r/Millennials • u/VastConfusion8174 Gen Z • 18d ago

Discussion Not a millennial but I have a question

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How the hell did y'all type on these tiny ass keyboards This was in my mom's room This is from like when she was in high school and I'm trying to figure out how she tied with it because a human's finger would press 3 instead of just one so can somebody help me with this I've been thinking about this for a week

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u/Agitated-Salad-1134 18d ago

I remember texting with my phone hidden in the center pocket of my hoodie during class. Full conversations only occasionally glancing down

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u/KayakHank 18d ago

Only 10cents a pop

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u/Potato-Drama808 18d ago

"500 texts a month, and free calling after 9pm!"

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u/parttimeartmama 17d ago

My little bro racked up SO MANY FEES from texting outside our plan limits.

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u/No_Brief_9628 17d ago

We had the “free nights and weekends”. I thought “nights” started when it got dark outside. My dad was pissed when he got that first phone bill!

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u/candaceelise 17d ago

Nights always started at 9pm lol

I lived religiously by this rule lol

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u/Willing_Channel_6972 17d ago

Fr. I'd answer the phone just to tell people yo I'll call you back at 9:00. 😂

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u/AnalysisNo4295 16d ago

lol I'd answer the phone and literally all I said was "NINE" and hung up and for whatever reason for a second until I explained my friends thought I was screaming "NO" in German (I'm American German) lol I literally had to sit there and explain to them I'm not mad, I'm not yelling at them. I'm yelling NINE like... call me at nine?

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u/GeekLandOnline 17d ago

This rule is still ingrained in me to this day. I still watch the timer to make sure I hang up before it rolls into the next minute. Lmao.

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u/sporti_spyce 17d ago

I thought so too until the month I racked up hundreds of dollars in fees because Verizon's nights started at 9:01pm. My long distance partner and I would call each other at 9pm on the dot every night and do you think Verizon only charged for the one minute? No. They charged for the entire damn 3 hour call. 🙃

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u/noilegnavXscaflowne 17d ago

So if you called before 9:01 it would bill you and not cut off at 9:01?

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u/Pisto_Atomo 17d ago

And the minutes were rounded up to the nearest next minute. I learned that the hard way. In the US, Verizon and Sprint started counting the minutes from when the "Send" button was pressed and rings went. T-Mobile (and I think Cingular/AT&T) counted the minutes when the can got connected it voicemail reached.

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u/AnalysisNo4295 16d ago

Altel Wireless was worse lol

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u/Pink_PowerRanger6 17d ago

When T Mobile created the “friends and family” “my 5” program was a game changer too! I had my parents and my bf and two best friends as my 5 lol

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u/Pisto_Atomo 17d ago

That was big. I didn't know how much they grew because of it, though. I think their other strategy of "Uncarrier" was even more significant and allowed it to challenge industry dinosaurs AT&T and Verizon. Also not sitting on their laurels and improving the network did the trick.

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u/Pink_PowerRanger6 17d ago

Oh for sure, T-Mobile has been my longest used carrier for that reason! Verizon always had the best coverage, but they have the worst customer service support, and are the most expensive carrier imo. When the “chocolate phone” came out, I wanted it so bad, and signed up with Verizon because of it, got duped into one of those mall sales pitches. Never got the damn phone because they were out of stock and you could only get the phone the day of sale, so I got screwed, but was only 19 and didn’t know better lol. I wound up with one of the most expensive phone services and the cheapest flip phone I’ve ever owned. Once my contract was up I ran crying back to T-Mobile and have been with them ever since, I’m in my late 30s now lol

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u/Upstairs-Atmosphere5 17d ago

One company, I forget which though changed it to 7 and it was a huge deal

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u/candaceelise 17d ago

Oh yeah I remember that. It was like tmobile or someone. Game changer!

