Win a free Sony Playstation Portable ? - With SMS always read the fine print - the great SMS rip offs
Posted by MattE on 25 Sep 2005 at 05:59 pm | Tagged as: Media, SMS
Very little in life is free , as is nicely outlined in this post on Cayoblog cayoblog :: Free as in…
It’s an ad. 500 free SMS messages if I call this number. At home, I check the terms and conditions. Sure, there it is. By accepting the 500 free messages, I am in fact signing up to a monthly service which will cost me £ 1.50 a week. For whatever, more ads, more rubbish. But the SMS’s are free. Sure. They are free, other than the fact that you have to pay for them.
Of course not all SMS ‘free offers’ are loaded with some payment clause - perhaps it just means you will have to receive 3-5 advertising SMS each week per X number of txts you send.
But read the fine print, even if you have to get off the couch to read it on the TV screen.
One classic here in Australia at the moment is to win a Sony Playstation Portable just by answering a, b or c to the really easy question.
But read the fine print and it reveals that it cost A$2 EACH WAY SMS - that is, $2 to send your entry and $2 for their reply. My guess is that you have to answer 1-3 more questions to complete your entry, so it could cost you A$16 to complete the entry. Even at A$4, they won’t be making too many friends.
There are many of these sorts of ‘fine print’ SMS services being offered - joke of the day, ringtone etc. Plus the $5 signup fee….
Do yourself a favour - before you respond to ANY SMS offer or deal , make sure you know what it’s really going to cost you.
Note - While Plusone Marketing offers a range of SMS services, we do not condone ‘grey area’ tactics. We prefer to keep the industry sustainable.
Share your thoughts via comments
How do you stop joke of the day SMS? It was advertised on prime time television lately. It has been running through my credit and there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop it.
You would need to contact the provider. The TV ads should include details of how to unsubscribe, plus they should be sending you unsubscribe instructions at least every 10th message.
If you cannot locate the subscriber, try sending the word STOP to the number you subscribed through.
Failing that, contact the Australian Telecommunications Authority and they should eb able to track the provider through the number the jokes are being send from (even though it is a virtual number it is still assigned to someone)
I haven’t been getting unsubscribe instructions and the ad hasn’t been back on so I have no idea what is going on. I have tried sending the word stop numerous times and this doesn’t help, and my provider can not help either
Go to the Aust Communications Authority
hi i just wanted to know i send the Jokes of the Week on TV ads…. but i send it last 2 years…. but i don’t know how to stop the jokes but it not stop it still going… i have no idea how to stop it….. but my mum is checking my phone but hse angry with me.. she not happy i have big problem with my mobile phone account it getting worse! sigh* i can’t text my frineds for a few weeks time… can you help me?
thanks!
If anyone has had success at getting off these subscriptions through finding out who the companies are, please share them here.
I guess otherwiuse, cancell your number and get a new one - and always find out first how the unsubscribe works before subscribing.