Helen uses Grumbletext to great effect

By on August 11, 2006 in Services

Link: Musings of a mobile marketer: Grumbletext rocks.
D’ya remember this post a week or so ago about SMS-TXT.co.uk?  Well Helen posted a note of it on Grumbletext and what do you know, Vodafone’s good guy John saw it and switched off the service.  Kudos to John!

Next thing I know, I get an email from John at Vodafone to say that he’d spotted my posting and stopped the dodgy service altogether. Let’s hope the other networks have followed suit. Hurrah for blogs, forums and the magic of the interweb :)

About Ewan

Ewan is Founder and Editor of Mobile Industry Review. He writes about a wide variety of industry issues and is usually active on Twitter most days. You can read more about him or reach him with these details.
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  • http://www.itagg.com steve procter

    I probably agree that this service was looking very likely that it should be turned off. But for the record, as this story seems to have happened in the public eye on this blog, could John at Vodafone please clarify on what basis he turned the service off? I think we all just need to feel that there was a clear and definite breach of some code or other, rather than just a “oh blimey, lots of mobile bods seem to agree it looks a terrible service therefore I better just pull the plug”.

    Just a “yes there was a clear and definite breach of some code or other” will do John if you are unable to be specific.

    The service and application providers listening to this blog put a lot of effort (in general) to making sure they abide by the rules, and so what they don’t want to feel is that they can just wake up in the morning and find one of their services has been turned off just because a bunch of their peers complained on a blog.

    Would be great Ewan if you could pass this on to John.

    steve

  • John

    My exact word in disconnecting the service were
    “The service is operating in a way which is taking punitive advantage of customers and therefore likely to bring about customer complaints and discredit the premium SMS service.”

    It’s probably important to understand that all premium sms services are operated at the discretion of the mobile operators – the codes of practice provide a useful guide as to what’s acceptable and what isn’t, but inevitably someone will attempt to circumvent the rules we put in place. The recent spate of joke service where the users supposedly opted in via IVR some 18 months ago springs to mind as a good example of this.

    As operators, our hands aren’t tied by the codes we publish, and if we believe someone is likely to damage the whole market in the way they attempt to operate their premium rate services we’ll take the appropriate action.

  • http://www.technokitten.com Helen Keegan

    To be fair Steve, it wasn’t the moaning about the service on blogs that was why it was picked up by Vodafone. The network operators routinely scout Grumbletext for *dodgy* services and check them out themselves. I’m sure there are criteria they follow before removing them.

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