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Maybe it's a generation gap, but I've seen this in other places. I got a text message from my student loan servicer - It "needs 2know if U wish 2stay in Autopay

Maybe it's a generation gap, but I've seen this in other places. I got a text message from my student loan servicer - It "needs 2know if U wish 2stay in Autopay". I thought it was spam, but it's real. Do Gen Zers really think this is okay, or am I getting too old

pseudalopex 5y ago
Would the words have been over 160 characters?
- howdydoo 5y ago
  The 160 character limit is an ancient relic of 2008 (unlike Chrome)
  - f0rmatfunction 5y ago
    The 160 limit per message segment is absolutely still a thing, but when you receive a message >160 characters your phone stitches the segments back together for you so you don't notice. Why this matters: SMS delivery is usually priced per message segment. Going over the 160 limit ~doubles the cost to deliver the text. (Source: I am the CEO of a company which sends millions of text messages and avoiding 2 segment messages saves us thousands each month!) All that said, the text from the above commenter's loan servicer is unprofessional nonsense regardless of its length.
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      > I am the CEO of a company which sends millions of text messages and avoiding 2 segment messages saves us thousands each month! How much is each customer worth to you? Which is worse for your business - all your customers getting a cringey needs 2know if U wish 2stay in Autopay text and thinking that your entire business is unprofessional, or spending an extra $0.001 per customer per month to send them a message that reads F0rmatFunction can automatically pay your bill each month, but we need your approval. Change your mind? Cancellation is easy, just text "No" to this number. Respond "OK" to enable auto-pay! I'd rather get the latter for sure! Sure, it's good to let those generating the messages know where the threshold is. Concise communication is best, sometimes you can be equally professional and just pick a different synonym or structure, and save the company some money. But sacrificing quality of a $20/mo service to save $0.001 per customer seems unwise, even if it adds up to a thousand-dollar bill.
      - willcipriano 5y ago
        You are a executive, you could work really hard and find new lines of business, talk to customers and understand their needs to craft better offerings, or find another firm to form a strategic partnership with. But you won't, you'll just say "Start using 2day in the text messages, we will save 500k a year!" and move on to a new company in 18 months.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Some providers didn't support concatenated SMS until mid 2010s at least. Lots of software in financial institutions is old. And providers charge more for concatenated SMS still.
  - jdmichal 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that longer messages still generate multiple "packets" or whatever you want to call them on the backend. Which is important if you're paying per packet. It's just that every modern phone knows how to collect and stitch them together into a single displayed message. That's why phones still display the number of messages being generated when you type in longer ones. For instance, mine starts showing "10/1", then after another character "9/1", eventually to "0/1" and then "145/2".
arbitrage 5y ago
gen Zers know it's stupid, but have the ability to cope with reality and just go on with their business, instead of obstinately pretending to be 'baffled' by something that's been in common usage for twenty years, then complainging about it on the internet. you're thinking really hard about paying your student loans now, so it worked. who doesn't understand what's going on? doesn't sound like it's your loan-servicer, to me.
- throwaway4220 5y ago
  No I really thought it was spam!
NobodyNada 5y ago
> Do Gen Zers really think this is okay No, we don't think this is OK. It looks ridiculous. Remember that "textspeak" is just shorthand used to save keystrokes. I haven't seen anyone unironically use "2" instead of "to" since the days of flip phones -- on a smartphone keyboard, it's harder to type the number 2 than the word "to" because you have to switch to the numeral keyboard and then back. Writing "u" instead of "you" is less common than it used to be, though some people still do it sometimes. But capitalizing the U is absurd -- remember, the whole point of shorthand is to save a small number of keystrokes, so you wouldn't waste keystrokes on unnecessary capitalization. Any kind of shorthand like this looks ridiculous and out-of-place in a professional context, like a text message from a corporation. It signifies that you don't care enough to type out the whole message, which comes across as relaxed and casual between friends but as lazy and unprofessional in a form letter. If I received a message liked this, I would immediately think it was written by some middle-aged manager who is trying to be "cool" and "relate to the kids." But a poor imitation of low-effort texting shorthand doesn't come across as "cool" at all; it's just silly and disrespectful. It gives the distinct impression that the whoever wrote the message thinks of me as "just a kid" rather than a normal, adult peer; as if I don't deserve the dignity of a normal, professional message.

