Pterodaktyl…

After my previous post on the cost of Tweets if you’re a 3 mobile customer, I contacted Twitter support to see what they had to say on the matter. They replied that the previous UK number (the one in use before the switch to benefit Australian customers) was still live if I wished to use it.

I programmed the old number back into my phonebook, checked my account balance (3 has a very nice free-to-access mobile site which gives you near real-time info on your monthly spend) and sent a test tweet. It went through just fine, but when I checked my account again a minute later I had exactly the same number of free texts remaining and 25p more on my bill.

Puzzled, I dug out my itemised bills and went over them again. It seems that at some point between April 17th and May 3rd, the destination category for the old UK number changed from “Personal Numbering Service” to “Guernsey Mobile” and began to incur a 25p charge for every message.

I’ve contacted Twitter about this and they say that changes in fees are down to the carrier. Perhaps 3 noticed a large volume of texts to this number and decided to cash in by moving it out of the monthly allowance into a premium category? Let’s face it, Twitter probably doesn’t have the mobile carriers jumping for joy. Whereas you might once have had to send 10 texts to update 10 people on what you were up to, now it just takes one tweet to reach all 10 - and the carrier still has to deliver all 10 of those messages (OK, I realise the load will be spread between a bunch of companies, but it still equates to more deliveries than sends).

So tweeting by text is going to hurt your wallet if you are a 3 customer in the UK, but it’s not the end of the world, at least if you have a data plan. After my last post, Kevin Cawley pointed me in the direction of his J2ME app, TinyTwitter. This runs on any Java enabled mobile phone, and lets you send tweets (including direct ones), read and filter your friend’s tweets and do pretty much everything Twitter-related that you might care to think of. The only hitch for me is that, along with all J2ME apps on my phone, TinyTwitter can only connect to the ‘net when I’m in range of a 3G base station. Not much of a problem if you live in an urban area, but out here in the wilds of Devon 3G can be hard to find, even if you stand on a metal box. Luckily there is also the mobile version of the Twitter site at m.twitter.com which provides a useful backup.

After noticing yesterday that the balance of my 3 mobile account had dropped by several pounds, I spent the best part of an hour trying to figure out where the money could be going. My contract plan includes 75 minutes of talk time and 600 texts, and I hadn’t come close to using up either of those.

Finally, after checking the balance, trying different things and then checking again to see if it had changed, I found the culprit - Twitter. Every single tweet sent from my phone has been costing £0.25!

I’m pretty certain that when I started using Twitter I made quite sure the messages were free to send, so I’m guessing this is down to the new UK number they introduced last week.

The Twitter site has this to say on phone charges:

How Twitter will affect your phone bill depends on your phone plan, and text messaging allowance. Some people pay a per-message charge of ten cents or more. Some people have an allotted number of text messages monthly. Some (lucky!) people have unlimited text plans. Twitter can be addicting, so check your plan to make sure you don’t get a huge bill.

A special word of caution for International folks: some carriers (such as Orange) don’t charge an international fee to use the Twitter UK number. Others consider it an international number and charge up to .15 per message. Remember to check your phone plan for international rates; be aware that standard messaging rates vary by carrier, and do apply.

So I’m guessing they’ve switched from a number that 3 consider to be UK to one they have down as international. I’ll email the folks at Twitter and see whether they have any suggestions, in the meantime I won’t be sending many tweets when I’m out and about!

Update: I just dug out a bill, and yes, tweets to the old number are listed as free, so it’s definitely down to the new number.