T-Mobile prepaid not raising text message rate?

In the middle of November we found out, via T-Mobile’s own website, that they would be raising text messaging rates to 20 cents each to send and receive. That applied to new customers, with old customers grandfathered in. Well, over the weekend some snarky commenter decided to call me out on my reference to T-Mobile’s previous prepaid branding (To Go, which apparently they’ve dropped) and the text messaging charge. Now, I got a bit defensive because I was going on information directly from the company’s official website. Yet it appears that has changed. Text messages are not 20 cents each.

As you can see, text messaging is advertised as 10 cents to send, 5 cents to receive, which is the way it used to be. Strange that I haven’t seen anything about this anywhere. Everything else looks to be the same. Perhaps this is T-Mobile’s way of staying a head of the prepaid pack. They have, after all, added more prepaid customers than postpaid for two quarters running.

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5 Responses

1. Bruce Burke Says
   

   In the post you refer to text messages not being $0.20 cents a minute. Text is charged per send or receive – not per minute. Please make sure to be exact when talking about rates and charges for service. That way you won’t get “called out” for misinformation as often.

   
   Posted on February 2nd, 2009 at 10:49 am
2. TmT Says
   

   You have a nice site, glad to see it..

   
   Posted on February 2nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
3. Joe Says
   

   Bruce, I was not spreading misinformation with the 20 cent rate. As you can see in the previous post, I took a screenshot of T-Mobile’s website to corroborate the information.

   Thanks for the catch, though.

   
   Posted on February 2nd, 2009 at 6:05 pm
4. Mary Says
   

   I was wondering how you can check if you got a prepaid text messaging [5$/400] .

   
   Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
5. dbow Says
   

   I am wondering how tmobile charges for the text message. Does it subtract “minutes” from your minute bank, or does it subtract 10 or 5 cents from a dollar amount? I don’t have tmobile so I don’t know how it works, but if I buy a $100 refill card, I should get 1150 minutes (roughly .087 cents/minute). Now if I send a text, does it subtract one minute, or 10 cents? And if it subtracts 10 cents, does that change my minutes balance…and how, or by which rate? I know this question is getting confusing…

   
   Posted on May 9th, 2009 at 7:57 am

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