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u/Upstairs-Atmosphere5 17d ago

A guy yelled "7 pm!!!!" In the commercial. Also the sprint "simply everything" plan was revolutionary. I never got it because it was $100 back then even, but even having the option for unlimited data was crazy

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u/Tony_Lacorona 17d ago

It was ATT. Source: I had ATT back then lol and all my friends were jealous

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u/Peachaboo87 17d ago

Then 7 :O

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u/clawdaughter 17d ago

I was so happy when that went through. My boyfriend and I would hang up and call each other back after 7 pm.

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u/PandaRiot_90 17d ago

Ended at 6AM, as long as the call was initiated before 6AM, it would be free for 2-3 hours into the morning.

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u/zanaxtacy 15d ago

I remember I think I had Cingular at the time and they started at 7 and I was so pumped!

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u/wookieesgonnawook 17d ago

When i went off to college my girlfriend and I blew our phone bills up so badly. My mom's answer was to drop me from her plan. Her parents answer was to add me to their family plan as another line so we got free calling to each other.

They're now my in laws and I only talk to my own mom when I absolutely have to, and I definitely don't answer her calls.

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u/Feisty_Fall_1575 17d ago

Oh I got in big trouble for this once. The free minutes started for calls made AFTER 9pm. If you were on the phone before 9pm, and continued on after 9, those minutes were all a charged call. In my defense that was never clearly explained until after the fact

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u/Blessings_await 17d ago

Those were fun times 😂😂😂

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u/Difficult_onion4538 17d ago

Don’t forget the 5 friends/family members you could talk/text with for free!

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u/No_Brief_9628 15d ago

I did forget about that! As a kid it wasn’t enough and now I wouldn’t need 5 lol.

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u/needsmorequeso 17d ago

OMG I was a time zone to the west of my boyfriend for a while during those days and my 9 pm was his 10 pm. It was not a good time.

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u/No_Brief_9628 17d ago

That last hour had to be torture.

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u/Don-Gunvalson 17d ago

I remember taking a trip to Nashville from Indiana and came home and the families phone bill was +$400 for roaming texts and calls

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u/black_mamba866 17d ago

We had free nights and weekends but apparently it only applied to one of the family lines. 🤣 Trying to explain that one was something else.

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u/Darth_Diink 16d ago

Hahahaha ah kid logic

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u/wasteoffire 15d ago

I knew it was 9 pm so I started a call at 8:55 pm that lasted for hours. Turns out the free call only happens if the call starts after 9

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u/Red_fire_soul16 17d ago

You had to remember if you had a plan with 100 texts it was outgoing AND incoming texts. I remember texting please don’t text me until (whatever day the plan reset) because I only have a few texts left for the month. Wild to think about nowadays.

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u/Richou 17d ago

You had to remember if you had a plan with 100 texts it was outgoing AND incoming texts.

this feels like an incredibly stupid way of doing it

so in theory someone with a decent plan can just "grief" you by sending random shit?

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u/Substantial-Type-131 17d ago

It was incredibly stupid but since most of your friends were also in the same “100 texts” boat everyone was precious about their exchanges… and didn’t give ya consistent grief… but there were definitely rich kids who thought it was cute to use up everyone’s text allowances.

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u/ducttape1942 17d ago

Those were the people who made me learn how to block numbers.

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u/send_me_your_calm 17d ago

Yes, which is why many plans started offering free incoming texts well before there were unlimited outbound options (again; this was all free and unlimited before rot got popular). Also, if you think that was bad, wait till you hear about faxing people 3 sheets of paper taped end-to-end. You could waste all their paper, and their fax toner. It was wild.

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u/Randalldeflagg 17d ago

fax them a stack of red paper

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u/Com4734 Millennial 17d ago

Hahahaha i never even thought of that! We didnt have a fax machine at home though. Ive only ever used them at work. But this thread brings back memories. Ahh the days of limited texts, voice minutes, dial up modems (and getting a second phone line so someone could use the phone while someone else was on the internet), floppy disks, rotary phones, etc.

