Business SMS provider, The SMS Works, which launched last month, has called for the business SMS industry to rethink what it describes as its “unfair and unclear charging policy”.

“Ever since the industry’s inception in the late ‘90s, users of business SMS services have always been charged for all messages they send, even if a proportion of them haven’t been delivered,” said SMS Works director, Henry Cazalet. “By contrast, SMS providers are not charged when a message is undelivered, so there’s an additional margin that almost all providers are taking advantage of, based on the publicly-available information on the main providers’ websites. With the average non-delivery rate standing at around 18 per cent, there’s a significant hidden, additional profit that the industry has been enjoying for the past 20 years or so.”

The company is challenging this policy by offering an SMS API service where any undelivered messages are refunded back to the customer.

“For too long the SMS industry has been unfairly charging its customers for undelivered texts. We think it’s time this changed”, said Cazalet. “SMS Providers have always charged for failed messages and they’ve always struggled to justify this to customers. SMS companies don’t pay for failed messages, so there’s no reason that customers should have to. We’re offering a much fairer and more transparent approach to pricing.”