7 June 2008 @ 17:02AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless - Not so smart

AT&T My wife and I added AT&T’s Smart Limits for Wireless to our daughter’s phone last night. After reading about it, and watching the demo, I thought it sounded like a useful feature for my daughter’s phone. Her mom and I were mostly interested in the “Time of day” restrictions for school time and bedtime. We enabled Smart Limits last night, and tested out all the different settings.

WARNING: By blocking all calls, this phone will not be able to make outgoing calls except to 911 and numbers on the Allowed Numbers list. Incoming calls will not be blocked by this feature except from numbers on the Blocked Numbers list.

Unfortunately this feature is pretty much crippled by the fact that incoming calls and text messages still get through to the phone during restricted times. This doesn’t make any sense at all. She will learn soon, if she hasn’t already, that she simply has to tell her friends, “After a certain time, I can’t call you, so you should call me.” I find this flaw in Smart Limits extremely asinine. This would be simple enough for AT&T to implement if they had any desire to give their customers what they wanted. I know that I am not the only one who feels this way.

The only solution that has been offered is to add numbers to the blocked list, that I don’t want calling during the restricted hours.

I understand that I can add a number to the blocked list to block it, but there are 2 flaws with this “solution”. First, the “restricted” time of day should be just that — restricted (except from allowed numbers). The second problem with adding a number to the blocked list is that there is a limit of 15 numbers. My daughter has more than 15 friends that wouldn’t hesitate to call her during the restricted hours, and adding their numbers to the blocked list will block them at all hours, not just during the restricted hours.

ATT Smart Limits for Wireless Before anyone calls me out and says that I should have known how Smart Limits works based on AT&T’s documentation, I read and pretty much understood what Smart Limits could and could not do before adding the service. I’m not implying that AT&T misled me with their Smart Limits documentation. My complaint is that the service itself is not quite what it should be. Only after trying the Smart Limits service do the flaws become apparent. In my opinioin, AT&T only halfway implemented the features that would truly make this service useful.

“Disappointed with Smart Limits” thread at the AT&T forums

Comments:

Block that annoying cell phone | Geek stuff | 12 Aug 2008 @ 8:48 #

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