Liz Kolb, on her blog writes about a new phenomenon called BillToMobile, which allows users to charge items to their cell phone bills. This seems like a huge convenience but parents be warned! A quick look at the site will tell you that this new ad campaign is targeted at tweens, teens, and young adults!.
From the BillToMobile FAQ:
BilltoMobile is an alternative payment technology coming to the U.S. market that allows consumers to charge their purchases from an online merchant to their mobile phone bill. There are no fees to use BilltoMobile for consumers. Currently, BilltoMobile is working with U.S. mobile carriers to integrate the service and make it available to consumers. As long as your mobile phone can receive SMS text messages, then you are able to use BilltoMobile. There is absolutely no registration, pre-registration, setup, or sign-up process required in order to checkout at an online merchant using BilltoMobile. When choosing your payment option from an online merchant that offers BilltoMobile, the only thing you need is your mobile phone. The transaction is billed onto your mobile phone statement for you to pay along with your regular mobile charges.
Seemingly, anyone with a cell phone can enroll in this. Parents, please talk to your children about this. Consumer debt is at an all time high in this country, as evidenced by the biggest recession since the great depression.
Why is this scary?
- How about lost phones? I’ve misplaced mine several times and I don’t want someone charging their online purchases to my AT&T Bill!
- Are most students responsible enough to have such a powerful service available at their fingertips? (Notice that I said MOST.) I know that I was not have near the responsibility to handle such things when I was 12 or 13!
- How about bullying? Scenario: Student A makes student B mad. Student B retaliates by charging exorbitant fees to student A’s phone (while at school). Student A’s parents are mad (as they should be). Who ends up having to clean up the mess? The school? The parents? The courts? The taxpayer.
This is a bad idea on so many different levels. I hope when this does hit the U.S. market, we as consumers will rebel against it by shutting off the service on our phones (no matter how convenient it is)!
1 response so far ↓
1
Dan
// Feb 27, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Losing your mobile phone is probably not a problem because it appears the service requires two factor authentication, one factor being a pin code. Presuming that pin code is not the same one as the phone’s pin code, which could be found by someone else if the phone is not locked, then someone who simply found your phone wouldn’t have a way of using Billtomobile.
Second comment: why do bloggers so often post comments without doing any homework? Ireally find this annoying. All the blogger had to do was go to Billtomobile’s website and they would have very easily found the same information I found there.
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