paying for incoming texts makes no sense. spammers would really be a pain. does it mean someone with a texting plan could potentially text bomb you and cost you a hefty bill from the telco? how about overseas texts?
There are a few things that texting is ideal for. “Hey! What’s John’s email/phone number?” The response is automatically written down and there’s no chance of hearing it wrong.
That’s actually the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.
:shrug:, I used to think texting was a silly thing. I’ve got email and this contraption strapped to my hip that is also a phone.
I guess it all depends on the people that would text you, and with what info. For myself, there are only three people that might send a text. And it has been mighty handy. Perhaps the problem is that people are constantly texting TMI or unneeded info.
“Going to store, do you need anything” good.
“Safe after my training ride, coming home” good
“I’m bored”. Not so good.
To the OP, I don’t know your financial situation, but $5 a month sure sounds reasonable.
I’m 51.
I bought grandpa a pay as you go phone a few years ago. Incoming texts were twenty cents a piece. Some of his old co-workers send him merry Christmas texts, happy new year, that sorta thing.
Whenever I see these people, I tell them–quite honestly–that gramps knows how to dial, and talk, and that’s about all. Maybe too late for the OP to feign stupidity?
The texts stopped, until gramps signed up for an “online IQ test,” giving those pig fuckers his cell number for “verification.” $100 prepaid, gone in like, two weeks. :mad:
“You up?”
I don’t know. Sure you can put a kibosh on the texts, but texting as a medium of communication is getting more popular and fussing about an issue that is less than the cost of a sandwich per month seems kind of a waste of energy re notifying your friends and associates.
Texts can be useful in emergencies and texts can be sent in some scenarios where emails cannot in basic phones with no data plans.
Do as you wish but this is really something that I would deem not worth the effort.
I’d vote for sucking it up and paying the five bucks. Text is a normal, mainstream form of communication with it’s own advantages, and I think it makes more sense to pay five bucks than to inconvenience your friends by making them use a non-preferred communication method.
Yes, we in the U.S. get charged for texting. Don’t fool yourself, you outside the U.S. are getting charged too, just in different terms. Texting costs the carriers almost nothing, but it’s one of their biggest sources of revenue. Yes, it stinks to be charged for incoming texts you have no control over, and it also stinks to be “charged” for for incoming calls on a mobile too, but U.S. companies have almost always done it that way. (I put charged in quotes because most plans have enough loopholes like “free mobile to mobile” “free nights and weekends” etc and enough minutes per month built in that it rarely matters, but it’s still possible to get hosed that way. I get 600 minutes/month on my plan. If I received 20 minutes of calls every day from landlines during business hours, I’d run over and have to pay extra.)
No, 5/month is not going to break my bank, and neither is the .20/text, but it’s a principle. That’s my money there. And other people are spending it for me without asking. 
But as you can see by some of the responses, asking them to stop makes me the weirdo. It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine to say “it’s only $5”. $5 is $5. If more people watched where they spent $5 at a time, the economy might be in a better place.
It’s particularly annoying because there are free alternatives that would do exactly the same thing. I get email on my phone, and never hit my data allotment per month. An email gets to me just as quickly as a text, and for free. Then there are also apps for free texting, like whatsapp, but SMS-based texting is so ingrained in a lot of people, it’s tough to get them to switch, even if it would cut their phone bill by $5-30/month.
Re: “And other people are spending it for me without asking. :P”
This is kind of your issue. You are asking people to work a bit harder to communicate with you because you are exercised at the notion of paying an insignificant sum for the privilege of receiving text communication. There are many attitudes in communication, but many people feel having to make a voice call is (on many levels) more work, and bother, and less efficient than texting. Also asking that they fire up their email applet to send you a message when they are group texting everyone else is kind of a PITA so you can save 2 dimes.
As a side note I’m kind of surprised the texts you get are so meaningless. I don’t get many texts at all (1 a day on average) , but the ones I do get are usually sufficiently important family and business wise that the service is worth it.
Again your choice
How are you calculating that email is free and texting is not? Email on a smartphone requires that both the sender and recipient have a data plan. My iPhone data plan is $30/month for 2GB, certainly not free. I also have unlimited texting which I think is $10/month. The ones for 250-500 texts are more like $5. So if you are making your friends email instead of text you on their phones, you are requiring them to have a $30 data plan so you can avoid a $5 basic texting plan. That doesn’t seem any more fair.
The vast majority of phones capable of texting now require a data plan, at least on the major U.S. carriers. Try to get an iphone without one. I know for a fact that the people texting me have data plans. Ergo, email would be free. And very few of these texts couldn’t wait until they get home to a computer anyway.
OK, I guess we’re defining “free” differently. To me, a data plan is an added $30/month expense, even if it’s required for the type of phone you bought, so it isn’t free. And frankly, the idea of having a smartphone with no texting plan just baffles me because it seems like such a basic thing to leave out of everything else the phone can do, but YMMV.
gonzoron, you just want a polite way to tell people of your preference, without sounding like you’re … well, unreasonably cheap? How about, “We reserve texting for emergencies - we use emails or phone calls for other communications.”
I use texting for just about everything not work-related. It’s a bit easier than email, and I hate the phone now because the calls are too loud or too spotty. I pay way too much for phone service …
I don’t think you’re unreasonable for not switching to texting; it suits me, but it’s not a very elegant medium.
gonzoron: If you only use texts a few times a month, just drop it altogether. Then you don’t have to explain anything to anybody. By definition, an emergency shouldn’t happen that often and you can just make a phone call.
To people who criticize texting: C’mon, this is the 21st century. If you need to make some kind of a statement by rejecting it, fine, but it’s here to stay. I pay a few dollars for unlimited texting because my 16-year-old daughter sends and receives around 8,000 texts per month. I don’t understand it but I accept it. I use texting sometimes but I could live without it. There are a lot of things I could live without but I take full advantage of what’s available, within my means.
“Well since I’m texting you, too, so it’s worth it now.”
My (adult) daughter mainly communicates through texting, but it was costing me 25 cents a pop to reply to her texts. Rather than just tell her to knock it off, I told her to send the texts to my email address from then on. This works out great for us; she can send me a message from her phone, but I read and reply through my regular email account, so it doesn’t cost me anything. The only problem is that I have to be careful to keep my replies under 160 characters; otherwise they get broken up into multiple text messages at her end.
Sorry but that bolded part is utterly wrong. Texting isn’t some magical “smartphone-only” capability - almost all phones have had text capability since the late 1990s, so smartphones and data plans don’t come into it.
Incidentally, why hasn’t here been a mass consumer revolt in the US about the ridiculous method of charging the recipient of a text message? It’s utterly nonsensical and nowhere else in the world (AFAIK) does such a bizarre thing.
The FCC has been very reluctant to regulate cell phone service contracts. Consumers don’t revolt when they have no experience of alternatives.
Even though we now have the legal right to jailbreak phones, it’s still rarely worth the trouble, unlike in other countries in which people routinely transfer handsets from one service to another.
And that has also meant that technical standards for mobile service are lower here than in other parts of the world.
That’s just because you read it on some sort of fancy computer device. If he’d have faxed it to you, you would have seen the wisdom of it immediately.