Deceptive Is Deceptive, Any Way You Look At It

Apparently some stupid kid in America with woefully inadequate developed etiquette skills sent almost 15,000 texts in a month (http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/teen-sends-14528-text-messages-in-a-month/2009/01/13/1231608669445.html) - far be it for me to criticise, all of them happened to be on unlimited texting plans which does mitigate one of my primary objections to this insidious form of communication but it still irks me intensely that phone companies continue to tell us that we are getting $100 or $200 or $300 worth of calls for the low, low price of $50 (or $30 or $75).  The fact of the matter is that we are only getting the lower amount worth of calls because that is what we are paying them.  Deceptive pricing is deceptive pricing.  Considering that the the true cost of sending the small packets of data that are SMSs is microscopically small (http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html) it's criminal that these companies continue to charge so much and then they have the audacity to tell us they're being generous with their infinitely confusing plans.