Rogers To Start Charging For Incoming Text Messages…. WTF?
Kudos to Christopher Parsons for giving me the heads up on this story.
You’ll recall the trouble that Bell Canada got into when they started to charge users that didn’t have text messaging plans for incoming text messages. Well according to The Boy Genius Report, Rogers has decided to do the same:
Beginning July 7th, incoming SMS will run plan-less subscribers 15¢ per message — the same rate as outgoing texts. Customers with text messaging plans will continue to receive unlimited free incoming SMS. Rogers customers will find information to this effect circulated via bill inserts that will begin going out today.
Oh, for those of you on Fido, this doen’t apply to you.
In any case, it doesn’t take a genius to see that this is clearly a cash grab by Rogers. Perhaps they were hoping that their news about Twitter via SMS would mute any comsumer outrage?
May 5, 2009 at 4:16 pm
If you want some more on this, here is a great talk that Jesse Brown (formally of the CBC, now on TVO) had about text ‘costs’.
http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog/2009/01/podcast_16_is_up.html
May 13, 2009 at 3:23 pm
If you read the Rogers terms and conditions on your bill, (item 15), you are not required to accept changes, and they must stick to the plan you agreed to if you ask, for the duration of your agreement.
The only problem is, their customer service rep agrees with me, but states that they have no way to prevent the 15¢ charges form happening, so I am screwed.
I smell a class-action lawsuit.