Another Way Carriers Screw Customers: Premium SMS 'Errors' 198
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.'"
Spreadsheets eh? (Score:5, Funny)
...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 [slashdot.org].
Re:No Need for the Quotes (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed.
Re:Only because people are dumb (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, though. This seems like a relatively good solution to a shitty problem. But, I do have to ask, why did you resign yourself to the fact that
And while we all know they should, and they could, it takes twenty minutes and then they don't
Really, if we know they can, and know they should, why aren't they?
Just wondering what your thoughts are. I have ideas, but they mostly revolve around hell-spawn and hatred of humanity.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:Only because people are dumb (Score:4, Funny)
Or if you like revenge better than bribery, just remember that for every call you make it costs them approximately $15 in total costs (phone + personnel + training) . So schedule your call during your least busy time when your opportunity cost is zero and count -16 in their account. That way after you are done with the call and have fixed the problem (so that your net cost is zero), you can mentally tally the score as Me: 0, T-mobile -16 and feel happy about that.