Rent overdue! by Text Messaging

Officials at Fife Council Scotland are hailing as a success, an experiment in which tenants behind on their rent payments were sent reminders by text messaging, according to the BBC.

Out of the 200 tenants sent SMS messages adivising them their rent was overdue, the response rate was of 40%, with five responses arriving within 10 minutes of being sent.

The Council is considering extending the service to telling tenants about repairs and other appointments.

There was a previous post in July, on text messaging used for debt collecting in South Africa, where it proved more successful than conventional telephone calls or correspondence, with response rates increasing as much as 200%.

"Possibly debtors who receive a personalised SMS gets a feeling of being tracked down with no place to hide as a cellphone is generally always in close proximity to the user, almost an extension of their person,” says Delmé Hawkins, manager of SMSmalls, a locally developed product that provides a bulk SMS service in South Africa."

emily | 11:40 AM | New SMS Services |
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2003/08/001497.htm