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Mobile Gadget News :: Making Your Mobile Life Simpler _ T-Mobile _ T-Mobile hidden charges - Email alerts!

Posted by: Webnasty May 12 2004, 05:58 PM

So I switch from Cingular to T-Mobile and purchase the $39/1000 anytime minutes and the $20 unlimited data. I then buy the MPx200, reconfigure it to work with T-Mobile and I'm happy as can be... until I get my first bill.

On my bill I have a ton of "Messenger" charges. I never use text messages so I call T-Mobile up, and the rep explains to me that when I registered on their website and downloaded their Secure Mail Connector, they charge for each "Alert" message you get when you get a new email. Wha-wha-what? She bumped me to level 2, and I told the rep if they could show me anywhere on their site where it said they charged for being alerted when you got an email I would be happy to pay for it. He admitted sheepishly that the website made no such mention of the charge and he would be happy to credit my account for the "Alert" costs. How much? Over $42 for one month of usage.

On a positive note, the 2nd level rep was very helpful and nice. But c'mon, hidden charges of that magnitude? How shady is that?

Posted by: kalidor May 12 2004, 11:49 PM

Huh? Secure Mail connector? Can't find what that is, wanna link me on the website?

Posted by: smeg36 May 12 2004, 11:58 PM

At least the legendary T-Mobile Cust. Service pulls through and refunds the charges instead of saying tough luck like some other companies would. I also have never heard of this mail service you are talking about though. Is it the one where they check your POP email account, then let you pop it through them? If so, why not just do it straight to the POP account through Inbox?

Posted by: clrankin May 13 2004, 12:12 AM

I think I know what Webnasty is talking about. I set up a service on T-Mobile's web site a while back that would poll my POP3 accout and fire off an SMS to me whenever mail that met the criteria I set up came in (criteria includes from a specific sender, priority level, etc.). The thing is that I've never been charged for this, though... Well, not charged anything aside from SMS messages sent to me through this feature being deducted from my monthly bucket of included SMS messages.

May I ask how many SMS messages T-Mobile said you received in that period of time? Could it be that you didn't have SMS messages included in your plan and were charged for receiving those (vs. receiving messages specifically through this service).

Posted by: abatis May 13 2004, 02:00 AM

I think T-mob will charge $.05 for an sms unless you buy the 300 for $2.99 service or other discount sms plans. I use the the t-mob pop service with Sunnysoft for multiple accounts. You can change the alert for new email to "off "and thus not receive the sms if you like. You than can just periodically check your email and it costs you nothing more than the data plan.

Posted by: kalidor May 13 2004, 04:08 AM

yeah ... I didn't realise there was such an animal. My mpx200 just pops my personal server directly every half hour.

Posted by: Webnasty May 13 2004, 11:46 AM

clrankin is right, the service I downloaded would fire me a sms everytime I got an email. I had hundreds and hundreds of them. I just thought the "alert" was like my outbox telling me I had mail. I am not a text messaging person so never thought I needed a plan for that.

The reason I don't just pull them off of my server is I own a trade publication, and I constantly receive attachments up to 2 MB (photos and articles). So I have my desktop Outlook pull them off of the server every 5 minutes so I don't max out my space allotment. During my deadline time I can get bombarded with up to 30 MB a half hour.

Posted by: kalidor May 14 2004, 04:39 AM

I see .. can I just say then ... eeek

poor phone wink.gif

Posted by: Webnasty May 14 2004, 12:21 PM

Hahaha, I wouldn't do that to my poor phone. Well, ok...I did try to but it couldn't handle the load. It looked up at me, eyes welling up and said, "No mas!" I now have it set to only receive 1,000 kb so I can get back to people letting them know I received their email.

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