Free Remind service to end for Verzion users

Abby McCoy, Co-editor-in-chief
January 14, 2019

 

Photo credit: Remind
Remind will be discontinuing services to users with Verizon Wireless as their carrier due to Verizon’s new fee on Remind. The fee will be implemented on Jan 28.

In a ploy to tackle digital spam, Verizon will be charging Remind a new fee that will make it impossible for the company to support free text messages for anyone who has Verizon Wireless as their phone carrier. The fee will be implemented beginning on Jan 28.

Remind is an educational service that allows students, parents and educators to send individual and group messages for free.

Previously, the company had paid a fee for every Remind message sent. Now, Verizon is adding an additional fee because it considers Remind messages spam.

“The fee will increase our cost of supporting text messages to at least 11 times our current cost-forcing us to end free Remind text messaging for the more than 7 million students, parents, and educators who has Verizon Wireless as their carrier,” Remind said.

Remind said that will no longer be working with Verizon, and it’s likely that Verizon won’t be the only carrier to implement some changes. If this is the case, it could end Remind’s services.

“If other carriers follow suit, it will severely curtail the ability of schools to stay connected with the most socio-economically disadvantaged families in their communities,” Remind CEO Brian Grey said.

The company and its supporters have begun using the hashtag #ReverseTheFee.

History teacher Rebecca Doerksen is an avid user of Remind and utilizes it to communicate with her students.

“I think it’s unfair to those kids who don’t have access to it,” Doerksen said. “Yeah, you can set up an email, but nobody checks it as much. It’s different.”