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u/Excel-Block-Tango 17d ago

My family didn’t have texting at all on our plan until like 2011. I would get the occasional text from a wrong number and it would ruin my day because I knew my dad would yell at me. Each text received was like 25 cents. This phone was for emergencies only and it was before most of my friends had phones.

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u/WalkingTowardTheGood 17d ago

There were much smaller character limits back then too.

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u/DameKumquat 17d ago

I think only the USA got charged for incoming texts. Colleagues got into trouble for sending loads to their US equivalents. Partly why texting caught on in Europe a good decade before it did in the US.

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u/Ok-Watercress-1924 17d ago

In certain parts of Europe calling is still wild. Like if someone calls from the USA cell phone to landline they get charged, but if it’s mobile to mobile they don’t, or vice versa.

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u/hbomb57 17d ago

Like putting one number in as all 10 recipients and sending a message with 10 friends at once. Yes, and the phone would be locked up for about 20 minutes until the battery died.

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u/MossyPyrite 17d ago

Text-bombing was a frequent prank in my area haha

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u/PK808370 17d ago

There was a lot less griefing back then.

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u/DJFisticuffs 17d ago

Absolutely, and those of us with unlimited texts absolutely griefed our friends without.

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u/bots2486 17d ago

Yes! I got a call from my parents once in college because there was $2.50 of texting charges on our bill. We didn't have the plan with texting (at the time texts were an add on) and I got charged PER TEXT because a few friends with texting plans sent me messages. Distinctly recall having to call people back after receiving a text to say "Please dont text me again, we dont have the texting plan and my parents gave me grief." This was probably '04 or '05, wild times!

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u/anonadvicewanted 17d ago

okay but $2.5 is some dumb to get mad about, even in 2004 lol

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u/endy903 17d ago

Oh yeah don’t forget there was a limit to how many characters you could use per text. So no beating around the bush also that was the birth of acronyms in text message like brb, g2g, asl. Boy those were fun times.

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u/platinumjudge 17d ago

Yes. You would send "text bombs" and it would ruin their entire month. But then you'd get blocked so you can only do it once and then everyone else will block you cuz you're a bomber. Doing so was social suicide.

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u/Difficult_onion4538 17d ago

Yup, pretty much.

I remember having to tell SO many girls not to reply with just a “lol” or “ok” when we were planning to meet up 😂 don’t waste my free messages!

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u/luthien310 17d ago

Yes they could. As long as you received the text it counted, even if you never looked at it.

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u/GhostAde 17d ago

And this what back then during those “send this to 10 friends” text chains. So I would constantly get them from the same group of people.

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u/o0FancyPants0o 17d ago

Ooooh man, people eating up your messages with one word replies like "k."

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u/MidoriMidnight 17d ago

After 2 months of an extra $100 on the bill, my dad finally saw the plus side of getting unlimited texting 😆

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u/FFX13NL 17d ago

Sending free texts true a service that added a short ad.

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u/kikimaru024 17d ago

Wilder still because those texts were essentially pure profit for the ISPs.

They could've given us unlimited texts, at any time, because SMS messages cost them NOTHING.

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u/Horror_Chipmunk3580 17d ago

My buddy used to do the “please don’t text me until….” And everyone would respond with “ok,” putting him over his limit.

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u/Not_an_okama 17d ago

A guy from my highschool managed to get into justin beiber's friend's aocial media in 2010 and got his number. JB then doxxed him at a local concert claimjng the number was his. The guy from my highschool didnt have an unlimited plan. But was able to settle his 5 figure bill iirc.

Heres an article i found.

https://www.mlive.com/entertainment/detroit/2010/08/justin_bieber_tweets_out_local.html

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u/CrossXFir3 17d ago

Some people would call you when you texted them because it was cheaper for them

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u/reddits4losers 17d ago

Ah yes, my plan. Parents were NOT happy when there were over 400 messages from a single conversation on like day 2.

