Free? I Think Not

My colleague said it best when he wondered aloud: "Empangan kerja pecah ke hari ni?" Literal translation: Did the work dam break? In a way I think it did. The whole day I've been running along at a breakneck pace, trying to get several dozen things sorted out, with none of them having any actual bearing on my career as an academic. Ain't life grand? To top it all off, another long lost "friend" suddenly called me up to rope me into her "aura water purifier" business. Bleh.

I'm tempted to rant about this today, but I'll store up some more angst first. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, during my lunch break today I played local internet lore expert at my faculty. The reason being I noticed a lot of anger directed at this site. It purports to provide free SMS service to anyone with a mobile phone. Sounds great, but recently several people have directed complaints about the site, and how they've been saddled with outrageous mobile phone bills. I've had the opportunity to test out the service myself previously while trying to locate my mysterious admirer/stalker, and I'm only too happy to say that those claims of heavy costs incurred, while true, arose simply because the so-called victims never paid any attention to the Terms and Conditions of the service.

You see, simply registering for the sms.ac service does not charge your mobile account in any way. This is explicitly stated in this page and I quote:

What is the AutoPay QuikCredits service (Premium SMS)?

In networks that SMS.ac currently has Premium SMS, when you activate your phone, you are permitting SMS.ac to automatically add smsCredits to your SMS.ac account each time your smsCredits balance goes below zero (0).You will not need to purchase smsCredits on our website each time you run out because the AutoPay QuikCredits will show on your monthly mobile phone bill sent from your local mobile carrier. You can view all transaction records by visiting the "myCredits" page on our website.

You can opt out at any time from this premium service. However you will no longer receive your 8 FREE Introductory smsCredits. To opt out from the AutoPay QuikCredits service, sign in to our website, and go to the "myAccount" page on our website and turn OFF this premium service.

Now by simply reading the T&C, and choosing to opt out (or in my case, specifying manual reloads) one will be informed that the service is not in fact free. Sending SMS messages use up credits that you purchase by charging your mobile account in addition to the free 8 credits you receive everyday. Those of you who have received the widely spread disgruntled email (which includes a scanned Maxis bill) will notice that on the bill itself, the mobile account is charged every two days on average. We can safely infer that the person, unaware of the T&C, continued sending the so called "free" SMSes until he/she ran out of credits and the system promptly billed the amount for recharging to his mobile.

Simple, isn't it? Anyway, this person then proceeded to get incensed when receiving his/her bill, and demanded recompense from the company involved, which of course does not make sense since they had already stated their terms! I guess what happened was simply the user got excited by the thought of being able to send "free" SMSes and promptly clicked on "I Agree" (face it folks, who really reads the EULA anyway in this day and age? Guess how most of the spyware gets on our PCs). What many internet users still don't get is that internet transactions can have consequences like any other transaction in the real world. Just because it's done virtually doesn't mean you're totally protected.

Think about it. Would you buy a car or a piece of property without analysing the small print? When you click on that "I Agree" button, you're essentially signing off and accepting any consequence (good or bad) of the product. Simple as that. Hopefully this example will teach us a thing or two about madly rushing into anything with the word "free", which unfortunately seems to be a still prevalent disease in our evolving society.

Like my father says: There's no such thing as a free lunch.

As I write this, I've just finished posting a reply to the purported RM 250.00 Famous Amos Cookie recipe, an old hoax that somehow altered itself Malaysian style. I'll probably comment on it later, and yes, this is how I spend my lunch breaks: trying to light some candles in the still dark recesses of the Malaysian internet user's mind.

Cheerio!

**Update: In case anyone else receives the Famous Amos email, lookie here:

Trend Micro's explanation of the hoax

Popular urban legend site snopes.com does the same