the lawsuit I would gladly do so.
quiltluci@hotmail.com
sincerely,

Lucille A. Quilt