WARNING! to all T-Mobile users

[TheForce]

I had a big surprise today as I opened my T-mobile statement. Seems that T-Mobile has begun to charge 5 cents an e-mail sent to my PDA phone and has increased this to 10 cents beginning March 1st. They said they sent everyone a notice in the last bill about the increase.

Now I have switched to Verizon and decided to drop all my plans and switch my old PDA IPAQ to a basic lowest cost phone service and internet access plus T-Mobile hotspots that I could use anywhere. I did this in February. Since then I incurred over $100 in e-mail surcharges and their explanation was that I nolonger qualified for free service since I lowered my account. This was never explained to me that this would happen. Anyway, if any of you are using T-Mobile forwarding of your e-mail to your phone via SMS service, watch out for this hidden charge. You can add text messaging to your account for as little as $4.99 for 400 and over 400 it is 10 cents each. They required me to add that and once I did, they reversed my last bill. I have since deleted my SMS - pop3 relay service on that phone.

 

[Digital Dude]

Thanks for the good info. I have a friend that is msg happy, I tell her to call and hang up but she insists on sending messages ALL the time.

 

[KE4EST]

Thanks for the tip.

 

[stone phillips420]

thank you for that 411

 

[ShadowEKU]

Wait... are they charging for emails to your phone or SMS to your phone?

my unlimited Tzones has never incurred a charge for email (i get around 30 a day)

 

[gizzer777]

Thank You

I had a big surprise today as I opened my T-mobile statement. Seems that T-Mobile has begun to charge 5 cents an e-mail sent to my PDA phone and has increased this to 10 cents beginning March 1st. They said they sent everyone a notice in the last bill about the increase.

Now I have switched to Verizon and decided to drop all my plans and switch my old PDA IPAQ to a basic lowest cost phone service and internet access plus T-Mobile hotspots that I could use anywhere. I did this in February. Since then I incurred over $100 in e-mail surcharges and their explanation was that I nolonger qualified for free service since I lowered my account. This was never explained to me that this would happen. Anyway, if any of you are using T-Mobile forwarding of your e-mail to your phone via SMS service, watch out for this hidden charge. You can add text messaging to your account for as little as $4.99 for 400 and over 400 it is 10 cents each. They required me to add that and once I did, they reversed my last bill. I have since deleted my SMS - pop3 relay service on that phone.

Just called and took care of that ...thanks a lot!
Everyone is scamming everyone!!! Apparently there is no way to block text messages whiuch are usually teenie boopewr wrong number...if it keeps up...the Razor is history! I will look for a ph without text m essages!
Jeff

 

[TheForce]

Just to clarify- This will only affect you if you have an account that does NOT include text messaging and you are on an a la carte basis, plus you have a phone that is text messaging capable! Then if you used the SMS server to alert you to e-mail in a pop3 account and changed your account (as I did) back to a lesser plan, it could affect you on a huge scale. I think people receive these text messages in two ways, via pop3 monitoring and direct phone to phone. It is unlikely you will get enough text messages direct unless you are into the "teenie boppewr" activity to worry about.

I think if you have a SMS capable phone and also have the base addition like T-Mobile 400 messages for $4.99 then you would not see the $.10 per charge until you exceeded that 400 count. If you also had your sms tied to a pop3 then yes, you'd get a tally on every pop3 e-mail at 10 cents per e-mail if you exceeded the 400. If you get 40-50 spams a day then it wouldn't take long to rack up a $100 monthly text messaging bill in a month.

Bottom line- don't have the SMS account monitor your pop3 unless you are on the unlimited data / phone plan. To disable this monitoring you need to go into your online account info and untie your pop3mail server from the t-mobile messaging service. FYI- you would have had to set that up anyway as it is not automatic.

Of course, at this point, my ipaq6315 no longer has those e-mail alerts when my e-mail arrives.

Now with my new service, on Verizon, my pop3 e-mail arrives right away as it comes in using outlook, no need for SMS alerts.