Unwanted texts means class action suit for T-Mo

face a class action suit over improper billing practices. This comes after they lost an appeal to uphold their mandatory arbitration clause. Not wasting any time, another class has filed suit against the nation’s No. 4 wireless carrier. This one is over unwanted text messages and the charges associated with them.

“T-Mobile refuses to disable the texting messaging feature on its customers’ accounts, even when the customer has no interest in sending, or, more importantly, receiving text messages,” stated plaintiffs representing Maria Detwiler and others. “Moreover, T-Mobile requires each of its customers who have not subscribed to one of T-Mobile’s Messaging Value Bundles to pay for each and every unsolicited text message they receive. In sum, T-Mobile, the party with the superior bargaining power, has carried out a wrongful business scheme regarding text messaging to deliberately cheat a large number of consumers out of individually small sums of money.”

I never really understood why it was so tough to turn off SMS. Some people just don’t want the feature. But carriers see SMS as a huge revenue cow — see those increasing per-message rates as proof. What they’re failing to understand is that you can’t force someone to use text messaging by mandating that they have the service active. People get ticked when they receive things they didn’t want in the first place, and then get charged for those things. It also helps avoid SMS spam, which could lead to your unaware enrollment in monthly services. They’ll merely show up as “download” on your monthly bill, and they’re easy to skip over if you don’t scrutinize your bill. Many people could be saved from these types of scams if carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile allowed customers to forego SMS. If you do get a spam text message, call your carrier immediately to try and arrange for a refund. Because of cases like this, they are likely to grant you the 20-cent pardon. And if they’re not, well, they might find themselves in the same position as T-Mobile. [RCR Wireless News]]]>