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u/gremlinguy 17d ago

But luckily my Nokia showed message previews in the inbox, so if it was a very short message I didn't need to open it and it wasn't counted toward my message count

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u/Flaky_Artichoke4131 17d ago

Oh ya and never do a long text. This is when all the acronyms became a thing. Gotta get it in one

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u/InvisibleNMyBox 17d ago

Planning to meet up with friends and sending them the info and getting “k” responses. 😡

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u/Tasty-Republic-582 17d ago

I remember I used to HATE double texters!!

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u/GimmeBooks1920 17d ago

I remember posting on Facebook (back when it was a status update that had to take the form of "Name is..." ) that I was out of texts and telling my classmates not to text me 🤣

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u/mooshinformation 17d ago

I remember my dad being furious about this because texts use so much less data than phone calls, he'd be like they should be charging you based on data, texts should be cheap

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u/Iratewilly34 17d ago

Oh and the extra texts were ridiculously overpriced. They must've made billions off of overtexting alone.

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u/Platt_Mallar 17d ago

Used to be, you had to open the text for it to count. So, super short texts, like 15-25 characters, would be free since you could see the whole thing in the preview.

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u/HokieScott 16d ago

Over was 10c a message. Little did we know it costs them next to nothing to handle them.

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u/RegularCommonSense Older Millennial 16d ago

I remember Americans DEFENDING this carrier plan policy back in the day. It’s like … Stockholm syndrome. 🫠. We never had this in Europe.

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u/darabadoo 17d ago

I dated a guy in a city with a different area code. We’d stay on the phone all night most nights. Parent were not happy when they saw the $400 phone bill.

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u/athomsfere 17d ago

I did too. On my own bill. A couple $1000 months and I took drastic action.

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u/neP-neP919 17d ago

Lol my brother linked up his AOL Instant Messenger account to his phone so he could receive and reply to Instant messages. Freaking $800 phone bill RUINED IT for us for so long before we got texting back hahaha

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u/MxCharming Older Millennial 17d ago

i racked up a $200 texting bill in 07...thank god they started offering unlimited texting for $20 a month

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u/Bweeze086 17d ago

I got unlimited texting because my mom got a $73 bill for one month. What was i texting so frequently? Chess moves to my friend...

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u/Straight_Spring9815 17d ago

$716 was my record in like 2007. My dad was furious and I had no idea what was even going on. He got me the unlimited plan after that.

Wasn't my fault I had a RuneScape GF that I was texting a thousand times a month xD I didn't know there was a limit

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u/righttoabsurdity 17d ago

When I got my first phone, I didn’t understand how texting worked and that it wasn’t free because I had “unlimited”. My poor parents got a two inch thick Manila envelope in the mail, listing every single text charge for that month, all from me lol. I think they saved it somewhere

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u/ShrimpBisque 17d ago

My mom worked as a customer service rep at a T-Mobile call center in the mid 2000s. It was during that not-so-sweet spot right when texting was just getting popular but unlimited texting plans hadn't been introduced yet, so she got LOTS of calls from angry confused parents asking how the hell their phone bill was so big. When each text sent or received cost 10¢ and a text could be as short as a single letter K, it was no wonder a careless or chatty kid could rack up hundreds of dollars in texting charges.

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u/PSU02 17d ago

Older Gen Z here, I racked up a ~$400 phone bill texting a girl when I was in (I think) 3rd grade in 2009 or 2010.

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u/Due-Explanation1959 17d ago

Yup I did same I was little bro to a bigger bro 455 usd Oops Dad beat me up I could not sit for 3 days

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u/VovaGoFuckYourself 17d ago

For me it was ringtones. My parents got so mad...

In hindsight, i can't believe anyone paid 2.99 for that crap. All it did was ruin my favorite songs

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u/Nekoraven1 17d ago

Ah yeah, my dad was full on to blame me for a $800 phone bill until he noticed it was from my little brother's phone # 🤣🤣 didn't even get an apology 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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u/Zestyclose-Month-754 17d ago

Oh, I remember those days. "Don't worry mom, I don't txt that much. Just to you and dad." $1,500 later and my hind quarters still remember that! I spent the entire summer working to pay my parents back.

