I came across this heartwarming tale of a downy looking for love....
Price for 'premium' text messages? $10,000
Sean Clark pays extra each month for his cell phone service so his daughter Amanda can enjoy unlimited, no-charge text messaging. So the Bothell, Wash. man was stunned when his Sprint bill for September showed with nearly $10,000 in text message charges.
"When I opened the bill, it was just pure shock," he said. "There were pages and pages and pages of things on there."
He called Sprint immediately looking for an explanation. Clark knew ringtones and Web-based downloads could get expensive, so he had turned off Web access from Amanda's phone. He also knew that Amanda, a developmentally disabled 18-year-old, liked to send text messages so he "protected himself" by signing up for unlimited messaging. The bill for his family plan was normally a couple of hundred dollars per month.
Initially, a Sprint customer service agent agreed with Clark’s guess that he was a victim of fraud. But a bit of research revealed that he was instead the victim third-party providers who offer services on Sprint's network. And he quickly learned that not all text messages are equal.
Amanda had signed up for a series of so-called "premium" text message services. Premium texts cost typically $1-$2 each and are not covered by monthly bundling plans.
It's hard to imagine one teenager running up $10,000 in text charges in a month -- until you consider the services she used. Amanda had signed up for text-chatting services, lured by ads promising romantic dialogs with "cool guys." With each message costing $1-$2 a pop, such chats can easily cost hundreds of dollars a day.
Clark asked his daughter about the services, and then found the advertisements which had led her to sign up. He discovered a pile of magazines aimed at teen-age girls in his daughter’s room, all crowded with advertisements full of smiling teen-age boys bearing headlines like "Hook a hottie.""She had no understanding of the repercussions,” Clark said. “… My conversations with the phone company customer service lines have been laughable."
Clark asked Sprint to waive the charges, saying he hadn't authorized them; the company countered by offering to cut his bill by 50 percent.
7 comments:
Read this yesterday... hilarious. She just wanted some loving.
can we look forward to a Cardinals preview each week? Lets go ahead and invite Jace. I don't think he knows enough about ASU to trust him with that responsibility, but who knows what he will write.
I'll give a Cardinals update... what is Jace's email.
oooh, jeez he has two old ones. dickieups@yahoo.com and jnoble@mindspring.com
isnt it acewithaj@dumbass.com
hey do we have to be nice if he posts
i wasnt nice to you
ha ha ha... that was a good one Court. I don't think we should be super rude at first, let him get his confidence up. Cindy had the great idea of asking him to update us on Turtle from Entourage. Idol worship at its best. Do you think he would really contribute? We might have to approve them beforehand if they are not up to snuff
Turtle has a cameo (small part) in WE OWN THE NIGHT
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