pseudalopex 5y ago

Would the words have been over 160 characters?

howdydoo 5y ago
The 160 character limit is an ancient relic of 2008 (unlike Chrome)
- f0rmatfunction 5y ago
  The 160 limit per message segment is absolutely still a thing, but when you receive a message >160 characters your phone stitches the segments back together for you so you don't notice. Why this matters: SMS delivery is usually priced per message segment. Going over the 160 limit ~doubles the cost to deliver the text. (Source: I am the CEO of a company which sends millions of text messages and avoiding 2 segment messages saves us thousands each month!) All that said, the text from the above commenter's loan servicer is unprofessional nonsense regardless of its length.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    > I am the CEO of a company which sends millions of text messages and avoiding 2 segment messages saves us thousands each month! How much is each customer worth to you? Which is worse for your business - all your customers getting a cringey needs 2know if U wish 2stay in Autopay text and thinking that your entire business is unprofessional, or spending an extra $0.001 per customer per month to send them a message that reads F0rmatFunction can automatically pay your bill each month, but we need your approval. Change your mind? Cancellation is easy, just text "No" to this number. Respond "OK" to enable auto-pay! I'd rather get the latter for sure! Sure, it's good to let those generating the messages know where the threshold is. Concise communication is best, sometimes you can be equally professional and just pick a different synonym or structure, and save the company some money. But sacrificing quality of a $20/mo service to save $0.001 per customer seems unwise, even if it adds up to a thousand-dollar bill.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      You are a executive, you could work really hard and find new lines of business, talk to customers and understand their needs to craft better offerings, or find another firm to form a strategic partnership with. But you won't, you'll just say "Start using 2day in the text messages, we will save 500k a year!" and move on to a new company in 18 months.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Some providers didn't support concatenated SMS until mid 2010s at least. Lots of software in financial institutions is old. And providers charge more for concatenated SMS still.
- jdmichal 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that longer messages still generate multiple "packets" or whatever you want to call them on the backend. Which is important if you're paying per packet. It's just that every modern phone knows how to collect and stitch them together into a single displayed message. That's why phones still display the number of messages being generated when you type in longer ones. For instance, mine starts showing "10/1", then after another character "9/1", eventually to "0/1" and then "145/2".

arbitrage 5y ago

gen Zers know it's stupid, but have the ability to cope with reality and just go on with their business, instead of obstinately pretending to be 'baffled' by something that's been in common usage for twenty years, then complainging about it on the internet. you're thinking really hard about paying your student loans now, so it worked. who doesn't understand what's going on? doesn't sound like it's your loan-servicer, to me.

throwaway4220 5y ago
No I really thought it was spam!

NobodyNada 5y ago

> Do Gen Zers really think this is okay No, we don't think this is OK. It looks ridiculous. Remember that "textspeak" is just shorthand used to save keystrokes. I haven't seen anyone unironically use "2" instead of "to" since the days of flip phones -- on a smartphone keyboard, it's harder to type the number 2 than the word "to" because you have to switch to the numeral keyboard and then back. Writing "u" instead of "you" is less common than it used to be, though some people still do it sometimes. But capitalizing the U is absurd -- remember, the whole point of shorthand is to save a small number of keystrokes, so you wouldn't waste keystrokes on unnecessary capitalization. Any kind of shorthand like this looks ridiculous and out-of-place in a professional context, like a text message from a corporation. It signifies that you don't care enough to type out the whole message, which comes across as relaxed and casual between friends but as lazy and unprofessional in a form letter. If I received a message liked this, I would immediately think it was written by some middle-aged manager who is trying to be "cool" and "relate to the kids." But a poor imitation of low-effort texting shorthand doesn't come across as "cool" at all; it's just silly and disrespectful. It gives the distinct impression that the whoever wrote the message thinks of me as "just a kid" rather than a normal, adult peer; as if I don't deserve the dignity of a normal, professional message.