I was talking to a friend today who works at WirelessWave and asked who on Earth buys a Fido phone in Alberta (their coverage area is Calgary, Edmonton, and within ten miles of highway 2 between those cities). He said a lot of immigrants use them because of the free text messaging, which allows them to keep in contact with family overseas.

When I signed up for it, I anticipated that I would eventually probably use it. ... it seems like a potentially useful feature ...

Who do you use? Telus or Bell or ... ?? Do you get these text spam messages too?

I guess it's not so much the fact that "just anyone" can send me a message for free, that bothers me, it's the fact that "just anyone" can do it "free and anonymously." There's got to be a better way of audit trailing these things.

Man, I've never heard of spamming on your cell phone before but apparently it's more common than not.

I guess that's the one good thing about being on Rogers. Actually it may be the only thing good about being on Rogers :rolleyes:

But what about those Rogers text messages that they send out all the time. The ones that say they have "free" ringtones and graphics for you to download or contests to enter. Do we pay for that crap?? I never even thought about it. :confused:

I haven't gotten any messages from Rogers in a long time, but I was told once (forgot who) that Rogers messages are not charged. I know it's also free to call Rogers on your Rogers cell phone.

I use rogers now too.

I get spammed on it occassionally. But I dont care too much since my package gives a lot of sms anyways (biz package).

Does anyone use Bell? Any thoughts on them as a provider?

DH works for Telus in the IT department, which has nothing to do with spam or cell phones. Anyway, showed him this thread and he says he will post it on Telus' internal Q&A/Customer Complaints department. Hopefully he will get an answer next week and I will post what they say.

I doubt that going to a different provider will solve the problem of cell phone spam. Spam is spam is SPAM!!!!! I get 5 times as much spam as regular mail on my PC and irritating is the nicest word there is for how I feel about this menace. But cell phone spam, that's the freaking lowest they can go, isn't it :evil:

True, spam is spam, spam email is annoying too, but, at the end of the day at least I don't pay a "per email" cost for my internet so it's somewhat less intrusive than this phone spam.

If this is going to become a bigger problem as time goes on then they need to almost institute some kind of collect call mechanism for text messages. "You have received a message from <blah blah blah>; do you accept?" Then at least I have SOME say in the matter. I don't know, maybe that wouldn't work either.

One of my coworkers got the same spam on his phone yesterday too, so, I wonder if this is not an isolated incident. I haven't had a chance to call telus yet ... hmmm I should go do that right now actually ..

"If you are calling in regards to a text message indicating you have won a contest; please be advised that this is a hoax. There is no contest."

(really ... you don't say.)

...

After on hold for a while I've gotten through to a rep. He said he'd credit my account. Which leads me to suspect if I hadn't called, the messages (I received it twice) would still appear on my bill otherwise. Not that we're talking about a huge sum of money here, but ... I guess it's just the principle of the thing at this point. I wonder how many people WON'T call to complain ...

So anyhoo ... I think it was Jason and Steve who said to call and complain and Telus would reverse the charges ... you were right. Thanks for the tip. Sounds like they're gonna have to work on their spam filters a bit...