Today I happened to notice a notice on the my.t-mobile.com about text messaging rate increases. I was astounded to see that they are going up from an already too high 0.15 each to 0.20. That's a third, 33.33333% increase for a service that must surely cost them practically nothing to provide on an ongoing basis. Each message probably doesn't even occupy 1k.
It's worse though. Here in the US you get charged to receive them, as well as send them. So anybody could cost you money simply by sending you a joke text message they think you'll appreciate. Then there's the spam that we're not supposed to get but do anyway.
I suppose this is designed to push me into what they want me to do all along: buy a messaging bundle. My cheapest option is 400 a month for 4.99. If you use them all up, this works out at 0.012 per message, which is obviously a lot more like it. At the other end of the scale, I have to send or receive at least 25 a month in order to avoid end up paying more than 0.20 per message.
Given that my normal usage pattern generally puts me at about that mark, I'm basically screwed. I either stick with what I have and hope I don't go over 25 messages in a month, or just buy the bundle and feel compelled to send more messages than I would otherwise want to.
Last month my messaging usage came to 4.80, or 32 messages. At the new rate that would be $6.40. Definitely worth it. The month before though I only sent 13.
Sigh.
Alright, T-Mobile, you win. I've added the messaging bundle to my service.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
T-Mobile massively increase text messaging rates
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2 comments:
ead of these two Russ,
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/07/01/atts-text-messages-cost-1310-per-megabyte/
http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/true_cost_of_sms_messages_a_bigger_rip_off_than_printer_ink.php
The cost of printer ink suprised me, I knew it was expensive, but when you compare it to other stuff it staggering.
I hadn't seen those. It's actually worse than they make out though because most of the time people don't use anywhere near the full 160 characters in a message, or they go over into the second or third message by only a few bytes.
Extortion, is what it is.
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