Pitting the Whole Damned Cell Phone Business (and myself, a little)

[slaphead]

@iamthewalrus(:3=

I get a handful each month, at a cost of $0.10 each. I don’t want them. I can’t turn them off. I can’t keep from being charged for them. Even if I don’t read them, I’m charged for them.

T-Mobile can go fuck themselves as soon as I’m out of contract, all over charges of about $5 a year. Who thinks this is a good idea?

Your issue isn’t with T-mobile, it’s with being a resident of an ass-backwards country where the mobile industry decided to charge people for receiving calls rather than making them. If you lived in a civilized country you could just ignore the fucking messages and chortle at the knowledge that your friends were paying to send you messages that will never be read. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is up with that? It’s like USPS deciding to charge you for every letter you receive, even of its junk mail or some random stranger has written the wrong address on a postcard.

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

@slaphead

Your issue isn’t with T-mobile, it’s with being a resident of an ass-backwards country where the mobile industry decided to charge people for receiving calls rather than making them. If you lived in a civilized country you could just ignore the fucking messages and chortle at the knowledge that your friends were paying to send you messages that will never be read. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is up with that? It’s like USPS deciding to charge you for every letter you receive, even of its junk mail or some random stranger has written the wrong address on a postcard.

I seem to remember something about people in England having to pay for the emails they receive. Maybe I was misinformed?

[Plan_B]

@zenith

Any dissatisfied cable or cell-phone customer who votes for anyone named Clinton or Gingrich deserves the absolute worst.

I didn’t know that Gingrich was involved in cell phone regulation. He generally comes across as being on the libertarian end of the spectrum, but I’m no expert. Any cite on what he did to make the government bigger and dumber here?

[essell]

@Little Plastic Ninja

I seem to remember something about people in England having to pay for the emails they receive. Maybe I was misinformed?

Yeah, maybe. Just a lot. Never heard of that. Unless you’re talking about the cost of accessing whatever service is getting you online.

And yeah, to the OP, you don’t need a new a carrier, you need to move country!
USA is soo much bigger, and much further behind the rest of the world in cell phones.

Also worth noting that analogue phones had about four times the power output of GSM (Max 8 Watts Vs GSM’s 2 Watts). If there’s anything to the radiation risks be glad the world changed.

[crazyjoe]

@SmartAleq

Look, the phones are SMS capable. The network uses the SMS system to send updates to your SIM to tell it which roaming partners it can use. It also uses SMS to send you software updates and port updates to keep your phone working correctly. The SMS system is integral. The only way to “block” SMS from your phone is to expire the feature. The result? You still get the text message, but it gets charged as one minute of overage. This is not a good solution. An extremely high percentage of TMo’s 20+ million customers think text messaging is just fine and dandy, and they use them a lot.

So, to recap, it’s an integral part of the way the network functions and can’t be retrofitted now to please you. You are in a tiny minority of people who don’t want to use SMS. Rather than shaking your tiny fists in rage and blaming a company for giving the majority what it wants and is more than willing to pay for, why not tell your small group of friends to fuck off and stop messaging you? Think that might be a slightly more measured solution than changing cell phone carriers? Here’s a hint–SMS is ubiquitous and you aren’t going to find a carrier that doesn’t support it.

Grow up.

Hmmm…that’s funny, when I called Verizon about text message charges appearing on my phone, they told me that they would be happy to block all text messages. Guess you’re misinformed.

[SmartAleq]

@crazyjoe

Hmmm…that’s funny, when I called Verizon about text message charges appearing on my phone, they told me that they would be happy to block all text messages. Guess you’re misinformed.

Verizon is CDMA , not GSM . Different network, works differently. You’ll notice this when you drop your phone in water and you can’t get your phonebook back because there’s no SIM card. You’ll also notice this when you have to call Verizon to get their permission to use a different phone for a while. Me, I’ll just take my SIM card out of my SmartPhone and put it in my old flip when I go hiking so I don’t mess up the good one. When you’ve worked for TMobile for four years perhaps I’ll be interested in your opinion of how the company and its network functions.

@Ludovic

Mind if I send you some interesting email offers? I hear your size could use some improving, if you know what I mean.

Gee, I already get those emails, thanks for offering! It must be my remarkable lack of whinging over things which can’t be helped that fooled you into thinking I’m not subject to spam like every other goddamned intarweb user, ya think?