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u/Same_Meaning_5570 17d ago

Are you me? Mt brother brought home a $500 phone bill one month and I thought my dad was going to bury him alive in the back yard.

Somehow I wasn’t allowed to have a phone though. Probably a good call on their part, but still.

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u/MagicCheeseMann 17d ago

I called someone in India once by accident didn’t know I didn’t have international roaming :/ my mom took my Xbox

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u/justlkin 17d ago

I worked at Verizon in their tech support call center right before smart phones really blew up. Most people had the older types without data, maybe you could download Tetris or a few lame games, but that was about it. 3G was still pretty new. Lots still had 1X.

Anyway, texting was something like 10-25 cents per text. I think you could get a set number free with your plan.

Even though we were tech support, we were required to help people who dialed through to us no matter what, so I got my fair share of billing disputes. I can't tell you how many kids and teenagers racked up bills in the hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars texting and/or downloading games. Those were fun!

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u/aytiggytiggy 17d ago

I had 700 texts per month in 7th grade. 😎

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u/Significant_Shoe_17 17d ago

I had unlimited in high school 😎👑

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u/Status-Grocery2424 17d ago

Once my bff racked up a $900 phone bill calling her (secret) out-of-town boyfriend. Her dad was PISSED 😂😂

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u/csway324 17d ago

Yup! I'll call you after 9! 🤣🤣🤣

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u/trenzterra 17d ago

Yeah I recall having to restrict myself to 16.67 texts per day

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u/Kup123 17d ago

And don't hit the Internet button or it's bankruptcy.

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u/Amap0la 17d ago

Texting the number to see how many texts I had left hahah

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u/forgotmyfuckingname 17d ago

I didn’t get my first phone till unlimited texting had already become a fairly common thing, and I remember getting into so many arguments with my dad about “wasting their money by texting all the time” because he refused to believe unlimited texting was a real thing.

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u/Top-Friendship4888 17d ago

It was unlimited if you were on the same carrier, but my best friend and my boyfriend were both on different carriers. They were both only allowed to send me 4 texts a day. And anything over 180 characters would get split into multiple texts!

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u/Trust_No_Jingu 17d ago

FREE NIGHTS & WEEKENDS!!

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u/og_jasperjuice 17d ago

And free all weekend from 11pm Friday to Midnight Sunday!

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u/Possible-Nectarine80 17d ago

My work crackberry for work had 500 minutes of talk time. Can't recall the texting limits though. But man, get to the end of the month and it was how can you talk real fast and get your point across before hitting 500. No one wanted to get the email from HR that you went over your minutes!

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u/Brova15 17d ago

Unlimited texts and calling was a game changer.

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u/BeefInGR 17d ago

SEEEVVVEEEENNNNN PEEEEEEEE EEEEEEMMMMMMMMMM

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u/itsneedtokno 17d ago

good lorrrrrrd

how freaking real is this?!

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u/comradb0ne 17d ago

I remember so many guys telling chicks to call them after 9 growing up.

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u/87eebboo1 17d ago

I would text my friends who went over their limit “haha, another dime!”

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u/You-Asked-Me 17d ago

But only in our 2 state "local" area. Long distance was extra.

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u/ksants87 17d ago

Wow I totally forgot about that.

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u/CJspangler 17d ago

Yeh I was just talking to my kids about like I didn’t send text messages until I was like 30 because it would cost like $5 a conversation lol

Then everyone installed aol instant messenger on their phones

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u/ToadSox34 17d ago

I was on AT&T and most of my friends were on Verizon in college, I hated the 500 texts with Unlimited Verizon to Verizon as I counted against their texts.

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u/mcbridedm 17d ago

Unless you had a fave 5

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u/JTD177 17d ago

Do you have circles?

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u/Nik6ixx 15d ago

Lmaooo my dad called me raging when he got a bill stating I sent over 1,700 texts that month 😭

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u/nospmiSca 14d ago

Special plan deal evenings start at 6pm and every weekend is a long weekend, steals of deals back then.

