For a company seeking to build the best product on the market, this is surely rationalized-away cognitive dissonance (total customer experience), and a slap in the face to customers buying Apple phones. Shame on Apple and Tim Cook (and predecessor) for being enablers. And Apple surely has the power to pressure AT&T to offer consumers a choice. If the US congress wants to fix something everyone could agree on, this is surely a fertile area, referring to the steer noted previously.īut let’s hold a powerful player accountable: Apple makes enormous profits from its iPhone, and Apple has in its power the ability to include a “total SMS disable” feature on the iPhone. Joy.įew companies can get away with this kind of behavior (minimal competition is a real problem in the phone industry, for consumers that is). And then you still have to monitor things. In other words, you get charged so you can control stuff you don’t want. There is a parental controls feature at AT&T. I feel like a steer in a cattle chute heading to slaughter. But looking into it, it’s a one way street (cannot be reversed), and it raises my total costs for all my family phones. There is some kind of sharing plan alternative. So AT&T really wants you to pony up $60 a month (plus fees and taxes). That is in addition to $30 a month for “data” (what is text if not data?!) and that’s on top of $9.99 a month for the phone in a family plan ($40 total). The choice is either an additional $20 a month for unlimited texting or the risk of an unbounded texting charge. But see the update below-the statement is misleading or erroneous at the least.īut is it actually true that AT&T will not disable SMS messaging for a smartphone? I called AT&T the next day and learned some things, see Update below. Even an astute consumer has no way to disable it, by design. It is not possible to remove text messaging from your wireless account or turn it off on your wireless device.Īs stated: AT&T sets up phones to charge extra for the data you already pay for (by the language fiat of calling data “text”). All of our messaging-capable wireless phones come pre-activated to send and receive text messages at pay-per-use rates. You cannot disable text messaging on your wireless account, as this service comes bundled with your wireless service from AT&T. I couldn’t call or chat with AT&T on Christmas day, but an online search found this aparently disturbing policy on the AT&T web site. That is quite a compelling business model. Note that if 5 million unwary users text at $8 for one day (or a few) as above, that’s $40M. It turns out that there is NO WAY to disable incoming SMS text messaging on an iPhone. We disabled SMS for outgoing, but it doesn’t stop incoming SMS at $0.20 each with messages like “hey”. But that is not a fix, it’s a case-by-case headache and does not stop random junk or new friends, or plain old mistakes by friends. She now knows the difference, and had to inform all her friends not to SMS her. The Apple iMessage app is simply “data” like any other app, but not SMS messaging. Within a few hours: $8.40 in text messaging charges, giving me a heart attack, so to speak. My oldest teenage daughter got an iPhone for Christmas. SEND FEEDBACK Related: Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPhone and iPad, iOS
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