Technology for the sake of technology is not a good thing.

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Technology for the sake of technology is not a good thing.

Posted by: sgb on Jan 05, 2012

Tagged in: sms , Adverts

On Monday 2nd January - a holiday here in Cape Town - I received an sms advertisement for life insurance.

Let us forget for the moment that I was sitting under the trees at an outdoor restaurant enjoying a leisurely meal with a couple of glasses of the Cape's finest. Let us also forget that my mood was a bit down as I had just blown a waterpipe on my car miles from nowhere, and on Alfa v6's that tends to lead to money.

But it set me thinking - who in their right mind would respond to an advertisement for financial services from an unknown person at an unknown company?

Now if I want insurance I would contact all the major players (companies / brokers), get quotes and decide. I certainly would not go with an sms - it just gets deleted, not even the name remembered.

Or were they hoping to get the 'New Year's Resolution' crew? Those people who decided on New Year's day that their resolution for the year would be to get life insurance. Get in while it is on their mind as it were. To my mind they just lost their money. 10,000, 100,000 sms's at 20c per sms? Sort of blows their advertising budget if they dont get some response.

Many companies do tend to abuse sms advertising. My favorite (not good, I assure you) are those that send me sms's at 3 in the morning. Banks and medical aid companies are the main culprits here. I assure them now, I will never buy their product - if they are that inconsiderate to potential clients, what are they like with existing clients (I know - just as bad).

Maybe, just maybe, it is because their sms servers were down, or the networks were busy. But surely technology exists to circumvent this?

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written by Charmed, January 05, 2012

I have a big issue with sms spam. I know for a fact that it was initially my 'trusted' bank that passed my number to third parties. I don't give it out in a hurry. When it comes to online sign-ups that put a cell number as a required field to proceed, I use a landline number; or if it required an SMS pin to proceed, I don't sign up.

Vodacom (and all other cellular providers) should allow individual users to block numbers/spam smses.

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written by Dissol, January 08, 2012

I think that the whole SMS system has been destroyed by these ridiculous companies, who, in an effort to reduce marketing (or to engage their brains, in any form whatsoever), have decided to hijack the system to market their unwanted products & services. I do believe that we should not sit back & accept this. I have a policy (both personal & in my business), not to purchase anything if I can, through any spam. Further, I will actively "black-list" any company that sends be unsolicited marketing spam. Indeed, I want to set up a website (the address of which is already purchased and parked), which would allow people to list all these companies who send out unsoliticited marketing, or, as in Charmed's experience, sells one's details to others for this trade. This would be a (free) membership website, where anyone can join, and submit companies for black-listing, and the membership would then agree to avoid doing any business that would be listed. In fact I also want to take it further and to include any company who sells snake oil of any form too.

SMS was a great form of communication before it was bastardised by spam. Family / friends / business colleagues could politely communicate, and so it was customary to check one's phone everytime the phone beeped. Now, I, like many either ignore the beeps altogether, or turn the sound off, and only look on occasions, to delete the multitude of spam, and read the now infrequent personal messages.

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written by Wizard, January 08, 2012

I tell people the truth - where I work it is forbidden to have a cell-phone! If they want to contact me during the day then they can run the wrath of our telephone operator! I wont fill in cell-phone numbers on forms - if they insist then I have to go elseway (or give a fictitious number).

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written by Mistressofspice, January 09, 2012

Omg!

This is definitely not where it stops!

I have compainies rip my clients off, they send you a link a day and they subsequently charge you R 8.76 per day for spam, if you are on contract you don't even notice it, I mean really how many of us look at out itemized billing,in this case I complained to waspa and got a refund amounting to R 3500 for a client, who did not request the service.

Last week I got an SMS, it said, welcome to fun4chat ' blah blah blah, to opt out reply 'stop' subscription R 9,99 per day!

This my friend is a hoax, if you reply this actually use this as a subscription, and start to bill you. smilies/cry.gif