Text Marketer, a UK-based provider of SMS services, is calling for clarity on the UK's bulk SMS pricing structures. The company believes much of the current pricing is confusing to consumers, leading to unrealistic cost expectations, and disappointment when the bill for a completed SMS campaign arrives.
Text Marketer Director, Richard Hawley, says:
The pricing structures charged by some bulk SMS providers are confusing at best and can be totally misleading at worst. Providers package their services in different ways and a wide range of prices can apply to essentially the same product. Text Marketer is calling for a standardised pricing system, so that buyers can easily compare different companies and products across the marketplace.”
According to Hawley, a key area of confusion lies with companies that adopt a text credit pricing system. Buyers quite reasonably assume that one text credit equals one text sent within the UK. In reality, sending a text to a UK mobile number may use up to 1.5 credits. So what appears to be an amazing deal can actually cost  50% more than expected.
We frequently have to explain to buyers that our prices are genuinely lower than our competitors – and by quite some margin, says Hawley. We've even published a competitor price comparison chart. We don't believe it should be left to companies such as Text Marketer to unravel misleading pricing information.
Text Marketer's team is also concerned about lack of transparency over message routing. The company points out that providers have a vast number of different gateways to access GSM networks. These vary enormously in quality and support a number of different features. It notes that overseas routes are cheaper, but less reliable, and says that most buyers have no idea about the differences or the possible implications of using an indirect route, adding that it uses only a direct UK connection.
Barry Hemmings of RoughTrax, a Toyota Hilux parts mail order company and Text Marketer customer, says:
Using another company's standard route sometimes resulted in our messages being delayed by up to eight hours. Waking our customers up at 4am to tell them about our products did not go down well.