Text messaging Pay-Per-Use increasing!!
Effective January 21st Cingular will be increasing their pay per use texting to $0.15 per message. They state that this is not a change to terms and conditions, and, unlike sprint, will not terminate contracts for free. What are your thoughts?
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i think its great. maybe more people will get a text plan or media plan. i figure everything will go up, not as much as gas has gone up in price from december 2005 to december 2006 but the price for everything in life has increased.
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I feel bad for the CSR who are gonna have to take these calls. First people will whine. Then people will complain. Next they will threaten with the media. And last but not least the class action lawsuit will be filed. I don't know what Cingy's got in their T&C but this has lawsuit written all over it.
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"We may change any terms, conditions, rates, fees, expenses or charges regarding your service at any time." - Cingular T&C, page 6
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People are still gonna cry over this though, customers never care about what they signed; which is the problem.
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Some people will cry, but people that actually text are on a package already and it wont affect them.
What it's going to do is make it more of a savings to be on a text package. Currently you have to send and receive 50 texts a month to save any money by being on the smallest texting package. With the new rates, it's 34 (17 in and 17 out) to save money.
We're notifying them in advance just like with the insurance premium increase and no one sued over that. Or if they did, I just haven't heard about it yet.
What it's going to do is make it more of a savings to be on a text package. Currently you have to send and receive 50 texts a month to save any money by being on the smallest texting package. With the new rates, it's 34 (17 in and 17 out) to save money.
We're notifying them in advance just like with the insurance premium increase and no one sued over that. Or if they did, I just haven't heard about it yet.
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you're probably, right that the impact to most customers will be minimal. it just wouldn't surprise to see a lawsuit out of this knowing the way people view their cell providers as a charity and not what it actually is and that is a SERVICE provider.
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people will talk about lawsuit but the lawyers will read over the Terms and Conditions first
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actually a per per use service is condidered an option service not part of any binding agreement. this class action lawsuit was settled very quickly in favor of 2 satellite television providers when there was an increase in the cost of a "pay per view" movie. the same will be done in this instance if people were to waste their time trying.
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Something else that kills me is when sprint did it everyone on here said they were the worst company and how dare they. Now cingular is doing it. I bet it doesn't stop at those two!
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"I bet it doesn't stop with Sprint" is exactly what all those who were defending Sprint were saying too! Ha! Some people on here owe Sprint an apology.
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Why would they sue cingular for Insurance increase? cingular is only the company who bills for it. They would have to sue the Insurance company for that, that is why you have not seen or heard about it. Cingular had nothing to do about that.
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my point was it's the same thing. It was an increase in the services which we provide (through lockline). It didn't give people an out to cancel service. It was either pay it, or cancel the feature.
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So... Cingular can change ANYTHING on your account and you're still locked in for the two years? -- Even your plan? Not trying to attack Cingular here, but that's what it sounds like.
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Not really, because it's your option to use it. There is no monthly fee unless you choose to use text messaging.
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schweaty_balls said:
They state that this is not a change to terms and conditions, and, unlike sprint, will not terminate contracts for free.blockquote>
🤨 This doesn't make sense to me. I fail to see how this is ANY different than what happened with Sprint. Can someone clear this up for me?
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Perhaps the Cingular contract is better written than Sprint's contract giving them the power to do something like this.
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i guess it is, we reserve the right to change fee's and what not, basicly idea is that you dont have to use it if you dont want to
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sangyup81 said:
Perhaps the Cingular contract is better written than Sprint's contract giving them the power to do something like this.
T-Mo also increased the sms rate a while back, and allowed custs to cancel w/o the ETF b/c of it. I don't think it's really a difference in the contract, but the carriers waived ETFs to avoid bad PR.
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LilShorty said:sangyup81 said:
Perhaps the Cingular contract is better written than Sprint's contract giving them the power to do something like this.
T-Mo also increased the sms rate a while back, and allowed custs to cancel w/o the ETF b/c of it. I don't think it's really a difference in the contract, but the carriers waived ETFs to avoid bad PR.
it's like the electric company raising rates... it's just something we have to deal with. remember when verizon raised theirs to match cingular???
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It is not like the electric company raising rates. the Electric companies are utilities and generally have a monoply in thier service area. They are heavily regulated with a lot of oversight because you can't change service providers. Which is why you don't sign a contract with your power company... 🙄
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No - Sprint's PR may be better than Cingulars. Ya know how many people are going to be pissed at this? At least Sprint tried to show that they cared about the consumer.
Does anyone know how many customers Sprint lost in Oct. anyway?
Does anyone know how many customers Sprint lost in Oct. anyway?
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there won't be suits. cingular is entitled to do as they please. the contract you signed is pretty air-tight. here's the deal, if you have a problem with the price increase, then don't use the txting feature. if you use it at the new rate, you're entering an implied bi-conditional contract with cingular; you get something, and they get something in return. they are not forcing you to use the txting feature. an unexpected increase in service plan prices, while under contract would be a different story.
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The contract for Cingular is as stated "air tight." Its all in how you word the contract and make it legitimate. A "pay per use" feature is not something you subscribe to. Its an option. If you use it, then you are using their service. But since its something that you did not subscribe to, its not something that you agreed to in the contract. If you did want it, then you should have blocked it with ADMIN block, or WIX blocked, or MMS Opt. Plain and simple. Raising the rates of texting is something that every customer is going to have to get used too. Did you know that over 19 BILLION texts were sent and received in the months of June/July of 2006? This is why texting PPU is going up in price. The companies realize that they are on...
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