I called mobile service provider plusCONNECT this afternoon in relation to a story I’m doing on mobile music.
A friend of mine sent me a Facebook message asking for me to download music from his friend’s unsigned band — and to do so (and pay) via text message. Neat. Social networking and mobile at it’s finest. I wanted to do a post about it. And I shall.
First though — who is the owner of the shortcode 82822 mentioned in the Facebook message, I wondered?
I did a query over at the 3UK shortcode lookup service and found that plusCONNECT was listed as the shortcode owner. I was reasonably confident that plusCONNECT were simply the ‘aggregator’ and that it would be another company behind the service.
So, I phoned plusCONNECT to find out.
A nice lady answered and I stated I had a press enquiry. She put me through to a chap who answered breathlessly. I explained my enquiry, said I was from SMS Text News. I expected a helpful response.
No dice.
The chap replied to my enquiry with words to the effect of ‘Er, yeah, er I think that is our shortcode but, yeah, I don’t know who uses it.’
I explained I wanted to give the client some promotion here on the site as I reckoned it was a smart service. But still the chap wasn’t interested.
‘Er,’ he told me, ‘Our operations manager is away at the moment. Could you call back on Monday?’
‘Well, no,’ I responded, ‘I have to publish today.’
Silence. No help. No use. Useless.
You’d think the chap could have got off his arse, loaded up the spreadsheet and queried ‘82822’ to find out who THEIR client was, so I could put their name in lights. He seriously couldn’t be bothered.
I’m rather surprised. Well, super-surprised, actually. You’d think they’d want to help out clients.
Anyway I did some googling and found that it looks as though their client using the shortcode is TuneTribe. I’m pretty impressed with what they’re doing. I whacked off a text to the shortcode as instructed in my friend’s Facebook message and, sure enough, I got a text back with a redeemable code at TuneTribe.com. Nice.
No thanks to the unhelpful chaps at plusCONNECT at all.
Any readers worked with plusCONNECT at all?
See Grant’s comment below. The 3UK shortcode whois was incorrect and plusCONNECT don’t work with TuneTribe at all ergo the above post is irrelevant.
I strongly suspect you’ve just caught someone off guard with your call. I’ve known the chaps behind PlusConnect for almost 6 years and I can honestly say that they are one of the very best companies in our space.. I’ve passed you contact details independently..
NIck, that’s excellent feedback and good to know. I’ll talk to them again.
Ewan,
I am a Director at plusCONNECT Telecom. Allow me to correct you on your post above;
– Short Code 82822 is not operated by plusCONNECT nor has it ever been. Your information from 3UK is grossly incorrect.
– Even if we did run short code 82822, we would still not reveal the underlying customer. We are committed to respect our customers privacy and safeguard their information. Please refer to our Privacy Statement should you seek further clarification.
– Our Operations Manager is indeed on vacation (a very well deserved vacation I might add) and I suspect you spoke to a newer member of staff who was perhaps, a little unfamiliar, dealing with a ‘Press Enquiry’. The staff member opted for the honest response of saying ‘I am unable help, please could you call back?’ I endorse this response 100%.
Should you require any further clarification, please do not hesitate to call me direct on +27 727 146 142 (GMT +2).
My thanks to NJAR for bringing this post to our attention.
Grant Lemke
Director – plusCONNECT Telecom Limited
Grant, thanks very much for taking the time to respond. I’ve updated the piece accordingly. You can check the 3UK entry details on that incorrectly assigned Shortcodehere.
they’re a text message porn service