Another day, another abuse from your friendly local cell phone company. T-Mobile is increasing their text messaging fees from 15 to 20 cents each next month. They are the last company to do so - apparently they wanted in on the action.
Can anyone say "Anti-Competitive Price Fixing?"

Of course, text messages really costs 40 cents - you're just splitting the cost with your friend who is also paying to send you the sms message.

So for 42 cents you can have someone physically hand deliver a letter anywhere in the country courtesy of the United States Postal Service, or you can lease your phone carrier's line for a fraction of a second to transfer so bits around - a cost that to them is so miniscule it is basically free.

The biggest scam of all is that you can't turn off the option to receive text messages on T-Mobile. Essentially, you could be receiving 500 spam messages a day and T-Mobile would bill you for each and every one, with no recourse and no way to solve the problem.

This is the subject of a new class action lawsuit that aims to take down T-Mobile's unfair practices. Once the lawsuit was filed, T-Mobile quickly released a new feature that allows users to turn of text messaging all together. "I'm going to take my ball home! Nyah!"

Well that's not good enough. The appropriate answer is to NOT CHARGE for incoming text messages. Shouldn't it be illegal to be charged twice (send + receive) for the same thing anyway?

Text messages should be next to free or cost you 1/10th of a minute off your monthly plan. Period
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