We have been with AT&T for a few years now and both have iPhones. This has been great for us, but we have had to evolve as the world of texting has taken over the voice to voice conversation. We have not yet made the jump to “unlimited family texting” on our plan. We both have 200 per month and since the upgrade and addition of iMessages we have been just fine. Well until this month, anyways.
We both have a long list of friends who have also upgraded their phones to allow for the FREE iMessage texting. We both know who those people are. The ones who are NOT on iMessage are the ones who we (sparingly) use our 200 texts on. Well this month, we both were text as normal…but I started to notice something. Sometimes my friends would appear green and sometimes they would appear blue. Blue is FREE, green goes against my 200. This made NO sense to me as these friends were iMessage most of the time.
I checked my texts for the month and was over??? How does this happen? I called AT&T and they said it all depended on where your friend was then they received the (what you thought was an iMessage) text. If they were near a 2G tower, then it went as a text message, going against my bank of 200. This is very frustrating. I begged and pleaded for a few of my friends to upgrade so we could “text for free!” and they did the upgrade.
Now I have to pay for what I thought was FREE. For a money saving mama…this is VERY frustrating. My solution going fwd? I am going to start using the “Text Now” app. All text messages are FREE on that. Yes, my text will come thru as a different phone number for my friends, but hey at least it’s FREE!
That $20 that I am saving by not getting unlimited texting will go a long way (with my coupons) in paying for groceries.
What has been your experience with AT&T and the new iMessage texting?
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