The hidden costs of mobile unlimited texts

[John Zoetebier]

Thought you would never be charged while sending texts as you are on an unlimited texts plan?

Think again!

If you wonder why your mobile phone balance is constantly getting lower although you have plenty of calls, oodles of data and unlimited texts on you prepay plan, you’re not alone.

There is a dirty little secret that your mobile provider, for example Vodafone, does not tell you about. They are hiding several “services” in their SMS Terms and Conditions.

A few examples of hidden costs from Vodafone NZ.

1.       Group texts
You send a small message to your team of 10 people: “Just a heads up, we have a meeting this Friday”
This group message will set you back a whopping $5.00 !!!

2.       Your dentist sends you a reminder for an appointment and asks you to reply with “YES”.
You reply: “yes”.
These 3 letters costs you $0.20

3.       Your child sends you a message while on the bus to school.
You reply with: good on you 😊
This costs you $0.50

Charging for group texts is nasty as you simply do not expect being charged for sending plain text. Vodafone will charge you $0.50 for each recipient in your group message.

To paraphrase the Lorax: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !!!

Avoid replying “yes” to SMS computer messages. You pay for the sender saving time and costs. Just call them back if you have sufficient calls left in your plan.

You may not be aware that Vodafone treats a special (non-Latin)  character in your message as an MMS message.

To save costs , use “: )” , not “😊”.

Even better, ditch SMS altogether and use an app like Signal.
Signal is open source, encrypted and does not share data with Facebook like WhatsApp.

Ensure you have a sufficient data on your plan.

In the meantime, our family has switched to Skinny:

1.       Cheaper prepay plans

2.       Unlimited data plan starting at $36 per 4 weeks

3.       No charges for Skinny to Skinny calls

4.       No charges for group messages with plain text

5.       Top-ups from $1 onwards

 

[Author]

Posts