Technogory

Amazing, T-Mobile keeps a large number of people from getting tweets, and the world stops moving for many of them.  I won’t comment on apparent need to get a majority of useless “tweets” everyday.  Like the guy that wants to “tweet” while shopping with his wife… Whether T-Mobile is contractually obligated to provide the “unlimited” service is probably something that could be debated.  However, the fact that T-Mobile has decided that SMS messaging is not something they want to provide, in particular to “short code” messaging, it shows that they see a potential loss of revenue.

After all, it always boils down to money!

T-Mobile would like to bring to your attention that the Terms and Conditions of service, to which you agreed at activation, indicate “… some Services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming. We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to Service, cancel or suspend Service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion.” Therefore, T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation.

Guess what mobile users, this same type of generic legal blah, blah, blah, is similar to every other mobile service provider out there.  Don’t believe it, look at your agreements.

But the real argument is service.  Most folks using T-Mobile pay for a service.  Many of them won’t admit it, but they are stuck in some kind of long-term contract.  And, based on the verbiage above, will lose $200 on early cancellation.

So, here’s what you have to weigh.  Is $200 worth moving to a new provider to gain back the “tweets” of life?  Sure, I am having a little fun at the expense of many of the “twitterers,” but come on!  There is one obvious solution - take it in the shorts and cancel T-Mobile!  If even half of you T-Mobile users do this, guess what, the rest that don’t have the ‘balls’ to put their words into action will get their precious SMS back!  I can almost promise this is the case.

But, here is what is going to happen.  There will be such a backlash, and it’s growing, T-Mobile will come up with a compromise that includes more charges.  I had a friend that was using Verizon for a service a couple of years ago.  It was later determined that service wasn’t going to be “free” anymore.  So, they modified the agreement and turned the service off.  The only way the user got his service back was to pay a “tax” of sorts for the use.  I wonder if T-Mobile is just the tip of the iceberg for these “short  codes?”

To all of the T-Mobile users, thanks for the entertainment for the day.  I say dump them and move on!