Got a weird recurring charge on your phone bill for $9.99 a month? Did you vote for American Idol? AT&T is screwing you.
It's not really anything out of the ordinary for AT&T. They are constantly finding themselves the subject of public outrage after pulling this kind of scam. But this time, they went mainstream and started charging people who voted for American Idol (an election that rivals the US Presidential vote in numbers and the Iran Presidential election in shady biased results).
At the end of every show Ryan Seacrest reminds the audience that "Standard Text Messaging Rates Apply" to votes received via text message. When I hear this, I think "yeah, that's cool. I have unlimited free texts" but that's not the case.
Christina writes "I kept getting $9.99 charges for the past 3-4 months. Well this last bill had THREE $9.99 charges on it. I'm getting tired of paying these charges that I have no idea what they are from." After some time, Christina called ATT to inquire about the charges. The rep explained to Christina that after voting for American Idol, the $9.99 monthly service was attached to Christina's account. The bizarre thing is that the subscription doesn't come in as an "American Idol" line item, but goes by unfamiliar names that don't make sense.
But AT&T isn't the only one looking to profit from the American Idol text messaging vote system. Verizon tags a $1 charge to every vote cast towards the hit FOX competition series billing it as a "Premium Text Message". So that teenage daughter that just voted for Adam Lambert 100 times, just flushed a benjamin down the drain.
Neither T-Mobile nor Sprint charge any extra fees on top of regular text messaging rates for the American Idol votes.
Since we're on the subject of text messaging, here's a common myth that is not true:
"If you delete a text message before reading it, you are not billed for it."
I've always heard both that once you receive a text message, you are billed for it as well as the argument that the cell phone company only bills you for it if you open it. I did some research and found that AT&T charges you for the text message as soon as you receive it on your phone, not matter if you delete it immediately or read it. This is straight from att.com's
support page.
Q. What messages am I billed for?
A. AT&T bills for all messages whether sent or received, read or unread, solicited or unsolicited. Also, any message sent or received that is longer than 160 characters will be delivered as multiple segments of up to 160 characters each. Each segment is billed as a separate message.
In addition to AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon charge for the incoming text messages as well despite what actions you take after receiving the message on your phone. I wasn't able to find anything on Sprint's website regarding how incoming text's are handled, but I spoke with 2 customer service representatives who both told me if the text is deleted before being opened, the end user will not be charged.
This is a glimpse into how cellular service companies can really push the customer around however they want, and AT&T is perhaps the biggest culprit. With the iPhone on their side, people have no choice but to sign up with the cell phone giant who nearly went bankrupt before Apple came along and saved them. The AT&T iPhone exclusivity contract expires at the end of this year and AT&T is doing everything it can to keep the iPhone from leaving the carrier in the dust. Analyst predict that were Apple to break free from AT&T and stretch across multiple carriers, their profits would continue to soar as its former exclusive carrier would lose a large percentage of its business and iPhone service plans would become much cheaper. #KeepYourFingersCrossed
