[hakoreh]

I didn't know where to put this so I apologize if there is the wrong place.

I have a friend who has a texting plan but I don't. We want to talk and they don't have a smartphone or BlackBerry that they can check e-mail so that's out also. What other ways can we talk? And I forgot - this friend has internet blocked on their phone as well. I know there are free texting sites around - I don't know if they are legitimate or not but I tried one yesterday and had the reply sent to my gmail but I never got the replies.

Can anyone offer any help?

Thanks so much

[Jared DiPane]

I notice you are on the verizon network, is your friend as well?

You can have your friend send a "picture message" and instead of typing your phone number, they can put your email address and instead of attaching a picture they can just write, and it will come to you as an email, and then when you reply they will get it as a picture message generally.

If your friend has Verizon as well you can send the first message using the following format. [email protected]

Let me know if you have any more questions about this.

[Radius]

You can text through email as well. I am not sure what the Verizon email is, but for Rogers you can email to their number like:

[email protected]

They will receive the email as a text, and you get the response as an email. That might work for you. If you use the BIS push mail it should be nice and fast too.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[wagets13]

Yes that worked for me as well

[Radius]

[email protected]

That is the one for Verizon.

[amojeba]

[email protected]

That is the one for Verizon.

+1 that's correct.

[hakoreh]

thanks guys for all your help. what happend was this friend was on sprint and i was sending it to [email protected] but it wasn't getting through because I was using an aim email address which is kind of strange. Sprint says can't use an aim email, I guess for spam but there is always Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail for spam so yeah.

[Radius]

Why not use your BIS email? That one always works for me on most carriers.

[KillYouWithMyMind]

call them maybe? it is a phone after all.

[jlb21]

You can text through email as well. I am not sure what the Verizon email is, but for Rogers you can email to their number like:

[email protected]

They will receive the email as a text, and you get the response as an email. That might work for you. If you use the BIS push mail it should be nice and fast too.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

So let me ask you this.......

I will be getting a Tour in a few weeks. My daughter will be getting an enV 3 in the near future and we were going to get her a basic messaging plan.

If I send to her via e-mail is there cost on my end, or only a hit to her on the inbound side?

Then, if she responds and it comes to my e-mail, is it that only she gets hit outbound and I don't get hit for an inbound e-mail?

Thanks. This will help us save some money, if that is the case, when I get my Berry and she gets her enV 3.

[Vortex337]

call them maybe? it is a phone after all.

haha, it does seem like a whole lot of work to avoid a phone call.

[jlb21]

I just tried doing a send to my own phone and was amazed out how quick it went through. And the reply from the phone went back fast too.

So, sure, that was a few cents to check functionality.

I guess the more I think about it, VZW only can see the fact that the message is an incoming text (on the phone). Or do they see that it routed through VTEXT and double charge the phone line that the message arrives at....?

This really could help us out....We can start by getting $5/250 text for my daughter's phone and I can communicate, if she wants, via my BB sending email. Once she gets her phone, I'll send and initial message. She can always use that as a starting point and just reply when she wants to send to me.

And by doing that, we can just get my wife $5/250 on her line. If I were to add Text to my BB, then we inch closer to wanting to go unlimited, which we might do anyways, but this is a nice interim solution, I think.

[jlb21]

haha, it does seem like a whole lot of work to avoid a phone call.

Oh I know. But since this will be myu daughter's first cell phone.....and seeing the way her friends use them, I know she is going to want to text a lot at first. It's also a great way for her to send me a message while at work or travelling for work if she doesn't know if I am in a meeting or not.

That.

[Radius]

So let me ask you this.......

I will be getting a Tour in a few weeks. My daughter will be getting an enV 3 in the near future and we were going to get her a basic messaging plan.

If I send to her via e-mail is there cost on my end, or only a hit to her on the inbound side?

Then, if she responds and it comes to my e-mail, is it that only she gets hit outbound and I don't get hit for an inbound e-mail?

Thanks. This will help us save some money, if that is the case, when I get my Berry and she gets her enV 3.

I have no idea how your texting plans work there, but at the most basic level only the one who is sending/receiving the texts will get charged. There is no charge at all for the email.

Maybe you are lucky and you have no inbound text charges with your plan, just charged for the outgoing ones. I have no idea though.

[jlb21]

I should clarify...right now we have no text plan. I will likely get my Tour at the same time we get my daughter's (first) phone.

We talked already about when that occurs, texting can add up fast. She's a good kid and knows that this is the case. We talked initially about getting a 250 text/$5 plan for her line. She will pay that, and pay for overages.

Very possibly, we may go unlimited messaging for the whole family share plan, but not right now, thanks to the economy.

