T-Mobile USA's class action suit regarding unsolicited text messages

One of the strangest elements of the mobile industry in the United States is the way the market has grown up making users pay to receive text messages.

If you sign up for a contract at 15 dollars a month and you only use your inclusive minutes and texts (or better yet, you don’t bother with an inclusive text bundle, you just call), you’d expect to pay 15 dollars a month and no more, right?

Unless, of course, some smart arse has obtained or guessed your mobile number and is busy spamming you with unsolicited text messages. Your 15 dollar a month total can very quickly increase if you’re being spammed a few times a day.

It’s the complete reverse in most other countries — the sender pays to send the text message, so while there’s still an issue with regard to text spam, at least individuals being spammed aren’t footing the bill.

From one viewpoint, the receiver-pays model is entirely strange. Imagine having to pay the postman every time he arrived with (un)solicited mail for you. From another viewpoint, many text messaging related business have managed to establish themselves because of this model and their businesses rely on the ability to send ‘free’ updates to phonenumber@sprint.com email address that are converted and delivered to the handset as text messages.

Maria Detwiler is having none of it, though. She is representing the class action suit outstanding against T-Mobile USA. So reports RCR News:

‘T-Mobile refuses to disable the texting messaging feature on its customers’ accounts, even when the customer has no interest in sending, or, more importantly, receiving text messages,” stated plaintiffs representing Maria Detwiler and others. ‘Moreover, T-Mobile requires each of its customers who have not subscribed to one of T-Mobile’s Messaging Value Bundles to pay for each and every unsolicited text message they receive. In sum, T-Mobile, the party with the superior bargaining power, has carried out a wrongful business scheme regarding text messaging to deliberately cheat a large number of consumers out of individually small sums of money.”

Technically, I suppose it’s a bit of a hassle for the mobile operators involved to update their billing and technical systems to prevent handsets from receiving text messages.

I wonder how this one will play out…