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Question of the Day: How do you normally pay for purchases in stores?
Vodacom MMSs: Spam or not?
- Thread starter kaspaas
- Start date
kaspaas
Expert Member
V3G - what is the truth on this?
bad journalism, bad PR or actual fact?
bad journalism, bad PR or actual fact?
Unsolicited bulk messaging at a specific target market promoting the use of a product, which costs more than a std SMS, is marketing and SPAM surely?
As mentioned it is open to interpretation due to weak legislation.
I don't mind myself, but charging people to opt out of something that they never asked for in the first place is a little bit of a cheek.
stix
Expert Member
// little bit of a cheek ???
// its downright wrong
// its downright wrong
stix
Expert Member
Telecoms Businesses in SA and Ethics should never be mentioned on the same page
Skeptik
Banned
I don't believe anything was 'faulty'. They've been doing this kind of guerilla marketing for years.
No - the appalling thing is we laude the mobile operators because we assume they're less horrific than telkom.... jaw hits floor...
(appalling, and then we complain about government)
Occasionally though a little ray of reality shines through their haze of b.s.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
To be quite honest; bad investigative journalism coupled with confusion between different events. Here's what happened:
On the 4th of Jan, FIN24's Garth Theunissen published this article:
http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/com...px?Nav=ns&lvl2=comp&ArticleID=1518-24_2051041. The opening paragraph reads:
The article then goes on to imply that to unsubscribe from the Xmas and New Year MMS's was charged at 50c / MMS.
He quoted a 'Vodacom Source' and also gave the MMS unsubscribe text.
All this were factually incorrect and we made contact with the journalist to find out where he got this info. Turns out he had completely the wrong information, there never was a Vodacom source, the MMS he received was NOT the Xmas or New Year ones, he could not remember what MMS's he received, etc.
After our discussions, the journalist then undertook to publish an apology and withdrawal of the previous article. All this was discussed in the Vodacom thread.
Not sure if this new article is the one that supposed to clarify the facts. It, for sure, does not.
This new article again confuses many different aspects and take various concepts out of context.
Here are the facts:
Over New Year and Xmas, Vodacom sent out a number of MMS's to mostly users who have never or seldom used MMS and would appear not to know the capabilities of MMS's including:
- Rich Multimedia content
-- You can include audio, video and long (5000 character) text messages
- Same costings as SMS.
-- Instead of sending a standard 160 character text message, for the same price, you can get much more creative.
The whole idea was to get subscribers doing more fun stuff with their hand sets. They were going to send Xmas and Happy New Year type SMS's in any case, why not use MMS?
To seed this, MMS samples were sent to the above mentioned subscribers, AT NO COST.
These MMS did not try and sell anything, thus they were not commercial in nature and therefore not Spam, which is defined as unsolicited (it was), commercial (it was not) messages.
But we knew some people (the quoted 0.02%) would not want to even receive the sample MMS's, so we put an opt-out in the MMS's.
The Opt-out CLEARLY states the unsubscribe SMS is not charged.
The MMS campaign was a great success, many Vodacom subscribers used MMS's instead of SMS's for their season wishes. And it cost them the same.
This is also reflected in the very low unsubscribe rates of 0.02%.
In addition there was the 'Funny Face' campaign earlier in December, run along similar lines.
Lastly there was a retention campaign and we believe the journo got a MMS thanking him for renewing his contract! HE somehow confused this MMS with the season MMS's....
On the issue of opt-out: There is one central database where all opt-out requests are stored, so once you've opted out, you should not receive any more messages until you opt-in again. There were some cases where an second message were sent after an opt-out and those are being investigated. Probably a timing thing on the systems.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
I've found MMS' useful for sharing ringtones.Are you certain they cost the same, though? What's the size limit before it exceeds SMS costs, if there is one?
Let me check if there is a 'cut-off' I know on some campaigns there is but not sure if it applies to all MMS's.
What size is a ring-tone normally?
kaspaas
Expert Member
Thanks for giving the other side of the story.
It is good to get both sides of an issue before one starts to shout.
I have the feel that V3G's version is closer to the truth than Fin24's. There were a few dubious stories in the press that week.
However - I remember quite a few complaints about MMS'es arriving at real bad times like 2 in the morning
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vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
I remember quite a few complaints about MMS'es arriving at real bad times like 2 in the morning
Yes, it did happen. The MMS's were only sent during business hours but sometimes the handsets (for whatever reason) would not retrieve them till much later, resulting in your phone beeping at 2am! Not good....
We traced some of these instances after a few myADSL forumites helped us and we could clearly see this happening.
To try and further reduce the chance of it happening again, we made the send cut-off time very early.
There also were a few instances of the same subscriber getting the message multiple times. Again, traces show it was only submitted once but retrieved multiple times.
Turns out, not all handsets support the MMS capabilities in the expected way. We actually intensified our MMS testing of handsets after these events to try and catch these problems before certifying a new handset.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
As explained, on Vodacom, cost is the same.
Agree, that's why the opt-out's were NOT charged.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
Agree, these messages were not commercial in nature and did not advertise any service or product.
Spam is normally defined as unsolicited, commercial, bulk messaging.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
Agree, there were no 'faulty' MMS's.
Thx V3G and good show.
Q's though, the costing on the Vodacom site says the following for the contract customers at least.
MMS (All day) 0.80 per 300KB 0.80 per 300KB
SMS (Off-Peak: per message) 0.35 0.35
SMS (Peak: per message) 0.80 0.80
There is a cost difference there, unless I am being a total poopal
Commercial = Any (company/operation) in the commercial marketplace (does not have to directly sell you something, simply market the service. Is selling, ie, commercial! Gee whiz isn't the small print nice.
commercial:
1. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of commerce.
2. engaged in commerce.
3. prepared, done, or acting with sole or chief emphasis on salability, profit, or success: a commercial product; His attitude toward the theater is very commercial.
4. able to yield or make a profit: We decided that the small oil well was not commercial.
5. suitable or fit for a wide, popular market: Communications satellites are gradually finding a commercial use.
What happened to: at least some?!
Spam = Spam (no matter how you seek to justify it)