Earlier today, we covered T-Mobile’s long-overdue response to EZ Texting’s lawsuit filed last Friday over the blockage of SMS messages on the T-Mobile network. In short, T-Mobile blames EZ Texting for not following pre-defined “processes” as defined by the MMA’s U.S. Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Programs.
Shortly thereafter, EZ Texting fired back, issuing the following response to the new allegations posed by T-Mobile:
“T-Mobile’s statement is inconsistent with the reasons that were communicated to Ez Texting when T-Mobile began its unlawful blocking.
T-Mobile admits that it is blocking all text messages exchanged between its customers and Ez Texting’s customers. T-Mobile now claims that it is blocking Ez Texting because we didn’t follow some unidentified “process” to T-Mobile’s private satisfaction. In any event, T-Mobile’s reason for blocking Ez Texting is irrelevant as T-Mobile has no right to block Ez Texting in the first place. One thing is for sure, however, T-Mobile has never stated that any of its customers have ever complained about text messages from Ez Texting. That’s because T-Mobile’s customers want to exchange text messages with Ez Texting’s customers. Consumers have a right to exchange text messages with whomever they like, just like any other type of call.
Ez Texting has reached out to T-Mobile to resolve this blocking amicably, but since the blocking started, T-Mobile has refused to communicate with Ez Texting. Unfortunately, then, Ez Texting can only vindicate its rights through the judicial process, which the court has agreed to hear on an accelerated basis. T-Mobile has been ordered to respond to Ez Texting’s complaint by Wednesday, September 22, 2010. Ez Texting will reply on Friday, September 24, 2010, and a hearing is set for Thursday, September 30, 2010.”
EZ Text is out of line. Any party in and familiar with the mobile marketing space should be aware of the MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines and also the T-Mobile Playbook. There are very strict guidelines about what is allowed and how to make a submission to a carrier. EZ Text thinks they can circumvent rules and do what they want and now they are facing the consequence. I have seen this happen many times to green content providers who refuse to believe rules apply to their services. Rules are in place to protect consumers. FOLLOW THE RULES.
Can someone shed some light on this?
Unless Weedmaps was using a dedicated shortcode that EZ-texting set-up and T-mobile approved, it will be interesting to see if there is even a case. Many mobile marketing companies provide low cost text messaging programs on shared shortcodes but that is in violation of carrier’s requirements. Although the carriers have not been strict on this point because 80% of the mobile marketing programs utilize shared shortcodes it will be interesting to see if T-mobile plays that card.____I am surprised EZ-texting did not have a warning in their T&C's that using a shared shortcode does carry risks if one client gets blocked then all clients on that shortcode are blocked. I hope EZ-texting immediately starts to recertify and obtain T-mobile's approval for that shortcode, otherwise their clients will wait even longer than the normal 6 weeks. __
Related, but different: Just received notice from SMS Aggregator that they are increasing their charges if we want to serve any T-Mobile customers.
Considering there are emerging "free" sub-SMS communication channels opening up via Apps, I can only hope that all of the Carrier SMS services collapse.