Buyer Beware!!

I just finished my first BIG group project! It was for my Advertising class, and it was called Buyer Beware. Essentially the idea behind the project was to find something (a product, service, etc) that could be potentially risky or misleading for consumers, and research it. I ended up being the only female in my group, and worked with three other boys. Oh sorry, MEN! The project ended up being a success. From the moment we chose our topic, I think we all knew it was a good one.

My group chose to investigate "text short codes". Now for those of you who don't know what those are....than too bad. No, no I'm just kidding...they are hard to explain though. Just take a quick look at the short clip below, and you might recognize it as a tv commercial that plays over, and over, and over again while you're trying to watch your favourite show-




So basically a text short code is used when you are purchasing services directly from your cellphone. Typically the ones that are offered are ringtones, wallpapers (dancing bunnies, teddybears, etc), contests, voting options (American idol, DWTS), and some really pointless stuff like horoscopes and "joke of the day."

First we began by deciding who actually uses these services. We unanimously decided that we were all way too smart, and that they must be targeted at younger users. Since the ads are flashy and fun we decided that their target demographic was teenagers, aged 13-17. Technically, these age groups are not supposed to subscribe to these services, but most of them don't know that. The fine print on most of these ads is so small and blurry that it is hard to see if there is even a charge for the services. But a more savvy consumer (us, adults) would know that nothing is free, and we would be wary of texting in for these services.

From there it was decided that we would examine these "text short codes" from several different angles. In order to confirm that this service was legal, Neil contacted the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (they regulate text messaging in the country.) He managed to speak with Marc Choma, the Director of Communications for the CWTA, and was told the following, "There are no unsolicited short code messages. Protection of privacy is mandatory as part of the terms and conditions of leasing a short code." Sure, it sounds like a lot of corporate jargin, but what it basically means is that these services are legal. If the print ad, commercial or online ad has a terms and conditions listed somewhere in the body of the advertisement, than it is good to go. But since these advertisements are so distracting in other areas, the fine print can go unnoticed.

Despite being assured that these services were legal we still wanted to investigate further to see if anyone had experienced any "scam" scenarios with the product. Teammate John looked into some questionable scenarios and found that these "text short codes" can be deceiving. One woman from the UK had a text message sent to her cell phone which read, "I fancy you." Wanting to find out who her mystery man was, she texted back. Little did she know she was subscribing to a text code scam. Her cell phone bill reflected numerous charges from an unknown source, and she ran into some billing issues. When searching through internet references it is evident that this is not an isolated incident.

Group member Emannuel was brave enough to try a couple of these short codes from his own personal cell phone. We needed to try these out first hand to fully understand how they worked. He subscribed to an online quiz to find out who his celebrity love match was, and it turned out be Natalie Portman! The initial cost for the service was a miniscule charge of $1.25. But the next day he got another message from the same service, but this time it was a daily horoscope. The charges would continue at $1.25/day until he texted a number back to opt out of the service. He also subscribed to a billboard advertisement for Curve 94.3 where he could put his vote in for whether he thought that the band Pearl Jam was good or bad. Driving by the billboard the fine print is easily missed, but it does say that each time you vote you will be charged 50 cents. The fine print is located at the very bottom of the billboard in small text. The constant here is that the charges and/or fine prints are misleading.

My job was to get our target demographic to fill out surveys with the following questions:

Have you ever used these services?

Is there a charge for these services?

How old must you be to use the services?

Do you read the fine print of the ad? What does it say?

Any experiences, good or bad, with the service?

As you can see these are pretty standard questions, and having the target demographic fill out the surveys would give us a good grasp of their knowledge of the service, and if they are using it.
But since we don't have any teenage friends, I was went about trying to get clearance into high schools. I thought it would be easy, I would walk in there with my surveys, speak with the principal and get into a class, hand them out, and leave. Apparently I was wrong. These teenagers were nearly impossible to reach. Every school I contacted (there were about 15-20) told me I needed to get in contact with the school Superintendent. Now these guys are also impossible to reach, as they were either, "out of town", "out of the office," or "in a meeting." I guess they have no knowledge of customer service, or don't have to practice it cause they work for a school division and not a McDonalds (not saying you get good service at McDonalds, but I needed a comparable!).

I had to scrap that idea, and instead decided to use a more underhanded approach to the whole thing. From what I've seen with my fellow classmates projects, this was pretty standard. I gave the survey to my sister, her boyfriend and my cousin. Their ages are 13, 14 and 16. They got 50 surveys filled out and some interesting statistics were generated from their findings:

• 35 out of 50 do not read fine print
  
• 17 out of 50 said you had to be 18 or older to use the service. From those 17, 10 of them had used it anyway.
  
• 20 out of 50 answered "no" when asked if there is a charge for the service.
• 21 out of 50 have subscribed to the service. (some of them had several times)
  

As you can plainly see, the target demographic does use the service. On top of that, they have minimal knowledge of it's monetary implications.

!!! WARNING!!!

As a final disclaimer, and as you can probably already see for yourselves, text short codes are misleading. Not always, but most of the time. If you are ever unsure of what you are subscribing to, just don't press the numbers on that cell phone! For you teenagers, you don't want to get in trouble from your parents so if your name isnt the one on your phone contract, do not subscribe. Your parents could end up forking out A LOT of money if text short code services are improperly used, and you will be grounded! Right Mom, and Dad?

In all seriousness, feel free to use the service, we can't stop you, but consider yourselves warned.....