Txting to Email Addresses

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eunichs

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#16070 23-Sep-2007 10:10

Hi All,

As part of my personal GTD process, i often send text messages from my telecom mobile phone to an email address that I have set aside. However, I am having trouble finding out how much it costs to do so.

I do it on my work phone, so I never see the bill, and I dont have to pay for it obviously, but I am getting worried that I am starting to do it too often (20 or more times a day). Is the charge included in $10TXT?

Whats the deal? And why is it so hard to find out how much this costs!? Telecoms website is typically unhelpful for anything other than buying new services....

Cheers,
Evan.

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#87734 23-Sep-2007 10:15

It costs the same as other SMS, and it's not included in any SMS deals, because those are for person-to-perso only, not to services...

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#87735 23-Sep-2007 10:39

eunichs: Telecoms website is typically unhelpful for anything other than buying new services....

A search on Telecoms website for $10 text reveals this page as the first result. On that page, it discusses the $10 text promotion and has a link to the all important terms and conditions for $10 text.

On the terms and conditions page, it clearly outlines the definitions of what is included, and what isn't. Phone to Email text messages are excluded by the looks of it:

Here are some examples of text messages that are not person to person text messages: text messages sent to short codes, Web TXT or eTXT™, Xtra Alerts, Instant Messaging, Mobile originated text messages to e-mail and text messages you receive that have a charge associated with them

Its rather upfront about it and that information isn't hiding in any small print.

So summarising how I got there: that one (discussed above) search, click search, click first result, click terms and conditions... how is that unhelpful (~4 mouse button clicks). If you didn't like searching you could also goto 'Products & Services', 'mobile', 'View our services', 'Take and send messages', then click text messaging. From there - it would give information about text messaging, as well as a link to the $10 text page.

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eunichs

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#87737 23-Sep-2007 11:04

Hmm. Thanks for the info guys. I think we have different standards on how difficult that information was to mine. Firstly, from a marketing perspective, I wouldn't put pricing information about what I consider to be a product feature within the "terms and conditions" of a package, that is basically asking people not to read it. What's more, people like myself might still have some degree of uncertainty in their mind, because the price is never explicitly stated. Sure, non person-to-person texts are excluded from $10TXT, and sure, handset to email messages are not person-to-person. Can I then conclude that a handset to email message should cost $20c? Not necessarily. It would be nice to be able to search for 'txt to email' and actually have a price given to me for the use of that feature, rather than going through a process of elimination to find out which plans that product feature is NOT included in. Thats just the way I see it. Regardless, thanks for your rapid responses, I'm flabbergasted.

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#87739 23-Sep-2007 11:22

eunichs: I think we have different standards on how difficult that information was to mine. Firstly, from a marketing perspective, I wouldn't put pricing information about what I consider to be a product feature within the "terms and conditions" of a package, that is basically asking people not to read it.

The information is there, in plain english, and is not hidden - any one can read it. It even has a title with 'things you should know' rather than a * and then small text saying 'Terms and conditions apply' at the bottom which is all to common. It outlines quite clearly what is considered 'person to person'.

What's more, people like myself might still have some degree of uncertainty in their mind, because the price is never explicitly stated. Sure, non person-to-person texts are excluded from $10TXT, and sure, handset to email messages are not person-to-person. Can I then conclude that a handset to email message should cost $20c? Not necessarily.

Refer to your plans cost for sending text messages (Generally 20c). Remember that $10 text is a promotion that runs on top of your plan so regular pricing would apply.

It would be nice to be able to search for 'txt to email' and actually have a price given to me for the use of that feature, rather than going through a process of elimination to find out which plans that product feature is NOT included in.

Because the activity that you are trying to do is excluded in the $10 text promotion (remember that its not a plan but a promotion), your regular text messaging pricing would apply.

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#87740 23-Sep-2007 11:57

I'm going to put my Vodatroll hat on and get a wee bit OT here but if sending plenty of SMS->Email messages is something people need to do and they don't want to pay Telecom's prices then they may want to look at Vodafone since their SMS -> Email service is included in any included txt bundles since it's just a regular 021 number.

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#87746 23-Sep-2007 12:49

Telecoms SMS is sent to an internal shortcode 6245 (MAIL) hence it not being included in SMS deals.
You replace the number field with the emal address or you can do it manually.

user@5p4m.com This is your message up to 16 chars.

Vodafone email is sent to a number of gateways +642101099 is the most common but I have not used this in some time.
It's included in any "on-net sms" deal however.
Same setup...

user@5p4m.com This is your message up to 160 chars.
concantenated messages are not supported at last try.

Neither allow a reply back to the originating handset however.

Then of course you can use MMS instead but the Vodafone here add all this advertising garbage to the message.

Telecom force the users to access a horrible "lightsurf" website to view the message content and format the email with CID: links which has crashed many a pc.

I do not remember the providers in Australia doing this, it was just the SMIL content file, a JPG, and a TXT file. simple.