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Comment by nhaehnle | Hacker News Reader

They even have to pay for incoming SMS?

I understand the justification of paying for incoming calls, since they don't have separate prefix codes for mobile (which means that the caller does not know they're calling a mobile, and therefore you cannot put the charge on the caller), but incoming SMS, where you don't even get a choice over whether you want to receive it? "Peculiar" is putting that very nicely...

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That sounds like it could be abused really easily. Can any Americans confirm if this is true that you have to pay to receive an SMS?

Yes. We used to get charged $0.25 per text with Verizon. Occasionally we would get included on a group text that would create 30 some replies that we would receive. I was not happy.

It's true. $0.10 or $0.15 is my cost for all texts over 200 whether I send or receive them. Usually I don't go over, on average maybe 1-3 extra messages a month over 200. Upgrading to the unlimited tier for $15/month more doesn't make sense when I can reach all my friends but a few via Facebook, Google Talk or iMessages on their mobile devices. I can reach all my friends via one of those if they're on a computer but that's not always convenient, and no one I know uses twitter except to follow people.

  * With AT&T

Yes... until smartphone IM support finally offered competition that started to squash this particular aspect of price gouging.

Many people still "pay" for SMS. When we had outrageous per SMS charges (yes, also for incoming messages), carriers started to offer "bulk" -- e.g. 1000 messages per billing cycle -- plans and then "ulimited" SMS plans, typically for $30, $20, eventually $10 / month extra.

Now, more an more plans included "unlimited SMS". Not all, though, and total monthly bills that include such "unlimited SMS" vary widely. One also has to remain aware / beware of international SMS messages, where one's plan may still charge exorbitant per message fees.

P.S. Back in the days of high charges, just be so lucky as to end up on the receiving end of messages from some romantic interest who thinks your phone number is their interest's number. Obnoxious, perhaps crass messages, and to boot you're paying for the "privilege" of receiving them. (Fortunately, the carrier's limited blocking options sufficed to squelch those when he wouldn't believe I wasn't her.)

I can confirm it can be abused really easily. Back in middle school (2006? 2007 maybe?) me and my friends used a firefox macro addon and a free anonymous text website to send a few hundred vulgar texts to a girl that one of us had recently broken up with.

The next day at school one of us got called into the office. The girl's parents had hired a private investigator to find out who sent the texts. My friend denied everything and there was no real evidence so no one got caught (turns out these types of shenanigans are NOT okay, and illegal).

We had racked up her phone bill into over-usage rates and I'm not sure if the carrier dropped the charges we had produced or whether her parents had to pay. I can't imagine that night's incoming text cost being below $200.

But now I believe most teenage girls in the US have unlimited texting.

Yes, I still pay by the SMS. AT&T wants $20/month for unlimited SMS ($30/for all phones on my account). They used to offer $5 & $10 plans, but dropped those options.

It is nice to be able to iMessage w/other iPhone users.

My wife is on a pay as you go (prepaid) plan and each SMS counts as a minute.

Yes, but it's illegal to send unsolicited texts and there's a government website where you can report spammers.

Also most plans now have unlimited texts (to send or receive). I only paid for texts when I was on the cheapest possible pay-as-you-go plan.

Yes. However practically speaking no one who uses SMS really pays per message anymore. It's usually bought in packages (200 a month, 400 a month, etc), or unlimited.

Most cell phones come with some sort of messaging plan, but historically yes you had to pay.

The routing inbound calls you typically have to pay, but the costs are usually so negligible, most VoIP/landline provides include them for free with the overall subscription.

Cell phones are a different story all together.

Pretty sure AT&T charged for incoming text messages. It's been a while since I've looked at an AT&T bill (I've since switched), so it's possible that I'm mistaken, but I'd give that statement an 85% confidence rating.

Yes, but unlimited SMS plans are quite common and have been so for years.

Can confirm. When I moved to the US, had to pay for incoming SMS. My friends who did not have an unlimited SMS plan, had SMS completely blocked so that they don't receive unwanted messages.

Yes you do get charged for incoming calls and text. However most wireless carriers are now pushing plans with unlimited talk, text and data.

I don't know anyone who gets charged for receiving SMS in 2014 (and it has been like that at least since 2011 when I came to the US). All the plans I had (Verizon, AT&T, T-mobile) had free unlimited SMS (sending & receiving). I live in the bay area so maybe it's not like that in other parts of the country.

> free unlimited SMS

Free ay? So you can pay them $0/month and send/receive text messages? No? It is actually over $100/month? Is that "free?"

I pay $60/month for 3gb of LTE with T-Mobile and get unlimited texting and calling on top of that. I don't particularly care about the texting or calling so I consider it free. I'd pay the $60 just for the internet.

Most definitely. That said, most carriers have started including unlimited SMS in their packages.

by "including" you mean "charging extra", right?

Yes, is it an extra surcharge for the unlimited plans. Typically you have a few packages to choose from, e.g. 100, 250, 500, unlimited per month.

ATT charges $20/month + tax for unlimited texting alone. Which is about £12. For £12 (inc. tax) on GiffGaff in the UK you get:

- 250 minutes Calling

- Unlimited texts

- Unlimited Internet (no tethering, or £10 w/1 GB and tethering)

So Americas get massively screwed on their wireless services. The fact that tons of people on here are praising the insanely expensive "Unlimited" texting offers is just bonkers.

For the cost of just your unlimited texting in the US you can pay your entire monthly cellphone bill in the UK, consider that. And due to tax, surcharges, etc the $20/month is actually closer to $30/month.

T-Mobile has a $30/month pre-paid plan with 100 minutes, unlimited text, unlimited data (unsure about tethering). I really wanted to like the plan and tested it out in my area with a Nexus 4 I picked up for playing around with an Android phone (only had iPhones the past few years, so wanted it for both development and to see if it was practical for me to switch). Unfortunately the coverage sucked once I left the area since they didn't offer data roaming. Great along the interstate, terrible in the country (I often take the scenic routes when traveling long distances if I'm not in a rush, I hate driving on the interstate.). If I lived in an area with really good T-mobile coverage and primarily traveled to those sorts of areas it'd be an awesome plan, and similar in cost to what you're talking about.

it's part of the reason i dropped out of the major player market (AT&T, etc) and have moved to a second tier provider (in my case, net10). my bill is 50% of what it was for essentially the same service (minus visual voicemail on my iPhone, but it's not worth $600+/year to me).

unlimited internet (throttled at 2.5gig/month), unlimited text, unlimited minutes. $45/month = £26. Not perfect, but livable.

No, all four major providers have included unlimited text in their standard post-paid plans for a while now. If you're still on a legacy plan, you might not be aware of this.

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