Cellular Bills: Who Pays For Marketing to You?Cellular Bills: Who Pays For Marketing to You?
I found texting charges originating from an AT&T vendor, pitching ring tones that we didn't want or ask for. For AT&T and their vendors, marketing is a pitch that costs them nothing, by texting our phones at our expense.
August 23, 2010
I found texting charges originating from an AT&T vendor, pitching ring tones that we didn't want or ask for. For AT&T and their vendors, marketing is a pitch that costs them nothing, by texting our phones at our expense.
Before I called AT&T from my last encounter--Corking the iPhone--I reviewed bills for the past 6 months including the nitty gritty details.
The apps seemingly consume bandwidth, and then other hooks such as ring tones and texting are raking in big bucks for the carriers. There is a lack of accountability of the data usage, meaning that just showing customers on a graph their data traffic in generic terms of having used 60MB doesn’t mean anything and it would be nice to know what kinds of traffic make up that 60MB.
I also found texting charges originating from an AT&T vendor pitching ring tones that we didn't want or ask for. AT&T's vendor marketing to one of our users via cell phone and at our expense is another low point for cellular operators. Not all of our cell phones have texting but AT&T credited the charges and then stated the only way to stop the phones from receiving AT&T sponsored text messages pitching ring tone services is to place a block on each of the phones that we do not require texting. Why AT&T's practice doesn’t change instead, truly reveals that for AT&T and their vendors, marketing is a pitch for ring tones that costs them nothing by texting our phones at our expense--I think this signifies the brazen attitude of AT&T and no I wouldn't call this clever.
Telecom carriers--wireline and wireless both--have a history of botching what they sell. With all the marvels of technology and capabilities to connect to some thing or someone, a disparity continues to exist between what the carriers think they deliver and what we know we get. You may marvel that it’s only $2.80 and say I’m not a happy customer. I marvel that for some of you with hundreds and even thousands of users, how you find the time to justify what you spend, and then whether or not you hold your cell vendors accountable for what they charge and if they too are using text messaging to market to your users via the user's phones, at your expense.
