A few days ago, The New York Times pointed out that many young mobile phone customers are receiving bills for hundreds of dollars as a result of intense use of text messaging. The article says that many of these customers are cancelling their service when they receive their first bill that contains a large, unexpected charge. If the text messaging maven is a member of a family plan, quite often they are forced by other members of their families to come up with creative ways to pay the bill (like turning over large portions of part-time job paychecks).

It's outrageous that current mobile phone industry practice in the United States is to charge $0.10 for sending a text message and $0.02 to $0.10 for receiving a text message. Practices like these are a surefire way to increase uncollectible bills, hurt the credit ratings of young customers on their own billing plans, and create discord within families that have the means to pay. How is this a good situation for the mobile carriers? Rate plans should be restructured so that a bundle of messages is included in most plans and the absense of such a bundle is clearly indicated by the sales person at the time of the sale.

Nevertheless I see the current situation as a customer satisfaction success story waiting to happen. The first carrier that contacts each customer who receives a huge bill due to text messaging and offers to retroactively change the customer's plan to reduce the text messaging charges will receive the undying affection of customers avoiding hundreds of dollars in charges. More importantly, that carrier will reduce its churn and increase its revenue per account by charging those customer a bit more each month for text messaging bundles. [ Registration required to read The New York Times article. ]