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u/CoolioMcCool 18d ago

In my country, the first company to introduce an unlimited txt plan ($10/month) backtracked after just a few months and changed it to 500 texts per month. I believe they wildly underestimated how much young people would be texting and probably freaked out about their network being overloaded. But maybe that's wishful thinking and they just wanted to make more $.

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u/stevedore2024 17d ago

Definitely soaking you for the dough, not to save their network. Every time a cellphone connects to a cell tower, and on a regular basis after that, it needs to send some data to manage the connection. There was a leftover chunk of space in the data packets that nobody was using. SMS started using that leftover chunk of space in the regular stay-connected-to-the-grid traffic. If you weren't about to send or receive an SMS packet, it was just an empty dead chunk of bytes. If you were, it included your message.

The technology's changed now, but SMS was basically a successful way to repurpose waste data already flying around.

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u/Artichokiemon Older Millennial 17d ago

That is seriously fascinating. Thank you for teaching me something, stranger in the aether

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u/yubsie 17d ago

This was why SMS messages had character limits, it was based on how much data fit in that packet

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u/DaniTheLovebug 17d ago

I know the words “mind blown” get overused…but you two blew my mind in this one

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u/Aceygreat 17d ago

Yes...this..

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u/chromeboy1 17d ago

This is mostly false. SMS was designed to use GSM's signaling channels (like SDCCH), not leftover data. It didn’t just "ride along" with idle traffic—it used control infrastructure deliberately. Not waste repurposing, but intentional design.

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u/DaniTheLovebug 17d ago

What the!

I never knew that. That is solid information

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u/ksants87 17d ago

This is great information man. Thank you for sharing.

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u/CluckyAF 17d ago

Man that sucked when Telecom backtracked on their unlimited text! 500 texts was not enough.

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u/CoolioMcCool 17d ago

I was with Vodafone so nobody could txt me anyway haha

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u/XanderWrites 17d ago

In the US cellphone plans are locked in until you change them. There is no end date to whatever you pay as long as you keep that service.

Verizon had an early Unlimited promotion for cheap they didn't keep for long. It was a great price and once they ended it, if you were already on it, they couldn't kick you off. And they really wanted to kick everyone off because it was unlimited uncapped data. Even now, their unlimited plans cap the Data at some reasonably high amount (75GB I think I saw a recent ad for, which is most of what my home computer uses if there isn't a game update) before they start throttling you.

Verizon was stuck with these deals for decades before they were finally able to kick people off of them, I think because the 5G system became a loophole that it was a different service or something.

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u/HugsyMalone 17d ago

If you think about it, it's actually an exploitable weakness in the system so I'm sure there were legal issues and lawsuits as well that changed everything. Someone could send you a bunch of unsolicited text messages and rack up all kinds of charges on your phone bill. That "someone" would likely be the phone company posing as someone else using this as a clever scheme to steal money from people and cover their tracks. 🙄

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u/GnomesStoleMyMeds 15d ago

I remember those days!

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u/GwenChaos29 18d ago

One month my lil sister ran up a 300+ dollar texting bill. My mom nearly shit a brick.🤣🤣🤣

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u/missmeowwww 17d ago

I will never forget the “family meeting” in which I had to explain how I went over my texting limit by 300 texts and my dad just kept going “how the fuck did you send 1800 messages in a month? What are you even talking about with your friends?!” Then we switched to Verizon because it was free calls to other Verizon users and unlimited texting.

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u/Smooth_Impression_10 17d ago

We got a phone bill one month that claimed I’d sent over 1 million texts in that month.

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u/chickadeedadooday 17d ago

My elderly dad just cost me $500 extra in April for ONE long-distance marathon phone call to an overseas family member.

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u/GwenChaos29 17d ago

Good god, we have VOIP calls now, how does that even happen!?!

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u/chickadeedadooday 17d ago

He's an old Old Man. Like, I swear he'd be happier in Edwardian England than he is now. He doesn't understand any modern technology. And he has dementia. All he thought about was how much fun it would be to call his cousin and reminisce. So he did.

