Mississippi class action lawsuit takes aim at US wireless carriers for SMS text messaging charges

Any parent that’s had their tween-to-teenaged child rack up stratospheric wireless bills knows intimately how expensive a few text messages can get. With a 160-character limit on every SMS text message, it can take more than a few text messages to express your thoughts – at 5 to 10 cents per message, those thoughts can get mighty pricey. And, it’s not just outgoing text messages that get charged to your monthly wireless bill – incoming text messages rack up the charges just as quickly as outgoing messages.

So much so that a new class-action lawsuit has been filed in a Mississippi federal court. The class-action names six US wireless carriers – AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless, Sprint (NYSE: S), T-Mobile (NYSE: DT), Alltel, US Cellular, Cellular South, Virgin Mobile – and seeks compensation for “unauthorized charges, wrongful collections and unjust enrichment.” Apparently, charging customers for receiving unsolicited text messages “without offering its customers the opportunity to avoid such charges by opting out of text messaging and refusing to disable its customers’ text messaging service,” is the complaint at the forefront of the class-action lawsuit. 

We’ll see how this class-action pans out. If it works out, the carriers named in the suit could be forced by court-order to make incoming SMS text messaging free for its customers. On the other hand, an out-of-court settlement could just lead to a measly credit to your monthly bill.

[Via: RCR News]