SMS fee avoidance on iPhone

[GGD]

"It adds $480 to the cost of the phone. Just on principle I want to find a way around it."

Perhaps have a talk with your daughter.

Was texting free before this? With AT&T and ANY phone, that's what that amount of texting will cost, really has nothing to do with the iPhone, but rather AT&T's standard charges.

[Black Landlord]

Black Landlord wrote:
[quote=davester]
One question...do they charge both for the incoming and outgoing text message?

This really is a scam.

Yes/yes.
And FYI text spam has been very very rare for me-- mostly the occasional promotion from AT&T which startes out "free message."

[C(-)ris]

I thought it was $30 for unlimited texting on every phone on the plan with ATT. I am pretty sure that is what I am paying. Was a much better deal than $5 per phone for 200 messages. I've got 4 phones so $20 got everyone 200 each, or $30 and they could all send as many as they wanted. No brainer for me. I think you are looking at this the wrong way.

The pricing for text messages is no different on the iPhone than it is on any other phone you buy on ATT. In fact, neither is the data plan. The 3G data plan costs the same regardless of which 3G phone you have. Maybe you could pick up one of the original iPhones and get on the cheaper plan that way.

[incognegro]

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9690

http://www.maclife.com/article/iphone/screw_sms

[davester]

The $30 all phone charge is irrelevant to me since nobody except my daughter is interested in texting. This must be an incredible cash cow for the phone companies. They are selling a service for a huge amount of money that costs them essentially nothing extra. Since the iPhone is capable of accessing the web and chat, there doesn't seem to me to be any reason for anyone to use this ridiculous service other than old habits. Years ago, SMS maybe made some sense. Today it doesn't.

[Ken Sp.]

FYI
I think texting to and from another AT&T customer is free.

[C(-)ris]

davester wrote:
The $30 all phone charge is irrelevant to me since nobody except my daughter is interested in texting. This must be an incredible cash cow for the phone companies. They are selling a service for a huge amount of money that costs them essentially nothing extra. Since the iPhone is capable of accessing the web and chat, there doesn't seem to me to be any reason for anyone to use this ridiculous service other than old habits. Years ago, SMS maybe made some sense. Today it doesn't.

If everyone had an iPhone(or any other phone with push email) you would be correct. That isn't the case and so SMS persists. SMS is a value added feature for the phone company, they charge more because people will pay it because they see a value in it. If you ask your daughter she would probably think it is completely reasonable to pay $30 a month for it.

[Gareth]

Another thing I forgot to mention about using AIM to SMS: there is a noticeable delay (on the order of minutes sometimes) before a message sent from AIM or iChat appears on the cell phone. It is significantly slower than traditional SMS.

davester wrote: I've heard that you can enable sms blocking on your account. If she can do that and notify her friends of her sms address that goes to the AIM account, they can just respond there and all would be good.

In case you glossed over my previous post, remember, AIM needs to be OPEN on the iPhone to receive messages (meaning if it's not open, her friends can't send her messages) and also a regular phone CANNOT initiate a text to an AIM address (they can only reply to a message they have been sent). Meaning if you disable SMS on her iPhone, her friends will NOT be able to start text conversations with her (which maybe you'll think is a good idea).

[(vikm)]

Ken Sp. wrote:
FYI
I think texting to and from another AT&T customer is free.

I wasn't aware of that. How sure are you?

[Black Landlord]

(vikm) wrote:
[quote=Ken Sp.]
FYI
I think texting to and from another AT&T customer is free.

I wasn't aware of that. How sure are you?
Sorry, I think that's not true.