Here Be Dragons

More Telecom Dissing

Telecom's $10 text decision has resulted in..... an online petition! What ever will they do.

Someone pointed to the sutff article, but everyone knows that the Herlad is better (because their pages don't get archived into a pay per view hell), and so this is a better link.

Telecom is claiming that this decision is partly thanks to some freaks text bombing (sending hundreds of txts to a single user over and over again) other customers, speciffically Vodafone customers, although Vodafone says it has had no complaints.

According to Telecom around 5% of their customers are "bombing" other uses. This is a massive number in terms of real people, and I am curious. Surely there would be more complaints, and or media attention on the subject. I know someone did a report on "text message bullying" but this incessent text messaging would surely have flagged someones attention. It would also (I think) be a crime, as it is certainly a "missuse of a telephone" or communication device or whatever. It is outright harrassment, and someone should be doing some smacking.

What kind of freak sends 27,000 a month? Admittedly, only one, but still it is the same as prank calling, and that can be sorted out by complaing to your phone company, and or the police. So why can't this be done for texts? Answer it can.

Therefore Telecom is just in it for the money. Of course, it is a company, so this isn't really bad, but I prefer it when they don't make up some story to cover their actions. It is even worse when they make up research:

He [Kevin Kenrick, Telecom Mobile general manager] said the company had also researched its customers and they told them that text bombing was not appreciated and that 500 text messages a month, or 16 a day, was a good number.

But Kenrick would not divulge the source of the research that has appeared to have influenced Telecom in setting the new ceiling.

Yeah Kevin, I'm convinced. Also, cutting it back to 500 doesn't really seem like it will stop text bombing, it might reduce it, but as I said, a simple complaint and some evidence would likely get more done.

I am pleased that I didn't switch to Telecom though, and because I didn't I can laugh at the suckers who did.

Also, note Vodafone PXTs have gone from free until the end of March to 20c, which is a drop from the 50c they were prior to their free promoton of the last few months.

Also, the EQ2 Beta signup is out and about.

Posted by luther at May 4, 2004 05:04 PM | TrackBack