AshG
Easy target
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- Nov 5, 2008
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I know several of you here enjoy coaching and have either used or thought of using Remind at some point. You may want to find an alternative if you currently use it:
On 28 January, Verizon subscribers who receive updates on their children's school and sports activities will no longer receive messages from the Remind service. Verizon has begun levying addition charges to the service above and beyond what Remind and Twilio are able to afford to maintain their services. This has sent shockwaves through several teaching and coaching communities who rely on these services to reach parents and students quickly.
Verizon has been contacted and responded with a carefully crafted reply that places the onus of the situation not on the sudden rate increase to not be classified as Spam SMS but on the Remind and Twilio services for potentially having to charge parents, schools, and teams for enrolling in the service to make up for the new corporate charge structure.
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On 28 January, Verizon subscribers who receive updates on their children's school and sports activities will no longer receive messages from the Remind service. Verizon has begun levying addition charges to the service above and beyond what Remind and Twilio are able to afford to maintain their services. This has sent shockwaves through several teaching and coaching communities who rely on these services to reach parents and students quickly.
Verizon has been contacted and responded with a carefully crafted reply that places the onus of the situation not on the sudden rate increase to not be classified as Spam SMS but on the Remind and Twilio services for potentially having to charge parents, schools, and teams for enrolling in the service to make up for the new corporate charge structure.
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Hi, -----. We agree that schools and education-related institutions should not receive any fees for sending or receiving public service text messages.
A small fee to Twilio, a for-profit company, is intended to share costs incurred to help protect students, parents and teachers from spam and dangerous text messages over the Verizon network, while reducing fraud. That very small fee will be charged only to major text messaging aggregation companies such as Remind and Twilio– and not schools, parents or students.
If anybody claims you need to pay a text message fee to Verizon, they're not telling the truth.
Remind alone sends 1.6 billion text messages a year on the Verizon wireless network through Twilio, and Twilio sends more than 4.5 billion each year. The small fee on Twilio will pay for the work required to contain spam and fraud associated with this service.
Again, there is no Verizon fee to parents or schools. We’re now working through plans with Twilio and Remind so that they will not charge students, parents, educators or schools for this fee. - Jennifer