Reguardless of what you want to call them...that is a TEXT MESSAGE. If you don't like it, leave a voicemail and stop your whining.

You want some irony? Fiance joins T-Mobile with basic voice plan... then sales rep starts text messaging T-Mobile promotions which fiance has to pay for each month. How backwards is that? We pretty much ignored it, figuring we'd waste more time on hold than it was worth to reclaim the 20 cents or whatever a month it was costing. They've since stopped, but it pissed us off and is pretty slimy. I assume they were TMo resellers rather than TMo themselves, but still uncool. I think that's why Catherine Zeta Jones left.

Wow, someone put sand in Bill's panties, apparently. Ever think that this might apply to or aggrivate people who aren't in Jen's exact "voicemail or not" position? Didn't think so. Moving on. Personally, this rings to me of the same kind of treatment that credit card companies tried to hand off on people who paid their balance every month, or kept a balance low enough to be affordable to them but not particularly profitable to the company-they tried to start charing "casual use" fees so they'd make some money since they weren't raking it in on finance charges and interest. Boo. Hiss. Cellular companies should put up or shut up. If you want to discourage so-called "casual" text messaging, put it into packages that make you money and offer me convenience, the same way you did with calling plans and the number of minutes that you offer with each plan. I can choose one that works best for me, pay you a monthly fee for it, and that's that, and if you absolutely MUST, make individual messages expensive enough that opting into a plan is the only way to go. I mean, I'll take some measure of abuse, but not a ton, and it's ridiculous. I wonder how long cellular companies are going to be able to shaft their customers like this before someone does something about it.

Check out www.redoxygen.com - you can text from Microsoft Outlook.

Not sure if you've ever noticed these, but I receive sporadic service announcements via text for services like SprintTV. Considering I have unlimited text I'm not to weary of the number of messages I receive, but I do question whether normal Sprint users are receiving these messages and getting charged for them.

Well I completly agree with you phoenix but I am not surprised at all. I have been a $print customer for years now and my brother works for $print. It was about time they started charging for this service. See if you send a "regular" text you get charged, if you check and send a voice mail it deducts your minutes, but if you sent a numeric page it was almost free. Almost. So in order to take full control of thier services and get every penny they can they have decided to charge for this fee. And to answer you question, Phoenix, this process will never stop because there are too many people willing to put up with it. My brother tells me that many people threaten to cancel thier service but never do because of the penalty charges for breaking a contract or because a rep offers them free web use for two months or some other free service. With out thier numbers dropping they will never listen to unsatisfied customers. Even with those who actually cancel thier service there are more lineing up behind them to open a new account.

Thank you all for your comments! I wanted to get a discussion going because this is a very important issue. Bill-- If "casual" text messaging IS text messaging, then why put the "casual" in front of it? I tell ya, it's just another way for companies to make money. Even our phone expert has never heard of casual text messaging. It's simply ridiculous. Dave-- I get ads from Sprint via text message all the time. I don't think I'm getting charged for them though (which answers Derek's question)--but if I was, you know I'd complain! They're rather annoying though, but I did put a block on my phone to stop getting ANY text messages, so I shouldn't be getting any more. Phoenix-- I know, it's horrible what companies are doing. And I didn't realize that credit card companies were hitting customers with casual fees either! It really pisses me off! Lupe-- This is what I don't understand. I bet it costs Sprint virtually NOTHING to allow its customers to send numeric pages. Why? Because like I said, they're AUTO-GENERATED. It's not like a regular text message you send someone, where you write the message, then the message has to go through the wireless system where it's then stored, and then go out to the designated person. Numeric pages are just pulled from a database and sent out with no effort at all. So why charge for them? I don't get it. When I had Nextel (before the merger), they actually charged me monthly to use voicemail!! I'm grateful that Sprint didn't take the initiative to charge for voicemail as well, but I better put my foot in my mouth because one day it's likely to happen. I also agree with you Lupe, in that even though customers complain about this or other things, who wants to pay the $200 termination fee? I guess I'd rather just put up with it as much as I can.

You know its worse for those that don't own an SMS phone like I used to back in the day. I had to have web access just to check my text messages. That was a killer on the wallet if you didn't have the web, text, pic package. Now I use my Treo for everything and its a killer on my bosses wallet. :P I think its time a for a revolution!!! Where's Pancho [Villa] when you need him?

that's so true, Lupe! One of these days I'm going to splurge and get a Blackberry or something. I'm always getting stuck on the train (NJ transit kinda sucks) and I could kill time checking email that way! Not to mention it's convenient! but then i don't know...i don't want to get addicted to it!

