How do I ween myself off texting?

That’s a tough one! I think we are all in the same boat as texting can be addicting! We might have to go to T.A. meetings! Texting Anonymous.

not someone that likes to text!

What about cutting down the people that you text to – or if it’s not that many people, just a few, but a lot. Start telling them now that you won’t be able to text as much. If necessary, turn your phone off when you get the urge.

Start now and keep track of your texts. Say 1–40…fun…the rest, need to be very important. Set your goal to come in under the total amount allowed.

Then again, if you go over and can’t afford your bill….well, they will turn off your service. Just make a decision, do you want service or it to be cut off because you can’t pay your bill?

Good luck!

Good luck! I can’t imagine only having 75 texts a month! The only way I would be able to not go over and screw my bill would be to completely turn off my texting options. My husband HATES texting and had them shut it off on his phone-he can’t send or receive any.

I don’t really text very much, but I just wanted to say I’m sort of in the same boat as you, a little. My ex and I are finally getting to be friends again, but the only way we can really talk at all is through texting, which I can hardly do anymore because my cell phone company is bonkers and told my mom I had received over 700 texts in the space of two weeks. Took us forever to get that cleared up and off our bill, and now if I start texting a lot I’m afraid it will happen again and they can say, “Oh, but I see you received 40 text messages yesterday!” Or something.
...and then I found five dollars.

The thing is, if I do the math, that’s like 2 texts a day. I mean, wtf? I used to almost never text before, but now my iPhone is tempting me, so turning it off is a no-no.

I pay for unlimited texting. It’s a lot cheaper the being limited and going over your limit. Why don’t you check if they have an unlimited plan for texting or find another company that does. I believe if you are unhappy with service you can cancel with no questions.

Call your provider asking if it is possible to cancel texting on your phone because you are concerned for the price of individual texts (a legitimate concern for many non-texters as it can run up the bill $0.35/a text). See if they would be possible to offer a cheap plan for 100 texts as many providers would rather offer a cheap plan for texting rather than canceling it from your phone because it is much easier to get you to sign back onto a plan for texting if it is still enabled on your phone. After a bit of coaxing, you will most likely be able to get them to give you 100 extra texts for a couple extra bucks on the bill a month, which should be plenty of texts for you if you were able to use only 75 a month.

@babygalll I just switched to Rogers, and I’m VERY happy, I just feel a bit limited. I guess it’s because of lower expectations at my previous provider. I already added caller display, so maybe I’ll update my contract to a “value pack” or something. However, there are special plans just for the iPhone, so I’m not sure how that would work out. Perhaps I’ll call them this week. But please, I would really appreciate more answers if you have any so I don’t have to go through the trouble, possibly.

@buckyboy28 Wow, great idea. And I bet with this new provider, who actually has decent customer service, it might work. They really do rely on the customer…

That sounded sarcastic, but really it isn’t.

@Mtl_zack I didn’t think so… I’m pretty good at gaging internet sarcasm :-). Another thing that you may be able to do would be to ask your provider if there are any text message programs that they offer. For example, I am a college student, and sprint offers a special for college students for 500 texts a month for $1.

Buckyboy is right on. Check and see what your company is willing to do for you because you will not be able to control who texts you. I’d also ask why have such an advanced phone if you’re not going to take advantage of all of the features? Texting has saved my butt many times.

That being said, I don’t see texting going away any time soon. I’d do what you can to get a plan that allows for more.

@Mtl_zack Oh, I didn’t mean turn your service off…just the phone. Let the feeling pass. Again, I’m not a texter…so this not something I struggle with; however, make me give up one of my many vices and I’ll take someone’s head of!

Well with the email capabilities of the iPhone you could send emails instead of texts. You can also email someone’s phone and it’ll appear as a text to them, then they can email you back from their phone.

Services like Twitter are also great for short messages with no limits. Get a few of your friends to sign up on twitter and you can use one of the many twitter applications on your iPhone to communicate with friends for free and unlimited. If they don’t have iPhones, Twitter works great with regular texts as well. If they have more texts available, they could text you messages through twitter which would appear on your iPhone twitter client for free.

75!? I use that in an hour.

They have texting apps that will save you.

The Apple App Store offers some iPhone apps that make it possible to send free texts. I’ve used the same program on my ipod touch. The “full” version costs 5.99 (one time charge) and there are no ads and no limits.

You could look into that…
Or you could buy a bundle of texts per month. It’s really silly to pay per message unelss you use very little. I myself am unlimited because I text a lot but you can get cheaper bundles if you want.

Break your thumbs or spend a lot more time on Fluther.

Heh heh. You said ween.

ween

Personally, I weaned byself by seeing my first phone bill that was way too expensive. Lesson learned. Have self control. Actually call people, if you can’t call then wait.

If you’ve still got the iPhone you can get the app “text free”!
On second thought, maybe I’m being a bit of an enabler…