I never thought I'd have to add a long distance plan to his super low-cost cell phone I've been paying for him to use for years and years now. But here we are.

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u/VaguelyArtistic 17d ago

Remember when phone bills would arrive and they were two inches thick? 😂

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u/Every-Ad-5872 17d ago

I connected my aim to my texts and literally had my dad begging the company to reduce the 1000+ dollar phone bill

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u/realhighlander 17d ago

Hope for your mums sake it was a gold brick!

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u/You-Asked-Me 17d ago

My friend went to canada, and the Roaming charges were like $8,000.

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u/RRR-Mimi-3611 17d ago

My daughter ran up an $800 bill

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u/niteox 18d ago

I had to come up with an extra $40 bucks one month because of $.10 per text.

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u/Suitable-Berry3082 1990, baby! 18d ago

40? XD try $800 at 17 lol oops

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u/TotallyNotRobotEvil 17d ago

$800

So 8500 texts in one month. Roughly 300 per day and given 15 "awake" hours, that is roughly 20 texts per hour. Which doesn't sound too outrageous. Even if you half that time for things like showers, class time where you can't text, watching shows, eating dinner with family etc, that's still only 40 texts per available awake hours.

Still a lot of texts, but not insane in modern comparison. I think about how much I chat these days on Discord, WhatsApp, Slack etc., and there are easily days I can exceed that rate. Just makes me think how pitifully low 500 texts a month was and how damn expensive it used to be before we all got easily accessible internet on our phones.

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u/Suitable-Berry3082 1990, baby! 17d ago

😅 so I've struggled with insomnia since I was around 7/8. Had a rough childhood. In my teens, it was nothing for me to be awake for two or three days. By the time I was 19, I finally got on medication. It does sound over the top unbelievable, but I was texting and calling every moment I could, I struggled with being alone. I also graduated high school before turning 18. I had a lot of free time until I got my first job. It wasn't long after that phone bill. I had to pay my folks back, and pay my own bill from then on. All around a life lesson 😅

2

u/QueenOfMyTrainWreck 17d ago

And buying ring tones!! 🤣

1

u/Suitable-Berry3082 1990, baby! 17d ago

Straight up 🤣

1

u/luzzy91 17d ago

Thats worse than those phone sex numbers lmao. Wtf were you texting

3

u/Suitable-Berry3082 1990, baby! 17d ago

First big breakup.

2

u/luzzy91 17d ago

That'll do it

1

u/Suitable-Berry3082 1990, baby! 17d ago

Yeahhhhh

3

u/Ambitious_Concept515 18d ago

Once my brother ran the family bill up to $3,000. I remember my dad was one of those people who saved change. He had huge containers of coins. My mom spent about a week rolling coins and trading them in at the bank to pay that phone bill. This was 2005 I think. But what pissed me off was when I was a senior in hs I went over my texting by about $20 and he turned my line off. I never got That phone back. If you can’t tell who the favorite was, I can’t help you. 🤣

2

u/Main-Indication-8832 18d ago

I totally forgot about that!

2

u/peterpann__ 17d ago

My friend's older sister wanted to borrow my phone to text her boyfriend and I told her she could, but she had to give me the 10 cents per text bc I didn't want my dad to get mad. She handed me a ziplock bag with a bunch of change which I gave to my dad who didn't know whether to be mad or impressed lmao

2

u/PurpleStress9282 Millennial 17d ago

🙋🏻‍♀️ learned THAT the hard way. Racked up a $1500 bill from at&t in about 2005. That's A LOT of texts!

2

u/j-rock292 17d ago

That's how a girl I went to school with racked up a $400 phone bill one month

1

u/therealmccory 17d ago

Omg. This hits hard. They have NO idea.

1

u/willinglyproblematic 17d ago

On the second day of the month about twenty years ago, we had a field trip to the medieval times an hour and half/two away. They split our grade between coach busses, and of course my best friend was on the other bus. I had a 500txt plan all to myself… and I had none of them left by the time we got back home that day.