But by being able to send her text via email, and for her to send a text to me via email, it saves us $ as at first, she may very well send to me while she gets used to it and all.

I will likely set up either my blackberry e-mail or a secondary e-mail on yahoo so I can keep anything that is text from family coming into one email and not getting mixed in with all the other mail my personal mail receives. This way I can use berrybuzz, or something else similar, and have a unique tone/lights/etc when I know it is a family member texting me.

[TgeekB]

I should clarify...right now we have no text plan. I will likely get my Tour at the same time we get my daughter's (first) phone.

We talked already about when that occurs, texting can add up fast. She's a good kid and knows that this is the case. We talked initially about getting a 250 text/$5 plan for her line. She will pay that, and pay for overages.

Very possibly, we may go unlimited messaging for the whole family share plan, but not right now, thanks to the economy.

But by being able to send her text via email, and for her to send a text to me via email, it saves us $ as at first, she may very well send to me while she gets used to it and all.

I will likely set up either my blackberry e-mail or a secondary e-mail on yahoo so I can keep anything that is text from family coming into one email and not getting mixed in with all the other mail my personal mail receives. This way I can use berrybuzz, or something else similar, and have a unique tone/lights/etc when I know it is a family member texting me.

I know times are tough, but if you are purchasing two new phones, I would find a way to do the family texting plan. It's usually around $20/month on most carriers and from personal experience, it will save you in the long run. Plus, your family will get lots of usage out of it and not have to worry. Just my 2 cents.

[jlb21]

I know what you mean. It's not so simple wiht Verizon these days.

We're on a 550 minute plan with two phones. For argument's sake, let's say we've just added the third line bringing our base to $70.

Family share with unlimited text becomes $110. We have good folks in our local authorized seller so maybe they can find a way to get us the unlimited off of our 550 minute base. Perhaps get us to something less than $110.

If I were to add unlimited mobile to mobile text plus 500 for each line, that's $30, no better.

My wife is not a big texter, if at all, so if we start by putting 250/$5 on my daughter's line, then I can use BB mail, and an occasional inidividual text from/to my wife, then that is a great way to start.

Given that I will be spending for BB accessories and other stuff up front, limiting the plan for now is very critical. But, yes, we will likely push our plan up within 6 months or so.

[Xopher]

This is how we were set up to communicate with our daughter at first. We got her phone a texting plan, but didn't have one on either of our BlackBerrys.

I would send an e-mail and she would receive the text message. Then, she could send a text to us to our e-mail addresses. The only time there was a charge was for the texting side, not the e-mail side (after all, we're already paying for the data connectivity).

We eventually went with the unlimited text & pics family plan. Now we don't have to worry about the text-to-email thing anymore. Both my wife and daughter now use MMS to send pics back and forth as well. I'm always amazed at how many texts our daughter sends each month (right around 1,000/month). My wife now sends a lot of texts back and forth with her too - funny how textx messages make communications with our kids easier.

Starting off with $5/250 is probably a good start, but you'll need to watch that. Our daughter would do a pretty good job of keeping in that range, but not always. The first month we switched her to unlimited texts, she hit 800 messages in the first month.

[TgeekB]

Agree with the last two posts. We did the same thing, started out slow, had some bumps in the road, and eventually went over to the family unlimited. The email thing does OK as a work around for a while. My wife didn't text at all and had just a basic phone. Now she has a touch screen, goes online, and texts like a mad woman! It is addicting.

[jlb21]

Xopher and tgeekb, thank you for your last two posts. That was exactly the type of response I was hoping for. My wife just has a basic dumb phone with no data. So maybe we would put $5/250 on her phone too, or maybe not.

I do think my daughter will be good about watching what she does. But who knows.

I imagine some "conversations" with a friend going like this:

A: Hi
B: Hi

A: How are you?
B: Good, how are you?

A: Good. Did you do the math homework yet?
B: Not yet. You?

etc....etc...

Before long, one text conversation is a major hit to messages.

But who knows......Perhaps if my wife has no interest in direct texting (and maybe not even receiving via computer/email and sending back from there), maybe we would put the $10 option on my daughters phone. That gets unlimited mobile to mobile plus 500 outbound not in network. But that is really only a benefit if she wants to text my BB a lot. My gut says it should either be the $5/250 or a FS unlimited.

And as I said in my post above, I would probably set-up a BBerry email or additional Yahoo email address for this so I can uniquely keep email from her in it's own bucket and not mixed in with all the junk mail I receive to my Yahoo. Unless I can use something like Berrybuzz, or whatever, to flash specifically if I receive email from a specific incoming address (her phone).