What Goes Around…

What Goes Around… was Originally Posted on June 8, 2005 by lavarock

There is a saying “What goes around, comes around”.

A while ago there was a cell phone service (and I use the term “service” with a grain of salt). The service was advertised in the UK as a joke service. You take your cell phone and text JOKE to 85050 and you get a joke.

It appears based upon a Television Advertising Complaints Report out of the UK, viewers of the commercial did not realize that they were actually signing up for a 99 cent a day service. It appears the commercial did not tell people how to unsubscribe and for that information they needed to go to the company website.

If a cell users did not have web access, they would be hard pressed to stop the messages and would not know of the charges for quite some time! The company was told not to continue using that same advertisement.

Today I saw this particular advertisement on TV here in the U.S. I can’t tell you if there is info about how to stop them, but I did notice the 99 cent charge and something about 7 messages a week. Imagine that someone does not relaize that there is approximately a $30 a month charge just for the jokes and add to that text message charges that your cell provider adds to that. I also understand that the people in the UK said that the jokes were very poor.

Is this the same company here in the U.S.? I don’t know, but I would be VERY CAREFUL before getting any kind of text messages on your cell phone without knowing all of the details.

UPDATE: As I was ready to actually post this, the commercial came up. They tell you to text JOKE STOP to stop the thing, and they also give a website to go to for more information. My warning about being careful still pertains

Update: Here is the company advertising on TV in the US, http://www.text2.tv/us.html and here is part of their termination instructions:

[b]17. CANCELLATION.
The Provider allows the user the possibility to interrupt the flow of information received via SMS (Short Message Service). We offer you this facility on the Internet pages that belong to the Service. Generally, information received via SMS can be interrupted by sending an SMS message starting with the keyword, i.e. your entry code, followed by a space and then the word STOP. You can send this message to the abbreviated number you used for entry. For example you can send the message JOKE STOP to the number 85050. See for more details the landing page of the US market of the website www.text2.tv. In addition, an email can be send to [email protected] or our toll free number 800 – 303 1162 can be called.[/b]