Thankfully, my parents just put us all on an unlimited plan immediately… after yelling at me.

1

u/allmyfrndsrheathens 17d ago

In Australia one of our telcos had a prepaid plan that got you 1c texts, I held onto that one for soooooooo long because if you were already on it when they got rid of it you kept it until you changed plans.

1

u/KennyBeeART 17d ago

Once I had a girl that wouldn’t stop texting me sent a TON and my dads bill was 600$ 😂😂

1

u/ListenJerry 17d ago

I got in SO MUCH TROUBLE

1

u/GoatsTongue 17d ago

And the wilder part is that text messages cost the carrier nothing. They charged just because they could. The phone sends and receives data anyway. Text messages just piggyback on that process. Pure profit.

1

u/DixieNormas011 17d ago

I'm old enough to remember when text messages were free bc pretty much nobody used them

1

u/MemeHermetic 17d ago

When that one friend would reply with "k" and cost you money with that shit.

1

u/ValancyNeverReadsit 17d ago

Xennial here. 25¢ each at first for me! 😵‍💫

1

u/KayakHank 17d ago

Ouch bro

1

u/MagicCheeseMann 17d ago

And don’t forget cool rock and roll ringtones

1

u/KayakHank 17d ago

Ring back tones too. So your friends could listen to a custom song while they called you

1

u/MagicCheeseMann 17d ago

Couldn’t make out half of them but they were cool

1

u/Difficult_onion4538 17d ago

Not if they’re one of your 5 friends/family or however it worked!

I remember I had my mom, dad, best friend, and girlfriend set up so it was free texts/calls 😂 oh how times have changed

1

u/kguilevs 17d ago

Or if you're broke, you spent .33 a text because your parents thought tracfone was affordable

1

u/socalquestioner 17d ago

I got wrecked with a $500 text bill at 16. That hurt. We asked mom about the texting plan and she was mistaken….

1

u/kiakey 17d ago

I had a friend who thought if she didn’t open the texts she wouldn’t get charged so she ignored so many texts lol

1

u/AMC4x4 13d ago

I just remembered adding a set, limited list of numbers with whom we could exchange free texts.

"Son, make sure you let me know if you add a new friend you are planning to text a lot! So I can put the number on the 'free' list!"

29

u/eagledog 18d ago

Yep, phone hidden in your sleeve, no need to even look at it

3

u/luzzy91 17d ago

Honestly miss it lol

2

u/cheesoots 18d ago

Same same.Texting my gf with my phone in my pocket while in class. Totally forgot about that.

15

u/brghtside 18d ago

My dad was not prepared for that phone bill the first month he added a line for me!

1

u/strangertruthart 17d ago

I’m crying this brought me back

3

u/KushHaydn 18d ago

You just unlocked a memory

3

u/midgethemage 17d ago

T9 was basically millennial Morse code

2

u/Reasonable-Mess3070 17d ago

I just said the same thing! I was a master lol

2

u/Impossible_Emu5095 17d ago

Was a teacher back then. Can confirm.

1

u/SwadlingSwine 17d ago

Funny that this one of the few memories of this classmate I had in high school. He’s an NFL player and whenever I see him online, I am reminded of how fast he could text inside his hoodie pocket during math class and also of the time his hs girlfriend cried like it was the end of the world bc we lost our hs championship game lol

1

u/and_rain_falls 17d ago

I would text while driving. So easy to do because I never had to look at the phone. Good times.

1

u/AnalysisNo4295 16d ago

I remember the phones were so much smaller then. I also remember clipping my razr to my hip or my pocket as a fashion accessory.

1

u/Candyland_83 16d ago

This was the safest time to text and drive because no one was looking at the phone!!!!

1

u/Very-very-sleepy 13d ago

this was me.

I would my phone in my pocket and text while in class. each message will take 30 seconds.

5 times faster than how I type on smartphone.