I thought there was an option in your voicemail settings to not allow that text they call numeric page to be sent.

Check out 92.3 in the morning...the DJ there is drumming up people to join in a possible class action against sprint....I don't have sprint, but according to him, you can get out of your contract within 30 days of a change like this initiated by the company without the $150 cancellation fee. Call him, check it out and happy headhunting

I came across these posts in a search for what "casual sms text messages" meant. We just signed up with Sprint on 9/29/06. My daughter is an avid text messager so it was a relief to hear that we would get 300 messages free a month. The guy who sold us the phones told me it would be $7.50/mo for unlimited texting when we were ready to add that on. He did NOT tell us that messages would be $.15 each starting Oct 1st! OR that there was any difference in types of TEXT messages! Well, in the first two weeks of having the phone I checked my daughters usage and see that she has two IDENTICAL categories of "CASUAL SMS TEXT MESSAGES"! The first says 347 used, and the second says 14 used. The ACTUAL Text Message category says that she still has 295 of 300 messages left. WHAT the heck!?? I can guarantee you these are NOT numerical pages...my daughter only sends and receives ACTUAL TEXT MESSAGES! So now, instead of just being 61 messages over, she will be 361 messages over...labeled as "casual sms text messages" and we will owe an additional $54+ to our bill!! So now, I'm not even sure that the $7.50/mo would even cover the "casual sms text messages"! I am very angry with Sprint right now...and am feeling very sorry we signed up! They indeed have come up with a deceptive way to rip off their customers!

I don't understand what you are complaining about. You are using a service which costs money. If you don't like it don't use it. I'm a Sprint manager and I hear this type of thing all the time. Life is not free and I don't understand why you think it should be. Sprint is a company. If we gave you free service all the time then we would not stay in business. Same with every other cell phone company. Don't believe me? Try the other companies and see how much money you spend. And by the way, since those charges were legit you should give back the money Sprint was nice enough to credit back to your account, but I guess that would be asking too much from a "loyal" customer.

Regarding the Sprint Manager, Parker, and all those who say we should pay for these additional "services," I have used Sprint for SEVEN years, and during this time I have always had one of the highest consumer plans. I recently upgraded to a Blade phone, and though the company was happy to take my money at the time of purchase, I was told that I would have to wait up to FOURTEEN WEEKS for a rebate! I wonder how much they would like it if I told THEM they would have to wait FOURTEEN damn weeks for a rebate supposedly designed to REWARD LOYAL customers! Also, I seem to have 170 CASUAL text messages on my bill, which of course, there is no documentation or any description thereof on the Sprint WEBSITE, which is horribly designed and tries to sell you everything under the sun but makes finding any useful navigation impossible. If you want to sign into PictureMail you have to enter your PictureMail password, if you want to change your Alerts you have to enter your PictureMail password, etc. This is insane! Who wants to remember up to 5 different passwords for services all LINKED to the SAME cell phone acount! When I upgraded to this new "PowerVision" phone I also had to upgrade to "PowerVision," even though Vision was included in my previous package, to the tune of $15/mo. I believe PictureMail was an extra $5, so this is an ADDITIONAL $20/mo to a previous $99 plan that INCLUDED these things. I will say that the functionality of this new phone and the web access is awesome, but when the plans change constantly and they come out with new functions that are not compatible with the old plans, so that your bills are now radically increased by 30% overnight, is astounding. I remember seven years ago when you literally had to wait THREE hours on the phone with a sprint representative, now its easier to talk to a live person, but overall, the service quality is nominal. Just look at the attitude of the Sprint manager who posted here and you can see that they really do not care what the customer experience is. I have had a Sprint plan of $100 or more for the past seven years and have been through 5 phones and all the myriad changes in their service, pricing plans, company changes, etc., and I doubt that this manager has been with the company as long as I effectively have. I just spoke with a Sprint rep and she said that my old Vision pack included unlimited text but the new one did not, a fact that was not explained to me at all, obviously I would not have gone along with paying more for a new plan that included less features. She wanted to argue with me, but herself could not keep the dates of the new "casual sms" change, citing 2 dates in October and then 3 in November before finally coming up with the accurate one. Obviously if the people whose job it is to advise customers can't keep this bullshit straight, how can a customer who obviously has a life beyond looking at their Sprint bill? I cut her off by saying there was no point in arguing, I wanted the situation taken care of and to speak to a manager. Fair is fair, but what of deception and unfair business practices. The only reason I haven't switched is because I have tried Nextel and I don't think the service is better, and their customer service phone support is actually worse. My advice is to be firm with the Sprint people and ask to speak with a manager. Remember your time is money!

To whomever wrote this rant:

Check your October invoice. They told you of the changes on the invoice for Vision and Text changes in casual rates. If you didn't pay your since Oct. 1st when the change took place, you can break your contract without an ETF.

Just so you know.

Wow all of this bickering back and forth. Everyone has a point. My suggestion would be to us all getting the cheap basic package and use the phone for calls only, which is all we really need and we won't have this problem with extra fees, price gauging, money grubbing companies with insensative representation. But seriously who has time to read all that small print on a bill. You expect to get what you agreed on or someone should sound the alarm, throw up some red flags or something to let yus know you are about to be screwed.

SHAME ON YOU, SPRINT

Workaround for people who have bounded by sprint contract is to call Sprint and request disabling incoming and out going text messaging option.

Why send numeric pages anyway? If I'm I'm not leaving a voice mail I simply hang up, and I prefer that people don't leave me voice mails if all they want me to do is call them back whenever I get the chance. If its important, then they can leave a voice mail.

Checking the voice mail is annoying since it takes time, plus uses up your daytime minutes. However, numeric pages are a waste of money. Checking the missed calls are good enough. It shows the same info without the PLEASE CALL message.

Sprint's business practices with the text messaging fees are unethical at best. Like other customers, my casual text messaging fee went up to .15/msg effective 10/1 (14 mos into a 24 mo contract for me). After receiving a ridiculous number of "Happy Holidays" mass-texts from people at the end of the year, I noticed a signficant increase in my bill.

When I called to complain, I was given 2 options - continue to pay .15/msg (even incoming, nonsense messages I don't want) or sign-up for a text plan which would extend my contract. I do not want to extend Sprint service for a number of reasons. My contract is finally up this month. I'm very excited to leave America's worst cell provider (the worst coverage, the worst phones, the worst customer service) and help them maintain the highest churn rate in the industry.

Although I don't expect anything to happen, I've also filed a formal complaint with the FCC. If the only way for a customer to change text charges is by extending a contract then Sprint should honor the original terms for the full length of the contract.

I just went through this whole numeric paging/text messaging ordeal....and there's no way around it except to stop sending/receiving numeric pages. They were very useful for me because there are times when a call doesn't go through because of service issues..and doesn't show up on the other person's missed calls....leaving a numeric page assures me the person will eventually know that I called..it's alot faster than leaving a message or listening to a message....

I pay the SOB's extra for unlimited "text messaging" and I still got charged extra for "casual sms text messaging". I called and was told that they charge if the message has to go "through the internet". The problem is that they don't tell you (warn you) ahead of time if the particular message is going through the internet. So you are gambling every time you send a text message.

There is no question that the policy is a criminal act of fraud and I am sure some attorney will make a fortune on a class action suit as soon as they steal enough money to justify it.

I am changing to a new service as soon as my contract expires.

I hate Sprint with a passion. I've still got another year with them, but I look forward to the day that I will never have to deal with them again.

My bill over Thanksgiving was $255. With no warning. It's generally $65.
You know.. no where on their poorly set up website does it mention how much calls are per minute over the plan or how much text messages cost per message over the plan.

I hate Sprint. They've made me cry because of their (what should be illegal) practices.
I wish the company would just lose all their money and go out of business!

First of all, all you people crying about getting screwed by the big companies should realize that you are doing it to yourself. You act as if you can't live without being contacted or having the internet at your fingertips at all times. Gimme a break cause I know all of you aren't as important as you think you are. You act like little teenage b*%tches with you cell phones and texts. Let's see, if someone is banging you and you don't like it then don't deal with them. There is ALWAYS an option and you ALWAYS have a choice when it comes to these kind of matters. Make a choice and move on and stop your crying.
As far as why send a numeric page, remember that there aren't service issues with paging like there are with regular cellular use. A page will get through to you while you are staring at your phone and seeing how many bars you have and oh yeah, probably complaining some more about how sh**ty Sprint or Verizon or whoever is.